Words have consequences. This is by no means comprehensive, but a sampling of a few benchmark statements from Senator Obama and President Obama, as well as editorials and op-ed analysis:

8/13/07

“We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there,”

July 20, 2008, Face the Nation with Lara Logan:

Obama: “The Afghan government needs to do more. But we have to understand that the situation is precarious and urgent here in Afghanistan. And I believe this has to be our central focus, the central front, on our battle against terrorism.”

Logan: “Why does it have to be the central focus? What is so critical to U.S. interests here?”

Obama: “This is where they can plan attacks. They have sanctuary here. They are gathering huge amounts of money as a consequence of the drug trade in the region. And so that global network is centered in this area. And I think one of the biggest mistakes we’ve made strategically after 9/11 was to fail to finish the job here, focus our attention here. We got distracted by Iraq.

“And despite what the Bush Administration has argued, I don’t think there’s any doubt that we were distracted from our efforts not only to hunt down al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but also to rebuild this country so that people have confidence that we were to here to stay over the long haul, that we were going to rebuild roads, provide electricity, improve the quality of life for people. And now we have a chance, I think, to correct some of those areas.

“There’s starting to be a broad consensus that it’s time for us to withdraw some of our combat troops out of Iraq, deploy them here in Afghanistan. And I think we have to seize that opportunity. Now’s the time for us to do it.

“I think what’s important for us to do is to begin planning for those brigades now. If we wait until the next administration, it could be a year before we get those additional troops on the ground here in Afghanistan. And I think that would be a mistake. I think the situation is getting urgent enough that we’ve got to start doing something now.

~~~

Logan: “What would be a ‘mission accomplished’ for you in Afghanistan?

Obama: “Well, a ‘mission accomplished’ would be that we had stabilized Afghanistan, that the Afghan people are experiencing rising standards of living, that we have made sure that we are disabling al-Qaeda and the Taliban so that they can longer attack Afghanistan, they can no longer engage in attacks against targets of Pakistan, and they can’t target the United States or its allies.”

Logan “Losing is not an option?”

Obama: “Losing is not an option when it comes to al-Qaeda. And it never has been.

February 17, 2009:

As we develop our new strategic goals, we will do so in concert with our friends and allies as together we seek the resources necessary to succeed.

March 27, 2009:

“…if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban – or allows al Qaeda to go unchallenged – that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can.”

August 17, 2009 (speech to Veterans of Foreign Wars):

The insurgency in Afghanistan didn’t just happen overnight and we won’t defeat it overnight. This will not be quick, nor easy. But we must never forget: This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is a — this is fundamental to the defense of our people.

And going forward, we will constantly adapt to new tactics to stay ahead of the enemy and give our troops the tools and equipment they need to succeed. And at every step of the way, we will assess our efforts to defeat al Qaeda and its extremist allies, and to help the Afghan and Pakistani people build the future that they seek.

And now as public opinion has turned south and his left-wing base continues their chorus of retreat and defeat, President Obama has begun wavering and displaying the perception of weakness.

September 20, 2009, on NBC:

“if supporting the Afghan national government and building capacity for their army and securing certain provinces advances that strategy” of defeating al-Qaeda, “then we’ll move forward. But if it doesn’t, then I’m not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan.”

~~~

The generals believed they had Mr. Obama’s commitment to their approach after the policy review last spring. Now the president appears to be distancing himself from his commanders — including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who testified before Congress last week that more forces would be needed.

September 20, 2009:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Afghanistan is a big issue facing the country right now.

OBAMA: That is a big issue. That’s worth talking about.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You were for a flexible time line in Iraq. Some people now are saying that’s exactly what should happen in Afghanistan if the same conditions hold. Do you agree with that?

OBAMA: Here’s what I think. When we came in, basically, there had been drift in our Afghan strategy. Everybody acknowledges that. And I ordered a top to bottom review. The most important thing I wanted was us to refocus on why we’re there. We’re there because al Qaeda killed 3,000 Americans and we cannot allow extremists who want to do violence to the United States to be able to operate with impunity.

