LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
September 12/08

Middle East Analysis

Bible Reading of the day.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 6,27-38. But to you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well, and from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic. Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. If you lend money to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit (is) that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, and get back the same amount. But rather, love your enemies and do good to them, and lend expecting nothing back; then your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as (also) your Father is merciful. Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you."

Saint Maximus the Confessor (c.580-662), monk and theologian
Century 1 on Love, in the Philocalia/«Be merciful as your Father is merciful»
Don't attach yourself to the suspicions or the persons of those who would tempt you to become scandalized about certain things. Because those who, in one way or another, are scandalized by what comes their way, whether they wanted it to or not, are unmindful of the way of peace that, through love, guides those who are caught up by it to knowledge of God. Anyone who is still swayed by other people's characters and who, for example, loves one but hates another, or who sometimes loves, sometimes hates the same person for the same reasons, does not as yet have perfect love. Perfect love does not split men's common nature because some of them have different personalities but, always regarding that nature, it loves all equally. It loves the virtuous as friends and the wicked as enemies, doing good to them, bearing with them with patience, enduring what comes from them, paying no attention to malice, going so far as to suffer for them if the opportunity presents itself. So it makes friends of them if at all possible. Or, at the least, it is faithful to itself, always showing its fruits to all alike. Our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, demonstrating the love he bears us, suffered for all humankind and proffered the hope of resurrection to all alike even though each individually, by his works, calls upon himself glory or punishment.
 

Free Opinions, Releases, letters & Special Reports
9/11 and Future Jihad. By: Author Walid Phares 11/09/08
Your War on Jihad.Family Security Matters.By:Jeffrey Imm 11/09/08
Sunni dynamics shift in the North-By Michael Young 11/09/08
Can even Sleiman keep squabbling from undermining the dialogue? By The Daily Star 11/09/08

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for September 11/08
Lebanese, 3 Syrians Killed in Pickup Truck Explosion in East Lebanon-Naharnet
Arslan: Aridi's Assassination Aimed at Sowing Discord, Destroying Unity in Mountain-Naharnet
Ambassador Meridor: Talks aimed at break up Syria-Iran alliance-Ynetnews
Russia Supporting Jihadi Terrorism?Human Events
Pro-Syrian Lebanese politician killed by car bomb-Telegraph.co.uk
Suleiman to March 14 and 8: Don't Use Me as a Weapon-Naharnet
Suleiman Invites Moussa to Opening Session of National Dialogue-Naharnet
Washington Condemns Aridi Killing-Naharnet
Hariri Waves Olive Branch and Doesn't Surrender the Banner to Aggressors or Intruders-Naharnet
Barak: Israel Has Thwarted Hizbullah Attacks Abroad-Naharnet
Karami Obliged to Assad for Backing Lebanon's Security and Stability-Naharnet
Arslan ally reported dead in car-bombing-Daily Star
All sides hail Sleiman's invitation to dialogue-Daily Star
Livni hints at renewed conflict if Hizbullah fails to disarm-Daily Star
All sides hail Sleiman's invitation to dialogue-Daily Star
Sunni dynamics shift in the North-Daily Star
Press Syndicates Denounce Aoun's Prostitution Charge-Naharnet
Rights group says Syria exploits 'ambiguity' on missing Lebanese-Daily Star
Beirut to host second annual New Arab Woman Forum-Daily Star
Hizbullah man 'had no orders' to fire at LAF helicopter-Daily Star
Egypt thwarts protest against siege on Gaza-Daily Star
Minister hopes tourism show heralds new start-Daily Star
Euro-Med event brings regional youth together to think green-Daily Star
Islamic charity provides iftar meals for thousands of needy families in South-Daily Star
Children's Cancer Center opens seven new rooms-Daily Star
Beirutis doubt national dialogue will succeed Fadlallah urges women to enter politics: Strength means responsibility-Daily Star

East Mediterranean Team
Amnesty International, International Secretariat
LEBANON: Amnesty International condemns killing of parliamentarian Saleh Aridi
Amnesty International condemns the murder yesterday of Lebanese parliamentarian Saleh Aridi. According to reports, he was killed when a bomb targeted his car in Baysur, the village south-east of Beirut where he lived. Several other people were injured by the blast.
Amnesty International condemns deliberate attacks on civilians and calls for all such attacks to be investigated, promptly and thoroughly, and for those responsible to be brought to justice in accordance with international standards for fair trial.
Saleh Aridi, in his 50s, was a senior member of the Lebanese Democratic Party which draws its support mainly from Lebanon’s Druze community and is led by government minister Talal Arslan. The party is in the March 8 Alliance, a coalition of political parties considered to be pro-Syrian.
The killing is the latest in a series of attacks on Lebanese parliamentarians and journalists since October 2004, but the first against a figure from the “pro-Syrian” opposition. It is also the first such killing since the Doha Agreement in May 2008, which brought together the March 8 Alliance and the March 14 Alliance, the former ruling coalition, which is considered to be anti-Syrian, into a national unity government.
Working to protect human rights worldwide

Barak: Israel Has Thwarted Hizbullah Attacks Abroad
Naharnet/Israel has recently foiled at least two attacks by Hizbullah against its citizens abroad with the help of foreign security services, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Wednesday. Barak said the threat came mainly from Hizbullah, which hopes to avenge the February assassination of its top commander Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus. The group blames Israel for the killing but the Jewish state has denied responsibility.
"In cooperation with foreign authorities, we have already thwarted at least two attacks in different corners of the globe," Barak told a news conference.
"It is clear there is a danger, notably for important personalities who travel to Muslim countries where we have no security cooperation, not even in the intelligence sector," he said. The privately run Channel 10 television reported that Israeli security agents will be dispatched abroad to provide protection for Jewish facilities "in cooperation with local authorities". These agents will be deployed at synagogues in particular ahead of the Jewish New Year, which will be celebrated on September 29 as well as other religious festivals. Israel's Channel Two television reported on September 3 that a plot targeting employees of the Israeli carrier El Al had been foiled in Toronto, Canada. In August, Israel's counter-terrorism office warned that Hizbullah was seeking to kidnap Israelis abroad.
In 2000, Hizbullah snatched Israeli businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum after luring him to the United Arab Emirates. He was released in January 2004 as part of a prisoner exchange with the group.(AFP) Beirut, 10 Sep 08, 21:00

Lebanese, 3 Syrians Killed in Pickup Truck Explosion in East Lebanon
Naharnet/An explosion Thursday in a pickup truck in the eastern Bekaa Valley killed a Lebanese man and three Syrian nationals, the state-run National News Agency said.. News reports said the truck, carrying smuggled fireworks, blew up at 5:00 am near the town of Nabi Sheet on the Lebanese-Syrian border.
NNA, however, said that while two pickup trucks were exchanging smuggled goods on the Lebanese-Syrian border between the eastern towns of Nabi Sheet and Yahfoufeh, the truck carrying fireworks exploded, killing a Lebanese man and three Syrians. It identified the Lebanese victim as 30-year-old Radwan Ahmed al-Fann. The alleged smuggling operation came a few days after the independent U.N. team assessing the monitoring of the boundary said that progress in fortifying Lebanon's border with Syria has been minimal. It also said in its report that the eastern border remains "penetrable."
"Lebanon has not yet succeeded in enhancing the overall security of its borders in any significant manner," the report noted. Beirut, 11 Sep 08, 08:43

Car Bomb Kills Key Arslan Aide in Baisour, Injures 6
Naharnet/A car bomb explosion late Wednesday killed the right-hand man to Druze opposition leader Talal Arslan in the eastern town of Baisour and wounded six people, police reported.Sheik Saleh al-Aridi, in his late 40s, a member of the party's central council, was killed instantly when the bomb ripped through his Mercedes car in Baisour's square, a police official said.
News reports said Aridi had just left his house at about 9:30 p.m. and was alone in his vehicle when the bomb went off. His body was charred, one official said.
The state-run National News Agency said the bomb was planted under the driver's seat and detonated by remote control.
Other news reports said the car was rigged with 500 grams of TNT planted by "professional" people who had been keeping a close watch on Aridi.
Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat arrived at the victim's residence in Baisour shortly after the blast in a show of Druze solidarity and to pay his condolences.Supporters of the Democratic Party opened fire from automatic rifles in the air, in the traditional way of expressing wrath, but no clashes were reported. Security sources in the Aley Province, of which Baisour is part, said the situation is "under control."
"This is obviously an attempt to spark trouble within the Druze community, but it wouldn't work," one source told Naharnet, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Mustaqbal Movement leader Saad Hariri, working on reconciliation in the eastern Bekaa Valley, telephoned Arslan shortly after the blast to denounce the "crime" and relay his condolences. Arslan, who is on a trip abroad, accused Israel of being behind the blast.
Israel "has an interest in igniting strife and exploding the internal situation," Arslan was quoted as saying.
Speaker Nabih Berri and Premier Fouad Saniora also called up Jumblat and Arslan so as to prevent civil unrest. While Berri believed the explosion targeted "civil peace," Saniora said it was aimed at "disuniting the Lebanese people."Aridi's violent death came as Lebanon's political parties prepared for a national dialogue next week aimed at reconciling their differences, which in May brought the country close to civil war. The killing was a grim reminder of the series of bomb attacks that have shaken Lebanon in the last three years, killing a number of anti-Syrian politicians. In February 2005, five-time Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was killed by a huge bomb on the Beirut seafront. The international and domestic backlash against his killing resulted in Syria withdrawing its forces from its tiny neighbor after nearly 30 years. Lebanon and Syria just last month announced their intention to open diplomatic ties for the first time since independence some 60 years ago.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said last week that he expected Damascus to establish full diplomatic relations with Beirut by the end of this year.
The last car bombing in Lebanon dates back to January, when a senior intelligence officer investigating Hariri's killing and that of other politicians was slain with three other people in the Lebanese capital.
The attack came as Lebanon was grappling with its worst political crisis since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.
The crisis left the country without a president for six months, and led to sectarian clashes that left more than 65 people dead in May.
That same month, however, feuding political parties struck an agreement in the Qatari capital Doha that led to the election of army commander Gen. Michel Suleiman as Lebanon's new president and the formation of a national unity cabinet. Clashes between rival communities have continued intermittently since then, especially in the northern city of Tripoli, where Alawites and Sunnis earlier this week signed a reconciliation accord aimed at restoring state control to the port city and ending sectarian bloodshed. The national dialogue due to begin next Tuesday is set to focus on forming a "national defense strategy" in which the relationship between militias and the army in defending the country is to be defined.(Naharnet-AFP) Beirut, 11 Sep 08, 09:00

Arslan: Aridi's Assassination Aimed at Sowing Discord, Destroying Unity in Mountain
Naharnet/Lebanese Democratic Party leader Talal Arslan said Thursday the assassination of his top aide Saleh Aridi was aimed at sowing discord and destroying unity in the mountain. "Aridi's assassination was aimed at sowing discord and destroying the mountain and its unity," Arslan told reporters in Baisour, the scene of a car bomb explosion late Wednesday that killed his right-hand man and wounded six people. Arslan, who cut short a trip abroad, arrived in Beirut Thursday morning to make preparations for the funeral. "The message has arrived to the entire (people of the) mountains and to the Lebanese Democratic Party," Arslan said.
"What you and I have started together on May 7 shall continue for the sake of the mountains and the nation," Arslan said in reference to Aridi's efforts toward consolidating peace in the Druze-controlled region. "Unity in the mountains, which we launched hand-in-hand with (Druze leader and MP) Walid Jumblat and the Resistance master (Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah), shall continue," Arslan angrily vowed. He stressed that "while political differences are legitimate, unrest and divide are forbidden." Arslan said he will refer the assassination to the judicial council, Lebanon's highest court. Beirut, 11 Sep 08, 11:47

Arslan ally reported dead in car-bombing
Daily Star staff-Thursday, September 11, 2008
BEIRUT: An explosion rocked the Aley town of Baysour, southeast of Beirut, late Wednesday, and initial reports indicated that a senior member of Youth and Sports Minister Talal Arslan's Lebanese Democratic Party (LDP) had been assassinated. According to Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. television, Saleh Aridi, a member of the LDP's political bureau, was killed when a booby-trapped car exploded outside a municipal office in Baysour. At least four other people were reported wounded in the blast, LBC said. Another media report said that a car-bomb had been detonated as Aridi's vehicle drove past it in Baysour.
Lebanon, particularly the Beirut area, had witnessed a period of relative calm since an agreement was signed in Doha in late May following street clashes earlier that month that claimed at least 65 lives. And on Monday, rival parties in the Northern city of Tripoli signed a reconciliation deal to end deadly fighting that had persisted there. Arslan, a rival of Progressive Socialist Party leader and MP Walid Jumblatt for support within Lebanon's Druze community, returned to Cabinet under the terms of the Doha Accord, which increased opposition representation in a national unity government. Agence France Presse said a Lebanese Armed Forces officer had confirmed that Aridi did not survive the blast. No other details were available when The Daily Star went to press. - The Daily Star

Suleiman to March 14 and 8: Don't Use Me as a Weapon
Naharnet/President Michel Suleiman has assured the Lebanese that their country's situation is much better than before and urged rival camps not to use him as a weapon in their bickering. "Rest assured that Lebanon will be better off as long as this (presidential) palace is on the move. I promise you that we will not rest and we will not surrender," Suleiman told al-Mustaqbal daily in remarks published Thursday. When asked about the situation in Lebanon, Suleiman said: "Better. But much less than what is hoped for." Suleiman's comments came as a car bomb explosion killed Saleh Aridi, a ranking official from Druze leader Talal Arslan's Lebanese Democratic Party. The president said he is putting every effort to make his country a safer place to live and to bring stability, freedom and sovereignty to Lebanon. Addressing the March 14 and March 8 forces, Suleiman said: "I want to do what is best for Lebanon. That's why don't use me as a weapon in your bickering."Suleiman expressed satisfaction with the wave of positive reactions from across the political spectrum to his invitation for the first session of national dialogue on Sept. 16. He said he chose next Tuesday as the opening session because he wants to travel to New York "strong" and prove that "Lebanon is a nation that deserves to live because it has institutions capable of implementing agreements." Suleiman will head this month to New York for the General Assembly session of the United Nations. He described Army Chief Gen. Jean Qahwaji and Brig. Edmond Fadel, director of military intelligence, as being from the elite of Lebanese officers.About Qahwaji's appointment amid reservations by five ministers, Suleiman said: I told Premier Fouad Saniora during the cabinet session "let me remind you that this is the first time that the Lebanese are appointing an army commander. I and the one before me weren't appointed by a Lebanese decision. We were chosen from the outside and the cabinet agreed with consensus. It is not wrong if the image is different now. The Lebanese are now choosing the army chief and there is no unanimity." Beirut, 11 Sep 08, 08:56

Hariri Waves Olive Branch and Doesn't Surrender the Banner to Aggressors or Intruders
Naharnet/Mustaqbal Movement leader Saad Hariri on Wednesday waved a peace banner, pledging reconciliation in the Bekaa and participation in national dialogue with an "olive branch" to safeguard stability. Hariri, addressing an Iftar Banquet in Chtaura, told partisans in the Bekaa he would take part in national dialogue to defend the state and civil order. "In a few days, we will go to the National Dialogue Conference at the Baabda Palace with the aim of defending the state, and with an olive branch in defense of civil order," Hariri told the cheering crowd. "Dialogue is Lebanon's strength. It crystallizes all documents of reconciliation and opens all gates to all settlements."Hariri, however, warned that "dialogue would be meaningless if it was at the expense of the state concept and at the expense of its institutions." He was apparently referring to the Lebanese Army and its role as a sole force deployed throughout the whole of Lebanon.
The Conference on National Dialogue that President Michel Suleiman has scheduled for Sept. 16 at the Baabda Palace "is a chance to put Lebanon on the track leading to the resurrection of a capable state, responsible for its people and practicing all its authorities and powers across all Lebanese territories," Hariri noted.
"This is a chance that should not be wasted as other opportunities had been wasted," he stressed. Hariri predicted reconciliation in the Bekaa, similar to the understanding reached between feuding factions in the northern city of Tripoli. Hariri told citizens of the Bekaa "I carry in my heart the wound of Beirut and pain of the city that had been repeatedly oppressed, though it manages to keep its head high."Beirut, Hariri noted, "does not succumb to storms of sedition and does not surrender its banner to any aggressor or intruder." Beirut, 10 Sep 08, 08:43

Washington Condemns Aridi Killing
Naharnet/The United States condemned the car bombing death of a top aide to Lebanese Democratic Party leader Talal Arslan, vowing "unwavering" support for the Lebanese government. "The United States is deeply concerned about the latest violence in Lebanon," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement late Wednesday. "Our support for the Lebanese government and its democratic institutions is unwavering," McCormack said. "This support is a reflection of our unshakeable commitment to the Lebanese people and their hope for democratic change and economic prosperity."
Saleh Aridi, Arslan's right-hand man, was killed and six others injured Wednesday night in a car bomb explosion in his hometown of Baisour, southeast of Beirut.(AFP) Beirut, 11 Sep 08, 10:32

Suleiman Invites Moussa to Opening Session of National Dialogue
Naharnet/President Michel Suleiman has invited Arab League chief Amr Moussa to the national dialogue conference that will kick off at Baabda Palace on Sept. 16, An Nahar daily reported Thursday. It said Suleiman called Moussa to invite him to the opening of the talks next Tuesday as stipulated by the Doha Accord reached among bickering politicians last May. As Safir daily said that Suleiman, starting Thursday, will meet with the team preparing for the dialogue to study logistics and ways to send invitations to the 14 leaders who will take part in the talks. Suleiman's call for the national dialogue had triggered a wave of positive responses from across the political spectrum. However, it was not clear how the assassination of a ranking official from Druze leader Talal Arslan's Lebanese Democratic Party will affect the Sept. 16 talks. Saleh al-Aridi was killed in a car bomb explosion on Wednesday in Baisour. Beirut, 11 Sep 08, 07:12

Karami Obliged to Assad for Backing Lebanon's Security and Stability
Naharnet/Ex-Premier Omar Karami on Wednesday expressed gratitude to Syrian President Bashar Assad for the latter's "support for Lebanon's … security and stability."Karami also held talks in Damascus with Syrian Premier Naji Otari and discussed with him bilateral relations, the state-run national News Agency (NNA) reported. Assad, the report added, reviewed with Karami "results of President Michel Suleiman's visit to Syria (in August) and the development of bilateral relations." Beirut, 10 Sep 08, 19:36

Livni hints at renewed conflict if Hizbullah fails to disarm
By Dalila Mahdawi -Daily Star staff
Thursday, September 11, 2008
BEIRUT: Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has warned of a new conflict with Lebanon if Hizbullah does not disarm. Tensions between Israel and Lebanon have remained at a fever pitch since Israel launched a 34-day war on this country in the summer of 2006 after Hizbullah took two Israeli soldiers prisoner. A cessation of hostilities was put in place by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which called, among other things, for the prohibition of armed groups in South Lebanon outside of official national institutions and UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL, the disarmament of Hizbullah and for Israel to respect the territorial integrity of Lebanon. However, Hizbullah has retained its weapons and Israel routinely violates Lebanese airspace. The Jewish state also continues to occupy the Lebanese side of the border village of Ghajar and the Shebaa Farms, which Lebanon claims as its own. Israel and the UN, meanwhile, have said that the Farms are Syrian.
In an interview Tuesday night with Al-Arabiyya television, Livni, who is seen as the most likely successor to scandal-plagued Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said the Lebanese government and the international community were obligated to prevent Hizbullah from adding to its arsenal, and that if Syria wanted to make peace with the Jewish state, it had to stop arming the group.
"I do not need to meet with the Syrians," Livni told Al-Arabiyya, adding that she did not know when the next round of indirect, Turkish-mediated peace negotiations would take place. Israel and Syria launched talks in May, after 60 years of being in a state of war with one other. Syrian President Bashar Assad said earlier that a fifth round of talks had been postponed due to the resignation of an Israeli negotiator. Dubai-based satellite channel Al-Arabiyya is due to air Livni's complete interview during iftar Thursday.When contacted by The Daily Star, Hizbullah officials said they "had no comment at this time" on Livni's remarks.
The Israeli minister's comments came after Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Monday any Israeli attack on Lebanon depended on regional issues such as Iran's nuclear work and Israeli-Syrian peace talks.  "I cannot say when Israel is going to attack Lebanon, if it is going to be soon or not. It depends on regional events and circumstances," he told Iranian state television.
In its session on Tuesday, Lebanon's Cabinet demanded that Israel adhere to UN resolutions on pending issues with Lebanon. Information Minister Tarek Mitri said the issues were "all non-negotiable issues ... governed by international resolutions to which Israel is subject."
Speaking after the Cabinet meeting, Mitri said Israel was required to withdraw its land forces from all Lebanese territory, hand over mine and cluster-munitions maps, and end its illegal overflights of Lebanon. Also on Tuesday, Israel's Defense Ministry urged reserve generals working overseas to return to Israel due to the threat of abduction by Hizbullah, unidentified Israeli officials said. The warning was issued for reservists based mainly in Africa and follows a travel advisory in August cautioning Israelis that Hizbullah might carry out kidnapping operations.

Hizbullah man 'had no orders' to fire at LAF helicopter
Thursday, September 11, 2008/A Hizbullah member suspected of opening fire on a Lebanese Armed Forces helicopter last month denied that his command had ordered him to shoot at the aircraft, LBC television network reported Wednesday. The report said Mustafa Moqadem, 19, made the denial in a testimony to Examining Magistrate Rashid Mizher. Moqaddem, the report added, had standing orders to "open fire only in case of self-defense."