Now, I think we’ve lost — we lost that focus for a while and you started seeing a — a classic case of mission creep where we’re just there and we start taking on a whole bunch of different missions.

I wanted to narrow it. I did order 21,000 additional troops there to make sure that we could secure the election, because I thought that was important. That was before the review was completed. I also said after the election I want to do another review. We’ve just gotten those 21,000 in. General McChrystal, who’s only been there a few months, has done his own assessment.

I am now going to take all this information and we’re going to test whatever resources we have against our strategy, which is if by sending young men and women into harm’s way, we are defeating al Qaeda and — and that can be shown to a skeptical audience, namely me — somebody who is always asking hard questions about deploying troops, then we will do what’s required to keep the American people safe.

I agree with Peter Feaver that the President of the United States should be able to conduct internal deliberations on issues of national security without being Woodwarded through leaks to the media.

Even the perception of a lack of resolve on “staying the course” in Afghanistan will only embolden our enemies there.

Thomas Ricks:

“I would characterize the Taliban strategy in very simple terms,” said retired Army Lt. Gen. David Barno. Speaking at the Marine conference on counterinsurgency last Wednesday, Barno, who was the overall commander in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005, and was one of the more competent generals we’ve had there, said the Talibian think that they are winning and that the war is nearly over, and so “their strategy is simply to run out the clock.“

WSJ:

In two television interviews, Mr. Gates argued that the Afghan war was vital to U.S. national security. Laying out a timeline for removing American troops from Afghanistan would be “a strategic mistake” that could embolden al Qaeda and the Taliban, he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Heritage Foundation (The Foundry) blog:

According to the Washington Post, Obama has scheduled at least five meetings with his national security team over the next two weeks to reexamine the strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. When this review is completed, the President should announce his decision in a nationally televised speech. He should explain to the American people what is at stake in Afghanistan, why it is necessary to make continued sacrifices to defeat distant enemies there, and why the war is not only necessary, but winnable. President Obama’s March troop surge has not even been implemented yet.

Also:

President Obama needs to demonstrate leadership on Afghanistan, repeating the truths he has spoken in his past speeches on March 27th and again to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on August 17th. He needs to demonstrate he is willing to properly resource the war in Afghanistan as he promised to do so many times during the presidential campaign last year. And he should realize that while the election outcome has not been ideal, it alone should not force the U.S. to pull up stakes in the country. Both the leading presidential candidates, President Hamid Karzai and Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, represent broad constituencies that vehemently oppose the Taliban. That is the key point. The U.S. can work with whichever candidate is finally named the winner.

Obama’s statements on Afghanistan at the UN today will likely be interpreted by our allies as a sign that he is beginning to waver in his commitment to finishing the job of stabilizing and securing Afghanistan and preventing it from returning to serving as a safe haven for international terrorists. This is highly unfortunate. Without American leadership on Afghanistan, the entire civilized world will remain hostage to international terrorists intent on attacking innocents at the times and places of their own choosing.

Osama bin Laden, May 1998:

the American soldier was a paper tiger and after a few blows ran in defeat. And America forgot all the hoopla and media propaganda … about being the world leader and the leader of the New World Order, and after a few blows they forgot about this title and left, dragging their corpses and their shameful defeat.”

8 years is just a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things. We seem to think 8 years is a long time; but our enemies think in terms of generations. Time ran out for the Bush Administration. The opposition team is still in the game, without term limits. Will the Obama Adminstration pick up the ball, or fumble?

Ultimately, this is a test of wills, resolve, and commitment. Which side wants it more? Which side has the intestinal fortitude to sustain the losses it may take in order to achieve success/victory?

Will our president have the strong leadership it takes to make the tough decisions even when the weathervane of public opinion has turned south? Can he do what’s right, even when that decision is not popular?

American cannot endure another Vietnam. War of Choice or War of Necessity, America should not lose wars. The price of even the perception of an American defeat is too high. We didn’t allow it to happen in Iraq. We should not let it happen in Afghanistan.

*UPDATE*

One more example of how even the perception of defeat can have drastic consequences and repercussions. From Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower, page 119-20:

There were only nine brothers against one hundred Russian Spetsnaz Special Forces troops, but out of sheer fright and panic in the dense forest, the Russians were unable to make out the number of brothers,” bin Laden related. “All in all, about thirty-five Spetsnaz soldiers and officers were killed, and the rest fled….The morale of the mujahideen soared, not only in our area, but in the whole of Afghanistan.”

He had achieved his greatest victory immediately following his worst defeat.

~~~

The entire action lasted three weeks. It was waged by more by Sayyaf (who then took over the Lion’s Den) than bin Laden, but the Arabs gained a reputation for courage and recklessness that established their legend, at least among themselves. Their guesthouses quietly reopened i Peshawar. From the Soviet perspective, the battle of the Lion’s Den was a small moment in the tactical retreat from Afghanistan. In the heightened religious atmosphere among the men following bin Laden, however, there was a dizzying sense that they were living in a supernatural world, in which reality knelt before faith. For them, the encounter at the Lion’s Den became the foundation for the myth that they defeated the superpower. Within a few years the entire Soviet empire fell to pieces- dead of the wound the Muslims inflicted in Afghanistan, the jihadis believed. By then they had created the vanguard that was to carry the battle forward. Al-Qaeda was conceived in the marriage of these assumptions. Faith is stronger than weapons or nations, and the ticket to enter the sacred zone where such miracles occur is the willingness to die.

*UPDATE II* 10/04/09 15:50

Michael Barone:

“War of necessity” versus “war of choice” was a meme you heard a lot from Democrats when George W. Bush was president, and one you’re not likely to hear if Obama decides not to fight the “war of necessity” in the way the general he carefully selected says is necessary. Another meme we often heard was that we should rely more on military help from our allies. The argument was that Bush had so antagonized our allies that we were not getting from them military assistance which could have reduced the number of American military personnel in Iraq or Afghanistan.

This meme never made much sense. We had more than 30 allies providing military assistance in Iraq at some time or another, and the operations in Afghanistan have long been a NATO rather than just an American exercise. The problem is that not many of our allies can provide very much, quantitatively, in military assistance. Britain and France have significant out-of-area military forces, and other nations have provided very effective troops—Poland and Australia, Italy and Canada come to mind. But not in huge numbers. My guesstimate is that the United States has something like 50 or 60 percent of the out-of-area military capacity in the world, depending on what aspects of military force you are talking about. Moreover, some nations impose very restrictive rules of engagement on their militaries, as Germany has in Afghanistan for instance. It’s great to have the support of other nations, but there are limits on what they can do. Britain has been a stalwart ally in Afghanistan, and despite problems there its Foreign Secretary David Milliband is calling for more troops there. But Canada will be withdrawing its troops.

So it’s been interesting to see that in the debate over what should be done in Afghanistan, none of the Democrats opposed to sending more U.S. troops seem to be saying we should be getting troops from our allies instead. With George W. Bush gone, with the limits of what other nations can do painfully apparent, with the realization (the latest lesson was delivered at Copenhagen by the International Olympic Committee) that the charm of Barack Obama does not overwhelm all other considerations in other nations’ decisions, the cry of “more help from the allies” is no longer heard. Like the distinction between “wars of choice” and “wars of necessity,” it was never a serious argument but just an example of cheap partisan rhetoric.

Z, a friend of mine, had an opportunity to listen to Dr. Jasser speak; and I think came away from the talk, a better person for it, and a better advocate for fighting the war against Islamic terror and Islamism, without lashing out at at the hundreds of millions of Muslims who practice the faith, in peace.

I know this doesn’t sit well with many right-wingers. Good. Sometimes, we need the stupid smacked out of us. We’ve become so educated on the dangers of the Islamist threat by immersing ourselves in Robert Spencerian research and anti-Jihad books, blog any and every news story on honor killings and Islamic cultural encroachments upon our western society, that we find validation in our dim view of Islam as a whole.

I’m not saying there aren’t real dangers and a real threat from wahhabism and Islamist fundamentalism. But I am saying that some of us are becoming religious bigots, where our prejudice and hatred are based upon self-indoctrination of anti-Islam literature. Our views against Islam are shaped not by a lack of education, but by an overabundance and an overbalance of education, tilted in one direction. We are all-too willing to believe the worst about Islam, and zero-in only on repeating the negative stories. Positive stories about Muslims get ignored or dismissed as the exception; we seize upon the negative news, then cry out “where are the moderate voices?” We don’t see them, because we’re too busy looking for the worst.