Rights group says Syria exploits 'ambiguity' on missing Lebanese
NGO cites need to distinguish between detained, disappeared
By Dalila Mahdawi -Daily Star staff
Thursday, September 11, 2008
BEIRUT: The Beirut-based Foundation for Human and Humanitarian Rights called on Tuesday for differentiating between Lebanese citizens who disappeared during the country's 1975-1990 Civil War and those detained in Syria during and after that conflict.
During a press conference at the Starco Building in Beirut, the foundation said Syria's incarceration of Lebanese citizens constituted a violation of international law.
Out of around 17,000 Lebanese missing since the civil war, hundreds are thought to be held in Syrian prisons.
SOLIDE, a group comprised of the families of those missing, estimated in 1990 that 580 Lebanese were either still being held in Syria or had died while in custody. President Michel Sleiman has demanded that Damascus resolve the issue as part of a series of steps to establish formal diplomatic relations with Lebanon.
Speaking at the conference, Pierre Attallah said the foundation has worked on the issue of Lebanese detainees since 1990, adding that the difference between those detained by Syria and those who disappeared during the war had proved ambiguous. Such confusion enabled Syria to deny it was holding any Lebanese and claim that those missing had actually disappeared during the Civil War, he said.
Neglecting the plight of detainees was tantamount to a "death sentence," said Attallah, adding that Syria has never passed the names and locations of those detained onto the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Regardless of the reason the ambiguity existed, he said, a distinction between the two types of missing persons was necessary, as was the distinction between Lebanese "political detainees in Syria and those convicted of committing crimes."
He demanded that "complete profiles" of all detainees be registered at Lebanon's public notary "in order to legally handle the matter and avoid any closure of the case."Wael Kheir, a professor at the American University of Beirut and managing director of the foundation, also spoke at the conference, saying that recent threats made against the Lebanese media constituted a flagrant violation of Article 19 of the UN-penned Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which stipulates that "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression." Kheir was referring to remarks made in late August by opposition MP Michel Aoun, who said that Lebanon's French-language daily L'Orient Le Jour should be sued for asserting that a deadly attack on a Lebanese Armed Forces helicopter was premeditated by Hizbullah. On August 28, a Hizbullah gunman shot at the helicopter, killing First Lieutenant Samer Hanna. On August 30, L'Orient Le Jour ran the headline, "Hanna was killed in cold blood," which Aoun said misled the public and incited them to launch sectarian clashes. "We think that these threats take us back to the black chapters of Lebanon's history," Kheir said.

All sides hail Sleiman's invitation to dialogue
But some residents of Tripoli are unhappy about particulars of reconciliation pact
By Nafez Qawas -Daily Star correspondent
Thursday, September 11, 2008
BEIRUT: President Michel Sleiman's announcement that national dialogue meetings will kick off on September 16 triggered a flurry of positive responses from all across the political spectrum on Wednesday. Future Movement leader MP Saad Hariri said he would attend dialogue sessions "holding an olive branch in my hand so as to preserve civil peace."Speaking at an iftar meal to break the day's Ramadan fast at the Chtoura Park Hotel in the Bekaa Valley, Hariri said dialogue among the Lebanese "keeps us united and strengthens the will of the Lebanese." "Dialogue will pave the way to reconciliation among the Lebanese," he added.
"However," Hariri added, "dialogue is meaningless if the state is not respected."The leader of the parliamentary majority also urged Bekaa residents to safeguard their unity "and shun futile skirmishes." Over the weekend, Hariri toured Tripoli and other areas of the North that have witnessed sectarian clashes between Sunnis and Alawites. He held reconciliation talks late Saturday with a number of political figures in Tripoli, including Alawite leader and former MP Ali Eid. "I believe that just like Tripoli embraced reconciliation, so will the Bekaa," Hariri said Wednesday. On Monday, Sunni and Alawite leaders in the North signed a six-item reconciliation agreement in an effort to curb tensions following recent sectarian fighting in which at least 22 people died.
Also commenting on Sleiman's call for dialogue, Speaker Nabih Berri said that the national defense strategy, which is to be discussed during the dialogue sessions, includes the issue of defending Lebanon and protecting it on the military, security, political, media, and diplomatic levels.
"During the dialogue," Berri noted, "the role of the resistance and the Lebanese Army will also be discussed."
In comments to As-Safir newspaper on Wednesday, Berri said that he had prepared "a detailed study" on the issue of national defense, adding that he did not mind adding items to the dialogue's agenda "if all participants agreed."
Hizbullah's Al-Manar television reported on Wednesday evening that the first session of the dialogue will focus on whether to increase the number of participants in the talks. For its part, the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) said a "real chance" was available to "reach understandings between the Lebanese [factions] ... that can safeguard civil peace."Minister of State Wael Abu Faour of the PSP outlined that stance in a statement he made to reporters after meeting Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir at the latter's seat in Bkirki. Abu Faour said the basic topic on the dialogue agenda should be "the defense strategy, and we hope it would be the sole topic for discussion."  He also rejected calls for expanding the list of participants in the dialogue, which Sleiman has scheduled for 11 a.m. Tuesday at Baabda Palace. Separately, France welcomed the Tripoli reconciliation and urged Premier Fouad Siniora's government to impose its sovereignty on all Lebanese territory.
"France backs everyone who helps achieve security and stability in Lebanon," Foreign Ministry spokesman Eric Chevalier told a news conference Tuesday. "It is important that the Lebanese government imposes its authority on all its territories."Syrian President Bashar Assad also welcomed the prospect of reconciliation among various Lebanese groups, according to former Lebanese Prime Minister Omar Karami, who met him in Damascus on Wednesday.
In a statement, Karami said he expressed gratitude to Assad "for his support for Lebanon's ... security and stability."
Assad, the report added, reviewed with Karami "results of President Sleiman's visit to Syria [in August] and the development of bilateral relations."
In Tripoli, however, residents of Bab al-Tabbaneh, protested against the recent reconciliation deal signed between Sunnis and Alawites. Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported on Wednesday that "groups" from Bab al-Tabbaneh complained that the reconciliation agreement should not have been concluded before compensations were paid. The Lebanese Army issued a statement on Wednesday saying that special military units "will start surveying damage in Tripoli so that residents can go back to their homes as soon as possible." - With agencies

Beirutis doubt national dialogue will succeed
Some fear failure in talks will spur more violence
By Andrew Wander -Special to The Daily Star
Thursday, September 11, 2008
BEIRUT: Lebanon's political leaders may be preparing to begin a long-awaited national dialogue under the auspices of President Michael Sleiman, but many Beirutis are deeply pessimistic about the talks' chances of success. The Doha Accord, which bought an end to 18 months of political feuding, called for a national dialogue to hammer out the details of the truce. Political leaders who signed the deal are due to begin talks on Tuesday. Atop the agenda will be forming a "national defense strategy" which clarifies the roles of Hizbullah and the military in defending the country.
In May, during the worst internal violence since the1975-1990 Civil War, Hizbullah showed its prowess as a fighting force when it briefly took over southern and western Beirut after the government tried to curtail its communications. The Shiite group has repeatedly pledged that it will never disarm.
On the streets of Beirut, people do not hold out much hope of an agreement being found and fear that the talks could reveal the Doha deal to be a false dawn in Lebanon's long struggle to find political unity. Student Moe Kabbani, 18, told The Daily Star that if the dialogue fails, he expects to see more violence in Lebanon.
"I don't think this dialogue will be a success," he said. "It's just to show things are working, when in fact both sides are still opposed to each other. I don't think this will last very long, because both sides are representing opposing countries. I think they will fail and more people will die."
Not everyone believes that failure will spell further fighting, however. Accountant, Farah Awada, 23, agreed that it looked unlikely that the talks would succeed but does not believe this will lead to more violence.
"I hope that the talks work, but it depends on other circumstances, like Lebanon's relationship with Syria," she said. "If it doesn't work, nothing too big will happen, because no side feels it has all the power. They are afraid of each other. They fear they won't win so they do nothing. We have to wait and see and hope."
Paul Bouez, a 23-year-old student, says that while an agreement may be difficult to find, the dialogue is a worthwhile exercise. "We should have this dialogue, but previous dialogues were disgusting. They were not sincere. This one should be sincere because we have the new president," he said. "They should agree on the basics that allow people to live in peace without problems. The key issues they should agree on are the weapons of Hizbullah, and relations between Syria and Lebanon. This should be the minimum aim."
On Gouraud Street in Gemmayzeh, Joelle Eneine said that politicians in Lebanon needed a "miracle" to find agreement. "After all my experience of Lebanon, I don't think this dialogue will work. No one here listens to each other, everyone has their own opinion. The politicians are not going to make concessions to each other. We hope to live in peace - Lebanon is a beautiful country without the politicians."Roland Abisamra, 62, was similarly pessimistic about the dialogue's chance of success. He said that politicians in Lebanon "have nothing in common," and their politics are defined by religion. "Their viewpoints are opposite," he said "Its not about politics or democracy here, it's about religion. We don't have a leader in Lebanon - there are the Sunni and the Shiite and the Christians are divided half and half." But he said it was important to attempt reconciliation, no matter how unlikely it seemed. "It's important to try," he said. "But I'm not hopeful."