We are under threat of becoming the stereotype that multicultural liberals wish to see us as: intolerant, warmongering, religious and ethnic bigots.

I have an anti-Islam troll living under the bridge of my blog; anytime I come out with a post that doesn’t condemn the entire religion, he will crawl out of his hole to tell me how I am a dhimmi and defender of evil. Bigots like him are part of the problem and have their heads up their asses every bit as much as they rightfully accuse some of us as having our heads in the sand.

bin Laden and Zawahiri tried to convince the Muslim world that the West are at war with Islam. They have failed. That is, unless they’ve simultaneously convinced the West that Islam is at war with them.

Dr. Jasser represents the kind of modernity and reformation that Islam needs to undergo if it is to survive peacefully alongside the other great world religions in the 21st century. We should not fall into the trap of becoming what we hate.

Here’s an excerpt from Islam vs. Islamists (apparently uploaded by Tarek Fatah):

Another clip:

This is the PBS episode from their program series that they had initially pulled, apparently influenced by the likes of CAIR, who they deem to be the “true” “moderates”, because they are bearded. I got to see a free screening of this documentary in June of 2007 and highly recommend it to everyone. It is the irony of ironies that the multiculturalist liberals at PBS would suppress Islam vs. Islamists, when the four voices of those in the program are the very “moderates” people need to hear from.

When we lament, “where are the moderate voices in Islam?”, “Why aren’t they speaking out and denouncing Islamic terror?”…..well, you can thank, in part, PBS.

Ok, readers: Let me have both barrels in the face, and tell me why I’m wrong.

Hugh and Lawrence go over the beginning of al-Qaeda and the radical Islam movement as they have done in the past, its always good to go over it one more time. But the real meat of the interview is where the radical Islam movement is at right now, and it all hinges on a very important man in the movement….Dr. Fadl:

HH: Of course, Zawahiri goes with bin Laden now, Fadl’s been sidelined to Yemen, and the blind Sheik is in America, and in jail, and so the leadership goes to Afghanistan. But then 9/11 happens, and Fadl says al Qaeda’s committed group suicide. Did he disapprove of the action on a theological basis or because of its practical consequences?

LW: Well, actually, Hugh, this…the point of this argument is that there are two tracks.

HH: Yup.

LW: One is practical, you know, does it accomplish our goals. And in terms of 9/11, no. If you wanted to wound America and cause it to withdraw from the Middle East, the consequence is the opposite. You wounded America, but now we invade two Muslim countries, and we and the West are much more deeply engrossed in Middle Eastern affairs than we were previously. And then the second is theological – is this the correct Muslim practice? Are we doing the right thing? And what Dr. Fadl had sold in his previous books to young Muslims who were considering joining al Qaeda, is the philosophy that this is the only route to salvation. Islam has to be purified. No Muslim can go to Heaven without reestablishing the kind of pure Islam we stand for. And now, you know, one of his arguments, for instance, about 9/11 is indiscriminate killing is against Islam. And that was part of his reaction to 9/11.

HH: Now let’s update it to where we are today. In 2003, Fadl was arrested in Yemen, and shipped to Egypt secretly. And this past year, he wrote a new book called Rationalizing Jihad, primarily composed in the Scorpion, within Tora prison…by the way, the Scorpion sounds like about the last place in the world anyone wants to be.

LW: Yeah, it is. Well, Egyptian prisons are infamous.

HH: And in this 2007, Rationalizing Jihad, Fadl, the author of so much, writes, “We are prohibited from committing aggression, even if the enemies of Islam do that, and there is nothing that invokes the anger of God and His wrath like the unwarranted spilling of blood and wrecking of property.” Lawrence Wright, this must have sent earthquakes through al Qaeda.

LW: Well, yeah, you can judge their reaction by the fact that Zawahiri has responded in repeated videos, and has written a 200 page book trying to refute Dr. Fadl’s arguments. And he’s not the only member of al Qaeda. They’ve brought out ever legion, you know, that they can to attack Dr. Fadl to try to dampen the argument that’s going on right now.

HH: Now the obvious question will be, how much coercion is in Dr. Fadl’s renunciation of his previous ideology? What do you think on this?

LW: Well, I don’t know. I mean, the honest answer is that he’s in an Egyptian prison, and they can do horrible things to him. On the other hand, he’s one of many voices, some of which have come out of the prisons, and others of whom are free. There was a movement that has started in the Egyptian prisons in the 1990s, on the part of another organization called Gama’a Islamiya, or the Islamic Group. And they had begun, after years, decades of being in Egyptian prison, to reexamine their violent views. Now this is long past the time when torture and that sort of thing might have been used on them. And they began to write a series of revisions. Now, a lot of these guys are out of prison, and I’ve talked to them. And they are no longer under the kind of subjugation that they were in the Egyptian prisons. It’s pretty clear that they have had a sincere rethinking of their previous views. And Fadl’s views track theirs very closely.

~~~

HH: You also mentioned in The Rebellion Within the work of the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia who issued a fatwa in October of 2007, forbidding Saudi youth to join the jihad outside of the country.

LW: And then al Qaeda tried to kill him. Saudi authorities rounded up a bunch of young al Qaedaistas after that. They stopped a plot.

HH: And Sheikh Salman al-Oadah, who is another former bin Ladenist whose now rebuked him on television, are these outliers? Or do they represent a sort of generalized revulsion against al Qaeda?

LW: Well, I think that you’re beginning to see a consensus developing not among moderate Muslims, but among radical ones, that first of all, these actions are not productive, and secondly, they are not Islam. They are indiscriminate violence, they…bin Laden and al Qaeda use principles that are opposed to the fundamental tenets of Islam. And this is an attack from within radical Islam itself, and that’s why I think it’s so significant.

~~~

LW: Yeah, I mean, for one thing, Dr. Fadl’s argument places the relevance of al Qaeda at question right now. Al Qaeda can’t exist without terror. That’s all it is. It can’t really very well defend its philosophy. It’s own philosopher has overturned the apple cart. And so the only thing that al Qaeda can do to demonstrate its relevance is to create some other radical, terrible, tragic action. And I think they’re under a lot of pressure right now to do something like that.

They both then discuss the response to Dr. Fadl’s book by Zawahiri who tries to rationalize 9/11 by comparing it to the Clinton aspirin factory bombing which killed one man along with attacking Hezbollah….apparently because they grow strong as al-Qaeda grows weaker:

HH: Now let’s talk a little bit about, though, where it goes from here. I’m reading from the last couple of pages of your article, is al Qaeda finished? “It is, of course, unlikely that Al Qaeda will voluntarily follow the example of the Islamist Group and Zawahiri’s own organization, Al Jihad, and revise its violent strategy. But it is clear that radical Islam is confronting a rebellion within its ranks, one that Zawahiri and the leaders of Al Qaeda are poorly equipped to respond to. Radical Islam began as a spiritual call to the Muslim world to unify and strengthen itself through holy warfare. For the dreamers who long to institute God’s justice on earth, Fadl’s revisions represent a substantial moral challenge. But for the young nihilists who are joining the Al Qaeda movement for their own reasons—revenge, boredom, or a desire for adventure—the quarrels of the philosophers will have little meaning.” Expand on that, Lawrence Wright. What are the relative numbers here?

LW: Well, you know, when we talk about al Qaeda, al Qaeda central, the core of al Qaeda, a member of Egyptian intelligence puts a number at fewer than 200. American intelligence says they estimate between three and five hundred. But it’s not a very large organization. It’s much reduced from what it was. On the other hand, al Qaeda is a movement, and there are many affiliates that are connected to some extent with al Qaeda central, and then there are a lot of wannabes that are al Qaeda sympathizers. Those people, and I think especially among the wannabes, there are a lot of nihilists who are only in this for action. There’s been some interesting European studies, especially a Dutch study, of this third generation of al Qaeda. And they’re so much less focused politically than their forbearers in that group. They have very poorly formed ideas about what they’re up to. They’re just striking out. And for them, I don’t think they’re going to care about what Dr. Fadl has to say.

HH: And so what is the, in that Dutch study, or in the other reading that you’ve done, how to combat that?