Sunni dynamics shift in the North
By Michael Young
Daily Star staff/Thursday, September 11, 2008
The headline in the pro-opposition Al-Akhbar newspaper on Tuesday described the reconciliation in Tripoli as an event that "broke" the authority of the Hariri camp. The statement was typically partisan. It was also, as they say, correct but not true. Inter-Sunni dynamics in the North are changing, perhaps to Saad Hariri's momentary disadvantage, but it would be a mistake to write off his supremacy in the district just yet.
In recent weeks, the implications of the tension in Tripoli have alarmed a number of Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The Saudi ambassador, Abdel-Aziz Khoja, visited the city in late August, and a few days later the Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmad Abu al-Gheit, arrived with a particularly anxious message that the situation there needed to be brought under control. What Riyadh and Cairo apparently feared was that Syria would exploit developments in the northern part of the country in order to return to Lebanon militarily - and more specifically to provoke dissension in the Sunni community.
That sense of urgency is why Saad Hariri took the lead in heading to the North last weekend and making sure he came away with some sort of arrangement to calm the mood on the ground. Hariri not only sought to rally his power base in the North, he also implemented a policy that both the Saudis and Egyptians viewed as an absolute priority.
But what about Syria? One line of reasoning is that the agreement in Tripoli was to Syria's disadvantage. That's true in part, assuming the agreement holds. However, the Assad regime may yet find some advantages in it. The apparent Saudi and Egyptian intention of setting up a political big tent to unify the Sunnis in the North means that some of Syria's Sunni allies might soon be offered a path back into Parliament. Damascus may have been denied a motive to re-enter northern Lebanon, an action always full of risks in the first place, but that doesn't mean the solution today won't bring them unexpected benefits.
Take Omar Karami, the former prime minister. Karami, who had all but disappeared from the radar screen earlier this year, was among those who benefited most from the Tripoli fighting. He deployed his gunmen to Bab al-Tebbaneh to confirm his Sunni bona fides, which he needed to do after the May onslaught in Beirut by his ally Hizbullah. Karami was not alone among the Tripoli politicians in using the fighting to burnish his sectarian credentials, and his actions may have paid off. His meeting with Saad Hariri earlier this week looked like a political comeback of sorts. Because it occurred against a backdrop of Saudi and Egyptian prodding, it may also have bought the former prime minister a measure of regained Arab legitimacy, following his recent trip to Egypt.
Karami has remained on good terms with the Saudis, but it was hardly a surprise on Wednesday to hear that he had visited Damascus. The Syrians probably wanted to ensure that Karami, big Sunni tent or not, remains loyal to them and does not lean too far toward the Saudis. That may also explain the laudatory portrait of Karami in Wednesday's Al-Akhbar, written by the newspaper's editor, Ibrahim Amin, who often relays messages from Hizbullah. In reminding the former prime minister of how ardently he has defended the resistance, in praising him for his Arab nationalist stances, the paper also seemed to be sending him a veiled warning that he had better not stray too far off the reservation.
Karami will have to walk a fine line in the months ahead between his commitments to Syria and to a Tripoli electorate hostile to Syria. Whether he succeeds will determine the role he plays in elections next year. But as things look now, a big tent strategy backed by the Saudis makes more likely a unified list in Tripoli, which means Hariri will have to surrender some of his parliamentarians. The Future Movement leader cannot be too happy with that. It might also oblige him to ally himself with Najib Mikati and others friendly to Syria, over whom he has little control.
The Tripoli reconciliation was also disadvantageous to Hariri for two other reasons. First, it took place under the auspices of the mufti of the North, Malek al-Shaar, so that Hariri looked like just another party to the conflict rather than the dominant politician in the North that he is. Indeed, this was the point Rifaat Eid, the son of Ali Eid, the head of the Alawite Arab Democratic Party, drove home in a conversation with me, namely that any reconciliation could only take place under the mufti's authority.
A second development Hariri must have groaned at was that Prime Minister Fouad Siniora came out of the pacification process also looking like one of its sponsors, rather than as an emanation of Hariri's Future Movement. It has long been the case, but it is now clearer than ever, that Siniora is not Hariri's man, and that if he is placing himself under any authority it is that of the Saudis. This was plain on Monday, when the prime minister said he would be examining with Tripoli representatives development projects for the city, to be financed by Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia. Siniora is positioning himself as a broker of aid to Tripoli, which brings with it patronage power and could help him anchor his own independent political position in the Sunni community.
But is it curtains for Saad Hariri? Hardly. There are still many months before the elections, and plenty of time for the reconciliation process to break down. That's not to imply that Hariri is banking on conflict and polarization. However, if tension resumes in the North, for example because of renewed Syrian interference, the big tent strategy may collapse and the people of Tripoli and Akkar will doubtless rally to Hariri's side.
There is also the question of money. Which parties dispense assistance in the North will be essential. Siniora may be trying to reserve a place for himself and the government in the aid process, but Hariri still has a decisive advantage on the ground over most other political forces, and there are no signs the Saudis have cut him off. That's why, if he plays his cards right, Hariri can use the current tranquility to regain his momentum. For starters he needs to overhaul the Future Movement's networks in the North and personally involve himself in whatever goes on.
Hariri made a mistake in not going to Tripoli immediately after the May events to underline that even though he had lost in Beirut, he could readily compensate in the North. He erred in allowing a situation to develop in which the Saudis and Egyptians saw a need to look beyond him and sometimes circumvent him. But there remains sympathy for the Hariri family in the North, and substantial enmity toward Syria. Saad Hariri's political destiny may well be determined by what happens in Tripoli, a city not his but that he may soon have to make his.
*Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR.

Against the wolf, the lamb resorts to international law
By Antonio Cassese
Commentary by
Thursday, September 11, 2008
In Phaedrus' well-known fable of the wolf and the lamb, the wolf easily could have eaten the lamb without a word, but prefers to set out his "reasons." First, he scolds the lamb because he is muddying his drinking water (even though the wolf was upstream). Then he argues that last year the lamb had called him bad names (but the lamb was only six months old). The wolf then snarls that if it was not the lamb, it was his father; after that, he immediately moves into action.
The wolf's "justifications" for his evil action were a luxury that he allowed himself. At present, the United Nations Charter legally binds wolf-states - that is, the great powers - to offer justifications for their use of armed violence. This is all the more necessary for the Security Council's five permanent members, because, aside from condemnation by public opinion, no sanctions are available against them for any serious breach of the Charter.
Russia has set forth various reasons to justify its armed intervention in Georgia, where the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia are nonetheless under Georgian sovereignty. Russia argues that its invasion was aimed at, first, stopping Georgia's aggression against South Ossetians; second, ending ethnic cleansing, genocide, and war crimes committed by Georgia there; third, protecting Russian nationals; and fourth, defending South Ossetians on the basis of the peace-keeping agreement signed by Boris Yeltsin and Eduard Shevardnadze in 1992.
None of these legal grounds holds water. By sending its troops into South Ossetia, Georgia no doubt was politically reckless, but it did not breach any international rule, however nominal its sovereignty may be. Nor do genocide and ethnic cleansing seem to have occurred. If war crimes were perpetrated, they do not justify a military invasion. Moreover, South Ossetians have Russian nationality only because Russia recently bestowed it on them unilaterally. Finally, the 1992 agreement authorizes only monitoring of internal tensions, not massive use of military force.
Hence, as in Phaedrus' fable, the Kremlin's "justifications" are empty. Russia has breached Article 2 of the United Nations Charter, which enjoins member states to "refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state."
There are several morals to the tale. First, when a lamb like Georgia gets smart and requests the protection of another wolf - in this case, NATO - he must be careful, for every wolf guards his territory, and is bent on "protecting" all those lambs that fall under his "jurisdiction."
Second, although great powers are de facto unbound by international rules on the use of force, they abide by a sort of unwritten "agreement between scoundrels" to behave similarly. The West violated that agreement in 1999 in Kosovo: NATO powers first attacked Kosovo and Belgrade, in breach of the UN Charter (although they were morally justified to do so, because there was a need to stop the serious atrocities under way); the West then promoted and blessed Kosovo's secession. As a result of that perilous precedent, Russia no longer feels bound by the unwritten agreement.
Finally, because it is mostly civilians that have suffered and are still suffering in Georgia, it is imperative for the world community to promote a lasting solution, as is stipulated in the agreement promoted by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. But a lasting solution is nowhere in sight, because Russian forces, in blatant breach of that agreement - and of international customary law - remain in many parts of Georgia beyond Abkhazia and South Ossetia. These two regions have now proclaimed their independence, and Moscow has given its blessing to a secession that is likely to be the stepping stone to incorporation by Russia.
Georgia has taken the path that lambs normally choose when facing wolves: brandishing law as a weapon. It has instituted legal proceedings against Russia before both the International Court of Justice for alleged violations of the UN Convention on Racial Discrimination and the European Court of Human Rights for alleged breaches of Articles 2 (right to life) and 3 (prohibiting inhuman and degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights. Because Georgia is a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), it could have requested the ICC Prosecutor to investigate Russia's allegations of war crimes and genocide as well as its own allegations of Russian crimes. Strangely, it has not done so, though, fortunately, the ICC Prosecutor has announced that he is keeping the situation in Georgia "under analysis."
Plainly, by itself the law may not be able to offer the right solution in such a complex and dangerous situation. Only politics and diplomacy can offer a lasting solution. Nevertheless, with both sides claiming the mantle of international law, authoritative legal decisions about these issues might perhaps push the parties to reach a lasting agreement.
Antonio Cassese, the first president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and later the chairperson of the United Nations' International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur, teaches law at the University of Florence. THE DAILY STAR publishes this commentary in collaboration with Project Syndicate (c) (www.project-syndicate.org).
 

explosion kills 5 in east Lebanon
www.chinaview.cn 2008-09-11

BEIRUT, Sept. 11 (Xinhua) -- One Lebanese and four Syrians were killed Thursday morning when a pickup truck carrying fireworks blew up in Lebanese eastern Bekaa valley near the Lebanese-Syrian borders, local Nararnet website reported.
Earlier Wednesday night, a car bomb explosion killed an official of the Druze Lebanese Democratic Party in Baisour village east of Beirut, wounding six other people.
Press reports said that the bomb was planted under the driver's seat and detonated by a remote control.
Supporters of the Democratic Party in the predominantly Druze region of Aley opened fire from automatic rifles in protest of the assassination, triggering the interference of security forces to contain the wrath.

Your War on JihadPrint This
Jeffrey Imm
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1138/pub_detail.asp
Every year since the 9/11 attacks, I have been measuring our progress in the war against Jihad on this Patriot Day. In the past year, we have seen some military accomplishments in foreign theaters of war, but in terms of the larger war of ideas against the Islamic supremacist ideology behind Jihad, we are losing that war. However, there is one hope to turn the tide against Islamic supremacism and that hope rests with you.
Understanding Islamic Supremacism as the Basis for Jihad
As addressed in my July 2, 2008 article "Crossroads in History: The Struggle against Jihad and Supremacist Ideologies," most of our government leaders refuse to acknowledge the Islamic supremacist nature of the Jihadist threat and how to leverage America's historical experience against other supremacist ideologies in fighting Islamic supremacism. Jihadist terror activity is the result of a fundamental conflict between an Islamic supremacist Sharia-based form of societal control versus the ideas of equality and liberty. Although the "experts" claim that "extremism" is the result of political grievances, socioeconomic stresses, and poverty, the truth remains that the Jihad is rooted in a war of ideas between Islamic supremacism and freedom. This is not only a war of ideas, but also a war of values.
The American people have demonstrated the courage of their convictions in fighting such supremacist ideologies in the past – in the streets, in schools, in homes, in work places, and in government. The American people have proven that they understand the meaning of the natural law that "all men are created equal" that supremacist ideologies abhor. It is the American public – the housewife, the business person, the construction worker, the musician, the artist, the teacher, the athlete, and every other individual that is willing to fight for such principles of equality – that is and has been the frontline troops in the war of ideas against supremacist ideologies.
You are the expert on equality and liberty, because your life is based on these values. You have internalized your knowledge of equality and liberty as part of your identity as an American; it is something that you understand as a basic part of your identity. With your grounding in the values of equality and liberty, your critical thinking on Islamic supremacism and Jihad is also vitally needed. America desperately needs you to internalize your knowledge on the Islamic supremacist threat, based on your learning, research, and reflection these past seven years since the 9/11 attacks. Such internalized knowledge comes from your digesting this information, and making such knowledge a part of your world vision and your priorities in your life. Combining your internalized knowledge on Jihad and Islamic supremacism with your pro-equality values makes you the most valuable "expert" on Islamic supremacism that America can have.
Why We Need You... to Fight Jihad and Islamic Supremacism
America is losing the war of ideas against Islamic supremacism today. Seven years after 9/11, our national leadership and a large group of our citizenry still do not recognize the ideology of Islamic supremacism that provides the basis for Jihadist actions. This lack of focus in the war of ideas has led to leaders calling for a war on "extremism," and led to tactical debates that refuse to acknowledge the identity of the enemy that our leaders claim to be fighting.
The past year has seen the forces of Islamic supremacism making significant advances in the American government and military, resulting in Islamic supremacist groups influencing our homeland security strategies and our foreign affairs. Certainly, in 2008, America has had some tactical military successes. But those short-term military victories and sacrifices will mean nothing if we don't challenge the Islamic supremacists that seek to redefine America's policies based on their Islamic supremacist vision. The anti-equality, anti-liberty Islamic supremacist ideology has continued to grow this past year as our leaders continue to debate tactics. Regarding Jihad, such government leaders have spent your tax dollars on who, what, where, and when... but remain unable to answer the vital question of why Jihad happens and the Islamic supremacist ideology it is based on.
America must have a national activist grassroots movement to understand, communicate, and rally against Islamic supremacism in our nation's capital and in cities around the country. Only such a national activist effort can thwart the continuing Islamic supremacist efforts to influence our government's actions. Only our willingness to serve as citizen soldiers in this war of ideas by internalizing the lessons we have learned from 9/11, the past seven years of Jihadist horrors, and the knowledge you already have, will make the difference against an army of Islamic supremacists and an army of tactical "experts" who think that you still don't know enough to define the enemy, seven years after 9/11. We can fight the Islamic supremacist ideology by our commitment to our values of equality and liberty, by revealing the supremacist nature of the threat, and by our joint efforts to awaken our national conscience. But given the level of infiltration that we have seen at the top levels our national leadership, America needs your activist commitment to defeat this ideology. On this Patriot Day, we need you to make this your personal war for America, for equality, for our children, against Islamic supremacism and Jihad.
Why You Are Needed to Turn the Tide Now
In the past year, major developments in the war of ideas have included a series of victories by forces promoting Islamic supremacism:
-- A Muslim Brotherhood ("Jihad is our way") memorandum calling for infiltration of American institutions using "front groups" (revealed during the Holy Land Foundation terror trial) was addressed in a September 7, 2007 memorandum by former Defense Department Islamic law specialist Stephen Coughlin. But Mr. Coughlin was then pressured out of the Pentagon in January 2008.
-- In June 2008, the West Point Combating Terrorism Center published "Engaging Islamists in the West," where Peter Mandaville calls for working with engaging with Islamic supremacists on counterterrorism measures, promoting a "role for groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood in counter-terrorism and national security efforts." (There have been other similar articles published by West Point and by other U.S. military organizations in the past year.)
-- In March 2008, it was reported that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was continuing their efforts to "train" American FBI agents.
-- In April 2008, it was revealed that a "terror lexicon" had been created by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) that would end the use of the terms "Jihad," "Islamist," and "caliphate," with a focus to identify the enemy as merely "extremists." This terror lexicon was to be used by all government employees. The DHS memo also stated that "progress," not liberty, should be promoted.
-- In April 2008, Defense Secretary Gates explicitly stated his definition of our enemy as merely "extremism," and in June 2008 his Defense Department created a "National Defense Strategy" document that refused to acknowledge the enemy beyond "extremists" and viewed that a U.S. military goal is to promote "prosperity."
-- In June 2008, a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court questioned the transnational Jihadist threats to America and granted habeas corpus rights to Jihadist enemy combatants.
Our military, law enforcement, homeland security, courts, academia, and the press have all been influenced by the forces of Islamic supremacism in the past year. Our few victories have been in the legislature, where a mostly partisan effort to condemn the DHS/NCTC terror lexicon succeeded as an amendment to an Intelligence bill by Representative Peter Hoekstra, and where Representative Brad Sherman defied the demands by ISNA (unindicted co-conspirator in HLF trial) and MPAC to silence Steven Emerson in a Congressional hearing. Congressman Hoekstra's efforts were previously denied by the leadership of the House Intelligence Committee, and were opposed by over 40% of the House of Representatives.
In dealing with foreign nations and international organizations, in the past year we also saw the United States appointing an Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) – the same OIC organization whose members have silenced any debate on Islamic supremacism in the United Nations Human Rights Commission, and who seek to silence any debate on Islamic supremacism through repeated efforts at "Islamophobia" resolutions. In the past year, we have also seen the growing Islamic supremacist threat from the United Kingdom and Pakistan, who are perceived as allies in fighting "extremists." In Iraq and Afghanistan, we saw the growing efforts of Islamic supremacists gaining influence among the people, despite our military campaigns.
In addition, over the past year, there has been a growing effort among counterterrorism organizations and analysts to promote a tactic of "counter-radicalization." Such "counter-radicalization" tactics promote engagement with Islamic supremacists to get them to promote their supremacist ideology through "political," rather than "violent" means. Such tacticians fail to grasp that when it comes to Islamic supremacism (or any supremacist) ideology that engagement equals legitimizing supremacist efforts, which empowers such groups to grow and gain further membership. In an awful twist of fate, such counterterrorism analysts and analysts promoting "counter-radicalization" will likely end up helping Islamic supremacist groups to gain members. Such "experts" seek to guide American national and foreign policy to legitimize Islamic supremacists' ideology, which is the basis for Jihad.
You are needed, as a citizen activist, to stand in their way and to demand that your representative government defies Islamic supremacism. The forces supporting or appeasing Islamic supremacism are formidable and troubling, but they are nothing compared to you.
Our Greatest Hope
Perhaps you think no one listens or cares. Perhaps you are cynical or uncertain about your power to make a difference. Yet history shows that the American people are the greatest conquerors of terrorist organizations in history. In the 20th century, the American people defeated a white supremacist terrorist organization, the Ku Klux Klan, which at one point had 4 million members. The 20th century crushing of that white supremacist terrorist group was based on the American people's determination that our commitment to equality and liberty was greater than our fears and our divisions. It was the individual American people – one person at a time – that disowned the ideology of white supremacism that had spread throughout our nation. It was the individual American people, not the "experts," that found the courage of their convictions to truly be a nation that honors the value that "all men are created equal."
In the 20th century, we made the widespread white supremacist ideology into a disgrace. What other nation's people have defeated such a massive terrorist and supremacist threat?
The American people did this in hundreds of ways: in rallies, in protests, in demanding action from their government, in schools, and activities across the nation; we need to take such actions today regarding Islamic supremacism. We denied the non-violent political supremacist offerings of segregation and a "separate-but-equal" nation, as Islamic supremacist Sharia advocates seek today. We denied legitimacy to a supremacist ideology of hatred, based on a lie that others are inherently inferior, as Islamic supremacists believe today.
Once again, your country needs you now this time to confront Islamic supremacism. In ways large and small, your citizen activism against Islamic supremacism is needed now more than ever. You are needed to reach your fellow Americans, your families, your neighbors, and certainly, your representative government. You are needed to show your representative government by your demonstrations, by your letters, by your constant communication, that you won't tolerate ignoring the threat of Islamic supremacism.
You and your fellow 300 million Americans are needed to provide a living memorial to the 9/11 fallen by demanding that our government recognize the threat of Islamic supremacism and develop a strategy to counter it. America's 300 million voices can change this nation, and can defy Islamic supremacism. You are our greatest hope.
Courage and Commitment during the Long War against Jihad
History will remember the efforts of the anti-Jihad leaders in America, such as Robert Spencer, Steven Emerson, Walid Phares, and others. Future generations will look at anti-jihad organizations' efforts to educate Americans as a shining moment of courage in these dark days. But it would be irresponsible to expect just these anti-Jihad leaders and organizations to fight the war against Jihad for all Americans.
This is your war too. It is your war on Jihad.
Every one of us who values equality and liberty has a role and an obligation in this war against Islamic supremacism and Jihad. No matter who you are, no matter how busy you are, no matter how many other responsibilities you have, this is your war on Jihad.
None of us have a choice in this fight. This war is not an option for us; it is not something we can do when we have nothing else to do. Good intentions are not enough. Our nation, our people are at total war in a battle for the very values on which America was founded. We can't expect "ordinary lives" during this war. But we can work to give such hope to the next generation. We can defy Islamic supremacist efforts to kill, pervert, and destroy the next generation of children that remain our shining hope for the future.
By internalizing our knowledge about Islamic supremacism and Jihad, our direction is clear. We must confront such an anti-equality, anti-liberty ideology. But we must make certain we stay focused on the enemy ideology, not on petty conflicts among each other, and not on frustrations.
Staying focused on the enemy also means not providing advocates of Islamic supremacism with ammunition to misrepresent the populist movement against Islamic supremacism. Staying focused means not tolerating those who advocate random hate and violence against others. Staying focused means learning from those in American history who successfully challenged supremacism before us and using tactics of shame, using tactics of reaching for our higher national purpose of seeking the natural law of equality, and using tactics of inspiration that "we shall overcome"... not tolerating those who would advocate their own identity-based supremacism as a response to Islamic supremacism.
Our commitment in the long war against Islamic supremacism will also demand courage and resilience from us. In the long war against Islamic supremacism and Jihad, we are bound to have setbacks. We also have to anticipate that, over time, some groups, some web sites, and some leaders are going to be lost. People will come and go. Our losses will be temporarily discouraging. But we have to stay focused and remember that our cause is larger than any one group, any one leader, and any one campaign.
Our adversaries are not dependent on only one leader, one group. They have numerous, nationwide ideologues and sources of resources. If one goes down, another one will step up. Anti-Jihadists and anti-Islamic supremacist causes must match and exceed such agility and such flexibility of resources; such pro-equality, pro-liberty campaigns must exceed Islamic supremacists in numbers and in determination.
With 300 million whose lives are dependent on the values of equality and liberty, there is no reason why the American populist defiance against Islamic supremacism should not be the most powerful, most agile, most demanding political force in this nation. The organization of such an anti-Jihad, anti-Islamic supremacist political force in America is the defining challenge of our generation. The imperative among all Americans to defy Islamic supremacism must remain our top priority. It is our national calling, our national duty, our national responsibility.
We must ask ourselves: what do we live for – if not to ensure for generations that follow that America will offer a life where our values of equality and liberty are honored and defended?
We must ask ourselves: what is the cost of allowing our national soul to be blackmailed by Islamic supremacist thugs who threaten terror if we defy their ideology that is a cancer to our very national identity?
Most importantly, we must ask ourselves: what life are we willing to live – one where we might die for the values that make us America or one where might live abandoning all that we hold dear?
On the anniversary of 9/11, we remember the dark day when New York City was attacked, when Washington DC was attacked, when Pennsylvania was attacked, when America itself was attacked.
But more importantly, we remember that no matter what Jihadists and Islamic supremacists do to our cities and to our people, we will defy them. Our defiance is our personal, individual war against Jihad. Our defiance is a commitment to equality and liberty. Our defiance is to show Jihadists that America will Fear No Evil.
[*Postscript - see also Sources documents for additional reading and background information.]
*FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Jeffrey Imm is Research Director of the Counterterrorism Blog , was formerly with the FBI, and also has his own counterterrorism research web site at UnitedStatesAction.com.

9/11 and Future Jihad
By Walid Phares
When* the second jet slammed into the north World Trade Center Tower in Manhattan, I immediately told students standing next to me, "It's a jihad Ghazwa ... they have chosen the Yarmuk option." The eyes of a few students around me opened wide. That Tuesday morning the world was changing at a record rapid pace - and yet in a sense it was moving in slow mo­tion for most Americans. During that agonizing half hour from 8:45 A.M. to 9:15 A.M., my students, my colleagues, and I belonged to two different worlds. In the corner of the campus where I was teaching on that day of infamy, I felt very much alone: What I had known, researched, and watched building year after year was finally here, ravaging my new homeland. I was as shocked as anyone, but unlike many I was not surprised. What had come to pass was something I had studied and tried to warn others about for more than two decades. It made me more determined to impact the future of what I knew was coming from that point on.
Across America, people's eyes were fixed on the smoke, the firefighters, the debris, the faces covered with blood and dust, and the gestures and declara­tions of America's leaders. Americans felt like lost souls. People around the world -supporters of peace and democratic ideas, at any rate- felt that the losses could easily have been their own. Many of their leaders said they felt they were Americans during that tragic day.[i] Spreading outward like a wave from the events of September 11 was a terrible new reality that enveloped the minds of an entire nation and perhaps the world.
TV crews rushed into the conference room of my building one hour after the massacre. I had been analyzing the jihad phenomenon for twenty-five years, yet as the technicians were setting up their cameras, I found myself wondering what to say. If I told them what I knew, they would simply not understand my logic. After all, it had taken me a lifetime to understand. If I did not try to ex­plain it, I would be allowing America's enemies to win on another day in the fu­ture. Other colleagues around the country faced a similar dilemma. Those few of us who knew about the danger and had tried to warn about it had been voices crying in the wilderness (often against enormous personal and institu­tional hostility); now our time had come. But the public vision was too blurred, the systems of knowledge were blocked, and the government had been failed by those charged with providing it with the truth.
The first question I took from the journalists was, of course, "What hap­pened?" Twenty-two years earlier I had published my first book, followed by a plethora of other books, articles, and hundreds of lectures, all addressing the clash to come.[ii] And it had finally come. How could I describe what had just occurred to the American people, and who had done this to them? When al Qaeda launched its mujahidin to bleed America in the early 1990s, very few in this country had projected a future jihad. By 2001, we were, in fact, already at war with an enemy unknown to most American citizens. The war was at least a decade old, but our media, elite, government, diplomats, and educators did not acknowledge this until the tragedy of September 11. Meanwhile, some of us had spent careers, lives, and resources studying this holy war and its strategies, tactics, and achievements; we had watched as it progressed unchecked. How could we explain the horrors of that Tuesday morning in an almost complete intellectual void? I wanted to help set the record straight and begin to unravel what was denied for so many years: the truth.
"This is the Pearl Harbor of terrorism" was my answer to the first question that morning. As I said this, I recognized the gigantic walls that prevented Americans and westerners from absorbing the realities that had been building in the East for decades. I believed that these obstructionist tendencies would continue to block the presentation of what the public needed to understand the tragedy. But at that moment I wanted to explain that we as a nation had been at­tacked in a war that was already raging. Indeed, in the following years, I con­tinued to remind audiences that the war had been in existence for far longer than had been acknowledged in the West. The United States was not attacked randomly, but as a part of a planned offensive war.[iii] This was not a mere lunatic reaction to U.S. foreign policy by a handful of deranged men; the enemies who targeted the United States on September 11 had a plan based on previous suc­cesses, all carefully planned, justified, and executed - and certainly it was a prel­ude to future attacks to come, in pursuit of clearly defined goals. Eventually America would have to understand the historical significance of what was hap­pening, because it would now forever be linked to it.
The terrorists who attacked us that morning had planned their aggression over the long term, had strategic ambitions, wanted cataclysmic results, and did so as a first wave in a much larger, all-out war against America and all it stood for. The closest example that would resonate with the pre-September 11 mind of most Americans was Japan's treacherous 1941 attack. The comparison is not perfect, however. But in an imperfect collective state of consciousness, it was an eye-opener. The pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor were not on their own mis­sion. They were not frustrated individuals who decided one morning that Washington was evil and had to be punished. They were not an isolated unit but part of an army, and their army was not without political leadership, an ideology, and geopolitical ambitions. They were not a mafia punishing the police, nor a gang retaliating against officials. Likewise, Mohammed Atta and his men were a unit within a network - part of an international terror army, under a global command structure and political organization that was in turn the fruit of an ideology, one that has penetrated many countries and governments and has been calling for a world war against America and western society as a whole. In the West by 2005, we have come some way in understanding this, but we still have a long ways to go.
The war against terrorism should have been in the forefront of public de­bate and policy at least a decade before the September 11 aggression. So when we contemplate the events that led to the massacre in Manhattan and Washing­ton in 2001, and the subsequent confrontations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Madrid, London, Riyadh, Pakistan, Bali, Istanbul, Beslan, Beirut, and the Sunni trian­gle, and when we revisit the general reaction to September 11 immediately after the dust settled, then we certainly draw the mother of all lessons: What went wrong? Bernard Lewis has provided a powerful analysis of "what went wrong" in the Muslim world that led to the attacks. I shift the question to failures in the targeted societies that led to the hole exploited by the jihadists.[iv] In simple terms, what went wrong in America, the West, and the international commu­nity? Why were we not ready as we should have been? And are we ready, even now, and after all that has happened, for what is to come?
We might linger a moment over the fact that the first question posed in the media, dizzying the elites and unleashing government soul-searching, was, "Why do they hate us?" How is it possible that a nation at war, as the 9/11 Commission later admitted we were, did not know why its enemies hated it?[v] Who had blocked this knowledge? Historically, when nations are attacked, es­pecially if these aggressions have been prepared for years, and more particularly if previous attacks have signaled this attitude (and given rise to an abundant literature), it is known. The enemy is not a complete surprise.
Regrettably, we must recognize that the fog of misinformation has not yet dissipated. Consider the number of articles, editorials, interviews, pan­els, books, forums, and discussions that have filled our airwaves and na­tional debates - yet are still unable to say why the perpetrators '"hate us"; is America really ready for what future jihad holds? One main objective of this book is to attempt to explain why '"they" hate us - if it is about "hate" to start with - and what ingredients we still are not aware of that may be relevant to the future.
Unfortunately, the first question, "Why do they hate us?" was not the only troubling one. In the days, weeks, and months following the slaughter, and as the public inquiry mounted, a whole series of stunning questions followed from many sources. All indicate that the problem of perception adds to the com­plexity of what we are facing. When we review the questions even now, four years later, they are bewildering. How could America have been so unaware of such a massive threat? I listed the ten most common questions for the National Intelligence Conference on national security, held in Washington, D.C., in Jan­uary 2005:[vi]
1. Who are they?
2. What did they want to happen?
3. Why did they launch the attacks of September 11?
4. Are they at war with us? Why? Since when?
5. What did they want to achieve?
6. Why didn't we know about it?
7. Who obstructed our knowledge of it?
8. Are they planning on future wars?
9. Have these wars already started?
10. What can we do about them?
These are the questions that this book seeks to answer, because I believe that the answers are still not clear and that we are in danger unless we face them.
WHO ARE THEY?
The second question to emerge from the endless writings and talks since the towers collapsed was: "Who are they?" With the exception of a couple of dozen analysts in the very specialized agencies and another dozen experts in the Belt­way's think tanks, very few had uttered the words "al Qaeda" before Septem­ber 11. During hearings of the 9/11 Commission, during the summer of 2004, two secretaries of state, two defense secretaries, and a counterterrorism czar were not able to agree on the birth date of bin Laden's organization.[vii] A sea of experts, publishing at will - after the attacks, I might note - pored over the records of the 1990s looking for evidence and pieces of information. An Ali Baba's cave opened up suddenly with a myriad of theories, conspiracy theories, and personal sagas. But despite psychological analysis of the organization's membership, health profiles of its leaders, speculations on the latest move and the potential links, and even rumors, the "Who are they?" question remains on the table. Is al Qaeda a central organization or a federation of groups? Did Osama bin Laden create it, or did it create him? Why didn't most Americans see him, hear him, or understand what it was about? Didn't he declare war against America years before on al Jazeera? Is al Qaeda a product of an ideology? If so, what is it?
WHAT DID THEY WANT TO HAPPEN?
What did the perpetrators' organization want, globally, historically, and ideo­logically? Was there a worldview behind al Qaeda's action? Its members spoke of jihad, of kufr, of istishad, of Fatah; what did they mean by these concepts? They theorized about dar el harb and dar el Islam, as their domain and ours, respectively. Where are these zones? Where are New York, Washington, Lon­don, Madrid, Baghdad, Kabul, Riyadh, Istanbul, Beirut, and Khartoum in their vision - the one that brought them to Manhattan, Fallujah, and Beslan? Why are most Americans unable to answer these questions?
WHY DID THEY LAUNCH THE ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11?
Can we trust the statements explaining their rationale made by Osama bin Laden and his spokesperson, Suleiman Abu Ghaith? Were the real motivations behind September 11 the U.S. sanctions against Iraq's regime, the U.S. sup­port of Israel, and American troops stationed on Arabian soil? Was it true-as many academics, intellectuals, and activists affirmed-that the attacks were a di­rect response to American foreign policy? Did the terrorists launch the attacks in retaliation for U.S. actions or to trigger reactions? Were the operations open­ing a war or resuming it? On that Tuesday morning, few Americans were able to answer these questions, not even those in the highest offices of the land. Today, years later, the American people are still confused about the answers.
ARE THEY AT WAR WITH US? WHY? SINCE WHEN?
On February 22, 1998, Osama bin Laden proclaimed a world front for jihad and declared war against infidel America.[viii] He based it on religious edicts. He followed his declaration with twin strikes in August against U.S. embassies in Africa. Since the early 1990s, jihad-inspired attacks had taken place against Americans, America, and other countries around the world. After the 1998 declaration of war, more strikes took place, including against the USS Cole in Yemen. But on September 10, 2001, the United States had not declared war against al Qaeda. During the summer of 2004, we learned from officials who were in charge of counterterrorism that al Qaeda had been targeted as early as 1998; there had been a number of opportunities to address its threats. The 9/11 Commission told us that U.S. agencies and institutions were spending energy, time, and money to bring down al Qaeda and its leaders; other groups were monitored for fundraising and other actions in support of terrorism for years. Yet: Were we or were we not at war with those who were at war with us? On the surface this question seems simple, but is in fact extremely diffi­cult to answer. From all that ensued after September 11 - before and after Tora Bora, before and since the removal of Saddam Hussein, and before and after the beginning of the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon - yes, there is a war against terrorism, that is, "them." And from all that has been uncovered, reassessed by U.S. and western authorities, experts, intellectuals, historians, and debate architects since September 11, we now admit that a war was launched against America years earlier, with a declared agenda and clearly stated objectives.
WHAT DID THEY WANT TO ACHIEVE?
The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, most commentators and experts agreed, were highly symbolic. Jihad suicide bombers wanted to de­stroy America's credibility worldwide. Even the founder of al Qaeda said so on al Jazeera television in the weeks following the strikes. He, scores of his follow­ers, and sympathizers in the Arab Muslim world rushed to conclude that the United States' moral power was shattered with the damage and destruction of the buildings in its two greatest cities. Most debaters on all sides of the divide concluded that ultimately, Atta and his co-executioners had achieved their goals by penetrating U.S. security and destroying in forty minutes Americans' trust in the homeland's security. At first, this seems to be true. But there may have been more to it than scoring a victory with massive bloodshed. What mechanisms did the jihadists want to unleash, and did they succeed? Did they hope to ignite more than the suicidal attack of nineteen men? Were the objec­tives the ones announced, or were their objectives planted deeper - under the skin of our nation?
The questioning unleashed that Tuesday morning in September 2001 never stopped in my mind, even though it had hardly begun in the public realm. For the next list of questions was even more disturbing - though it took two more years before a high body in government would try to address them.
WHY DIDN'T WE KNOW ABOUT IT?
Hindsight is a psychological impediment to clear analysis. The collective ex­perience of Americans since September 11 makes it hard to realize that most of what has been learned since the attacks was not known before. Because of the rush to action by government since, the overseas military engagements, and the exhaustive public debate during these wars and throughout the presidential election, the public tends to now believe that it always knew about the dangers and the threats. But harsh historical reality says otherwise. In fact, most Amer­icans did not know that a malevolent foreign force had declared war against their country and had no knowledge of that enemy; most segments of the po­litical and intellectual establishment were unaware of the existence of such organizations; if they knew about them, they did not know about their ideolo­gies or consider them a national security threat. The main question, of why we as a nation were unaware, remains. Why didn't our national leaders address their public, the legislative branch, or the media during the ten years before the attacks, as strikes and operations were taking place from (at least) the early 1990s on? Why didn't the president address Congress after the August 1998 attacks against the embassies and ask for powers of war? Why wasn't the Tal­iban removed that year, instead of several years and thousands of lives later?
These questions cannot be wished away. In the 1990s the essence of pub­lic debate about terrorism was focused on the root causes of violent groups and in most cases was tied to U.S. foreign policy mistakes. There was no govern­mental mission driven by resources aimed at fighting this war. There was little or no analysis of the roots of the jihadist movement worldwide, let alone its strategic articulation of aims and plans for campaigns. Even as the smoke of the disasters was still hanging in the skies, educational and information systems around the world were still focusing the public's attention in other directions.
A few hours after the attacks, al Jazeera aired stories of all sorts to divert at­tention from the real perpetrators. One release accused the Japanese Red Army "in retaliation for Hiroshima and Nagasaki"; another fingered the "American Indians"; Internet reports were circulating about Mossad's responsibility. Not only had Americans been mis-educated for years and poorly informed; the rest of the world had, and when the massacre took place, final attempts to continue blurring our vision were in place.[ix]
WHO OBSTRUCTED OUR KNOWLEDGE ABOUT IT?
But who would obstruct this much-needed knowledge, and why? At what stage did the misinformation occur? Was it a deliberate effort to mollify America and distract its attention from the aggressor in order to strike at will? Or was it in­deed a failure of the systems that were supposed to educate, inform, and mobi­lize the nation? These are tough questions indeed-but for someone who spent the 1990s observing and analyzing the creeping spread of the jihad networks and culture into the nation's systems, they cannot be dismissed as the result of hindsight. In comparing my analysis of jihad tactics during the 1990s to the findings of the 9/11 Commission, one conclusion emerges: An obstruction of knowledge took place.
Consider this: The 9/11 Commission released a tape, recorded a few min­utes after the tragedy in Washington, in which a fighter pilot rushing to the scene over the Pentagon exclaims: "Gosh, the Russians got us!" Ten years after the end of the cold war, the Russians were still being seen as the "strategic enemy," not the jihadists who had been attacking America and Americans for over a decade.[x]
If we go back to newspaper articles, columns, op-eds, documentaries, and round tables for the decade between the fall of the Soviet Union and Septem­ber 11 and tabulate all that we find on the jihadi threat worldwide, it is clear that, on the whole, the media establishment was unaware of the growing reali­ties of world politics. A few pieces investigated some suicide bombers in Israel; a few lines reported violence in Algeria, or the machine-gunning of tourists in Egypt's Luxor. But the media missed the greater phenomenon: the growing spread of Islamic fundamentalist units and activities in various countries and specifically against the United States. It is not that the fundamentalists were op­erating in secret. Their abundant literature, disseminated across continents, should have been enough to trigger academic attention, research, and advice. In fact, it did-but for over a decade the dominant academic elite simply dis­missed the threat and called jihad a myth.[xi]
WHOSE FAILURE?
I argue that the root of the denial was a full-scale cultural one, because I wit­nessed that denial firsthand throughout the decade preceding September 11. From day one after my arrival in this country in the fall of 1990, I noted the mechanism (the series of activities) that led to the tragedy. This is not to say that I knew where and when the attack would come, or that others should have. No one could have predicted the year, the day. and the hour, nor the in­struments and the results. But those in government charged with identifying threats were blinded by a deceptive fog. In retrospect, the 9/11 Commission tried hard to connect the dots and come up with an answer as to why it happened and how. The criminal investigation mapped out the road to the strikes, and the political inquiry found out that shortcomings were universal and oc­curred at all levels of government and under multiple administrations. But the commission did not catch the bigger failure. In his fiery testimony to the commission, counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke said: "I failed you, your government failed you."[xii] But he did not say who had failed the government. The three branches of government and their agencies are not just buildings and papers; they are a chain of men and women with limited - sometimes ex­tended - knowledge in particular fields. As any political scientist knows, gov­ernment is a related set of human teams, responding to each other and feeding each other with data and resources. The question thus is: Who failed the ma­chine of the government? The hearings of 2004 provided us with a glimpse. A highly sophisticated group of commissioners tackled the question thor­oughly, but at the end of the day stopped short of completion. On the day they offered their findings to the American people, two members of the commission addressed a select number of former officials and experts via a conference call. I was privileged to have been included in their briefing. The final conclu­sion of the 9/11 hearings shattered many taboos and released many old inter­dictions. The report finally spoke of jihad, jihadism, Islamic fundamentalism, and the litany of organizations involved. It retraced the decade-long history of their actions and attempts to hurt the United States and other nations around the world.
By comparison with the previous era, the report was a revolutionary text. It named names. While most world governments are still stuck with public diplomacy and "diplomatic" language, never crossing from the concept of "ter­rorism" to the 'j" word, the commission told us there is another "world" out there, a space ruled by ideologies and terrorist strategies aiming at our cities, towns, countries, laws, peoples, and cultures. But the commission landed on its "Normandy" and stayed there. Now we know that there is a "universe" of jihad out there, totally at odds with the norms of international relations and not abid­ing by the modern era's agreements on world politics. That reality was not of­ficially acknowledged before September 11, but it is now.
But how did we fail to see that universe before? That question is very important today, as it may help us not only prevent a new tragedy from hap­pening, but may allow us to win the war on terrorism. If we can understand how we "failed" to see it coming back in the 1990s, perhaps we can avoid new jihads. The commission concluded that "it was a failure of imagina­tion."[xiii] In the final analysis, the bipartisan group reasoned that as Ameri­cans, we failed to imagine such a thing happening, and so could not fathom it even as it happened. After hearing this conclusion during the prebriefing on the commission's findings, I exclaimed, "Yes, it was a failure of imagina­tion, but it was caused by a failure of education."
Had we been educated, our imagination would have been wider and greater. Had we been taught what jihad was, we could have predicted its drive. Had we been warned about jihadism, we could have devised a resistance to it. Had we been informed when the war first started, we could have defended ourselves thereafter. Education failed the public and the government. The question then is: Was this a deliberate attempt by the education community to hide the truth?
ARE THEY PLANNING FUTURE WARS?
It would take a whole decade to understand our failures and the missteps that led to September 11. But that is not a luxury America and other coun­tries around the world have. The raids on New York and Washington were not the end of an era but the beginning of one. Historians will certainly con­sume much time in filling out the greater tableau. They have the time, but America's national security doesn't, nor does world peace. The "world"­ - people, movements, ideologies - that caused September 11 did not go away. True, the geopolitical map has certainly changed with the rise of homeland security in the United States, the removal of the Taliban, the uprooting of Saddam Hussein, elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the ongoing popu­lar uprisings in Lebanon and the Middle East. But Osama bin Laden is still at large, as are thousands of his followers; so is Ayman Thawahiri, his num­ber two. The neo-Taliban still have an influence in the Muslim nuclear power, Pakistan. Al Zarqawi roams the Sunni triangle of Iraq, and al Qaeda's chapters are increasingly threatening Saudi Arabia and the region.
Madrid's judges arrested many terrorists after the Spanish government withdrew its troops from Iraq.[xiv] But there are still plenty of Islamic fundamen­talists on the Iberian Peninsula. Britain, France, and Germany have stepped up their counterterrorism measures, but those countries are in fact two decades, not one, behind. The Netherlands is discovering what has grown up inside its po­litical culture. Russia has been hesitant on Iraq and sold weapons to Syria and nuclear material to Iran - only to see Beslan's horror unfold. Indonesia has made arrests, but its jihadists have survived. The London bombings, a year after the Madrid train attacks, opened yet a wider battlefield in the war with jihadism. The terrorists proved their intentions to thrust jihad into Europe's geopolitics and intimidate its populations as a prelude to submission to jihad's "diktat." The war on terror is proceeding, but the jihad wars are proceeding as well. In fact, what we are seeing is two planets colliding at a great speed.
HAS THE FUTURE OF JIHAD ALREADY BEGUN?
To put it bluntly, yes, future jihads have already started. Now the United States and the international community have an opportunity to win the battle of "fore­sight" after they have realized in hindsight what was missed in the 1990s. By looking forward, I will attempt to analyze al Qaeda's (and other offshoots') strategic thinking with regard to future wars against the United States and its al­lies. There has been a fundamental misunderstanding about al Qaeda's ulti­mate goals. Strategic questions, such as what the jihadists want to achieve for the next decade or what al Qaeda's long-term plans are, are yet unanswered. Is the "international army of holy war" seriously aiming at conquest of the West or at rebuilding what was lost in the past? Do jihadists really want to restore the caliphate that ruled the Islamic world (and significantly, parts of what we now call the West) for over a thousand years? An inquiry into such questions would help determine what the United States and its allies need to do to win this war.
In the text that follows, I attempt to answer such critical questions as: What are al Qaeda's future strategies against the United States? How long will this war last? Is the United States secure on the inside? Will it have to engage the jihadists worldwide in multiple campaigns, and if so, where? Do al Qaeda and its nebulous allies - including potentially non-Sunni groups such as Hezbol­lah - have a world strategy to defeat the United States? How is victory defined by jihadists? What are the critical components of U.S. victory?
I show that the jihadist strategies include a deep infiltration of America's government, defenses, and its youth. Jihadi doctrines do not rule out the ac­quisition and the possible use of weapons of mass destruction.
The war is expected to last more than a decade. I argue that the United States is mobilized domestically for this war but is not yet fully secured. It will take mass cultural adaptation to fight jihad. America must win the war of ideas - it must capture the minds of the women, youth, and elite that form the foundation of the future. Americans must learn a higher, more difficult truth about the terrorists - and also about what and who allowed the jihadists to be successful until September 11 and beyond - so that they can begin the actual resistance. Washington's perception and planning for the global war on terror­ism is only beginning. Many aspects of our response to and understanding of the jihadists need to be changed or developed: our national education, our jus­tice system, our intelligence agencies, our political alliances around the world, and our spending policies. Some myths will have to be broken, and many realities must be unearthed.
A U.S. policy on jihad will have to be shaped; it will have to have its own men and women dedicated to it, and it must fought at all levels worldwide. We can compare America's position today to the end of 1942. We have declared war against the new enemy and made some initial inroads, but the tide has not re­versed. From their centers, the enemies are still waging global war against the West and the United States. In sum, major sacrifices are still ahead of us, and gigantic ef­forts and events are yet to occur. The high point of the conflict is yet to come.
The last four years created a major breach in how Americans and western­ers look at world politics and international relations. The latest presidential election showed how issues of security, insecurity, and uncertainty prey on the minds of voters.
Images from overseas have changed the perceptions of viewers and read­ers: Beheadings, mass graves, and the statements made by the vast networks of jihadists and other radicals have brought home the weighty question of future holy wars against the United States and the West. Americans are now preoccu­pied by two wars: the jihad that has been launched against them and the war on terrorism that has been directed at the jihadists. Collectively we are searching for the answer as to which one shall be successful.
The answer is that al Qaeda has a world strategy - but it is not what we have thought or been led to believe it was. It is shaped by intellectual forces wider than the membership of the organization and far older than the cold war. The "system" at war with America is in fact centuries old and cannot be de­fined solely in terms of countries, regimes, or leaders. I call this system the "mother ship." I have seen its mechanisms at work, its complexities, and its long-term vision. The jihadists' vision of defeat has not yet been understood by the West. Jihadists do not see the death of Os am a or loss of Fallujah as a defeat. Neither do westerners correctly understand the jihadists' vision of victory. In jihadists' view, Allah determines both victory and defeat.
So then, why and how did the jihadists establish the basis for the new war against the United States? It is crucial to analyze bin Laden's thinking, which can be done only from a jihadist perspective.[xv] As will be shown in this book, the vision of a 9/11 attack was one decade old, but the ideology that led to it stretches far into the past. Osama built his vision upon sources that have also to be examined.
Reading, listening, and absorbing Islamic fundamentalist literature for over twelve years has enabled me to understand the mindset of Osama bin Laden and therefore the strategic planning of his organization. One of the least understood chapters of the war on terror is what can be considered the "thinking mode" of al Qaeda and other jihadists: What do they factor into their planning? How deep is their penetration of the western system, and since when? Who helps them from outside the organization? Was their assault on Manhattan and Washington only a raid? Or was it a trigger to a wider chain of events they thought would happen? From reading their declarations, websites, and chat rooms, the deep and strategic goals they had in mind are beginning to surface. From this knowledge base we can learn lessons about their future strategy and also plan our own.
Another important dimension of the struggle is al Qaeda's reaction to U.S. reactions, especially in the 1990s. From a jihadist perspective, what was the meaning of the first attack against the Twin Towers in 1993? When was the de­cision for this first assault made, and why? Why were there attacks against tar­gets in Saudi Arabia and against the Khubar Towers in the mid-1990s? Was al Qaeda the sole attacker?
Then, in 1996 and 1998 came the jihadist formal declarations of war against America - incredibly, an event hardly noticed by the western media. I will demonstrate that this declaration was the watershed that set the September 11 attacks in motion. Who were the clerics behind that move? The attack on the USS Cole and the millennium plot moved the plan forward, but these at­tacks were only the tip of the iceberg. Based on my careful analysis of the video and audiotapes aired on al Jazeera and on other media, I assert that al Qaeda's plan was and remains more comprehensive than what is commonly believed. English-only analysts are at a big disadvantage when dealing with information from the Arab world. Not all of what was said in Arabic was translated, and not all of what was translated was understood in context.
Bin Laden had a plan, a substitute plan, and a counterplan. This book un­veils them all. Al Qaeda strikes, but it then analyzes the subsequent reactions of its enemies. It has a long-term vision, but can revise its tactics as necessary. This book shows the real al Qaeda; I will also show how the dominant political cul­ture in the West has helped to obfuscate it.
TEN QUESTIONS FOR THE FUTURE
A better understanding of the past leads us to a clearer analysis of future trends. Such analysis opens up the way for a series of critically important questions. To recap:
1. Do they wish to destroy the enemy (us) or absorb it?
2. Do they want to attack the West and the United States before they accomplish their goals in the Muslim world first? (A crucial question, leading to many others.)
3. Will it be possible to conclude peace with the jihadists? What would doing so entail?
4. What are al Qaeda's priorities in the struggle against the United States?
5. What weaknesses and holes do the jihadists see in America and the West, and how would they use them?
6. Are the governments in the United States and other western nations ready for these future wars?
7. What would the next generations of Americans, today's children and youth, have to face in these wars?
8. What should the United States and the West do to avoid future jihads?
9. Why wasn't it already done in the past?
10. Are the jihadists alone, or do they have the backing of other powers and states?
My goal in writing this book is to help answer these questions. My first objec­tive is to show that the future is very much about the past. The future of Amer­ica depends on our understanding of the historical roots of jihadism. This is not a war with an enemy with whom governments can sign peace treaties or es­tablish new frontiers. We are facing forces that link directly to ancient and mod­ern history. Their ideology was born decades ago, but was inspired by doctrines from the Middle Ages. America has never engaged in a conflict with deeper roots in the past. Today's terrorists see the world with different eyes and minds from all Americans-and from most communities worldwide. To fully understand their mindset, we must learn about the terrorists' history and their reading of history. The future of U.S. national security, international relations, and world stability lies in the hands of those who are first to learn about the ter­rorists' relevant history. That is the key to their code, but it is not a secret one; it was simply hidden for too long by our own elite, which denied the public this fundamental knowledge. By severing the historical roots from contemporary conflicts waged by the terrorists, and by camouflaging their real long-term in­tents (which are also linked to their vision of history), our elite blurred or even blinded our vision.[xvi]
In this book I make the case that a central obligation in the war on terror, waged since the fall of 2001, is education of the public: the American public first, but international public opinion as well. The outcome of the conflict will be decided by how well citizens understand the threat. The Islamic fundamen­talists' jihadist strategies are not fully centered on classical state warfare. The resources of regimes have been merged with the capabilities of networks. The ji­hadists' presence is fluid and their actions are stealthy until the final stages of an operation. But ironically; jihadists emerge, grow, and develop almost entirely in the open. If we look at their public manifestations and thinking, whether in chat room conversations or media like al Jazeera, we can begin to understand their objectives. And if we learn about their past and deeper history, we can un­derstand their current and future strategies.
Many among us wonder about the global strategy of the jihadists. In this book, I not only show the existence of a global jihadist strategy, but I also un­cover its several different components. Not only are the terror plans frighten­ing; they are already underway on a global level. I show that terrorist and jihadist strategies against the United States and the West started earlier than most of us generally think, that terrorists have been more successful in infiltrat­ing than we expect, and that they are readying themselves for far larger strikes than they have mounted in the past.
My aim is to participate in the global effort to educate the West about past mistakes in judgment that led to the terrorist advances. But more important, I hope to convey an urgent message to the reader: From what we now know re­garding what really happened, and from what we know could have happened, comes a terrifying picture of what could happen around the world if the appro­priate policies and measures are not taken.
*This piece is an excerpt adapted from Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against America, published in 2005 by Palgrave/McMillan. Author Walid Phares authorized its publication by The American Thinker at the 7th anniversary of the September 11 attacks

**Dr. Walid Phares is a Senior Fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a visiting scholar with the European Foundation for Democracy, the author of The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad, and teaches Global Strategies at the National Defense University
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[i] "Nous sommes tous des Americans" (We are all Americans), Le Monde Diplomatic, September 12, 2001.
[ii] Al Taadudiya (Pluralism) (Lebanon: Kaslik University Press, 1979). For other publications since, go to CV at http://www.walidphares.com./
[iii] Interviews with the author on local NBC, ABC, and CBS affiliates in Florida between Septem­ber 11 and 18, 2001.
[iv] See Lewis, Bernard, What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2002), "The Lessons of the Battlefield," p. 18.
[v] The 9/11 Commission Report, Final Report of the National Commision on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, "Foresight - and Hindsight," p. 339
[vi] Intelcon, National Intelligence Conference, February 8-10, 2005. See http://www.fbcinc.com/intelcon/agenda.asp
[vii] The 9/11 Commission Report, "Policy," p. 348.
[viii] Al Jazeera, February 22, 1998. Al Hayat, February 23, 1998. Also, "Jihad against Jews and Cru­saders," World Islamic Front Statement, February 1998. See http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm.
[ix] The statements were aired on al Jazeera between September 11 and 15, 2001.
[x] See The 9/11 Commission Report, particularly "September 11, 2001," p. 285.
[xi] See for example Esposito, John, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? (New York: Oxford Uni­versity Press, 1995).
[xii] From Dr. Richard Clarke, chief counterterrorism advisor at the White House, Testimony to the 9/11 Commission, August 2004.
[xiii] See The 9/11 Commission Report, "Imagination," p. 339.
[xiv] After the terrorist attacks in Madrid on March 11, 2004.
[xv] Adapted from an op-ed by the author. See Phares, Walid,"The 9/11 Hearings and the Failures of the 1990s," FrontPage Magazine, March 26, 2004: "The 9/11 Commission could have transformed the country into an adult nation, if the debate had concentrated on the investigation of the real root causes that allowed the jihad terrorists to massacre thousands of Americans on that fatal morning of September 2001."
[xvi] Adapted from an op-ed, Phares, Walid, "Blinded by Convention: How America Missed the Ji­hadist Threat," Washington Times, June 9, 2002.