LW: Well, I think that one thing that we’ve done, I think the best thing that we’ve done since 9/11, is to model the behavior that we’re doing right now with this magnificent election we’re having, where we’re really talking to ourselves about who we are and what kind of country we want to become. And I can tell you the Muslim world is fixated on it, because it’s such an example of what they don’t have, the opportunity to change their governments, to really reform their own countries. This has been a lesson that America has given to the rest of the world, especially the Muslim world, that I think is very valuable. And that’s one way, I think the most productive way, that we can address this problem.

I agree, it is the most productive way to address the problem. But we’ve had free Democratic elections for centuries now. Why the interest all of sudden? could it be because of what we accomplished in Iraq and Afghanistan? Could it be that we are no longer viewed as that paper tiger super power who talked a good fight but ran once it got tough?

The rest of the middle east now views a free Iraq. Where they have their own form of Democracy and elections, no tyrant or dictator ruling for decades. Infrastructure being improved daily and a government that has accomplished more then the United States own government.

They see this, they see our own election season and now may very well believe that Democracy isn’t just a fantasy for middle easterners. It IS possible.

Yet developments in Iraq have seen not only the success of the Surge, but also a rejection of al-Qaeda by all Iraqis including (and especially by) Sunnis; as well as a growing rejection of al-Qaeda theology in the Muslim world, in general. Iraq damaged al Qaeda’s image and any prestige they might have commanded, at one point. Al Qaeda knows this. Why doesn’t Senator Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Ariana Huffington?

Last year, Sheikh Salman al-Awdah, a popular Saudi Islamic scholar criticized Osama bin Laden who once lionized him.

Mufti Sheikh Abd Al-’Aziz bin Abdallah Aal Al-Sheikh, the highest Islamic religious authority in Saudi Arabia, issued a fatwa prohibiting Saudi youth from engaging in jihad abroad. Tareq Al-Humaid, the editor of Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, points out the significance:

“It is true that some of these [young people] have become enslaved by Al-Qaeda and its ideology, and are now beyond hope; however, the importance of the fatwa lies in the impact that it will have on most of the Saudi public, and in particular the fathers and mothers. Its value lies in the fact that it will wrest from the hands of the ‘politicized sheikhs’ the card that they have been using all this time.

“Where are the moderates?” Mainstream Muslims have been rejecting terrorism and al Qaeda’s brand of Islamic ideology, even as we remain suspicious of the sincerity and heart of those who profess to be practitioners of the Islamic faith.

The most recent astonishing and important rejection and condemnation of al Qaeda comes from Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, also known as Dr. Fadl.

Who is Dr. Fadl?

Lawrence Wright, author of the most definitive account of the history of al-Qaeda, The Looming Tower, writes in the New Yorker:

Last May, a fax arrived at the London office of the Arabic newspaper Asharq Al Awsat from a shadowy figure in the radical Islamist movement who went by many names. Born Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, he was the former leader of the Egyptian terrorist group Al Jihad [Egyptian Islamic Jihad], and known to those in the underground mainly as Dr. Fadl. Members of Al Jihad became part of the original core of Al Qaeda; among them was Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s chief lieutenant. Fadl was one of the first members of Al Qaeda’s top council. Twenty years ago, he wrote two of the most important books in modern Islamist discourse; Al Qaeda used them to indoctrinate recruits and justify killing. Now Fadl was announcing a new book, rejecting Al Qaeda’s violence. “We are prohibited from committing aggression, even if the enemies of Islam do that,” Fadl wrote in his fax, which was sent from Tora Prison, in Egypt.

Fadl’s fax confirmed rumors that imprisoned leaders of Al Jihad were part of a trend in which former terrorists renounced violence. His defection posed a terrible threat to the radical Islamists, because he directly challenged their authority. “There is a form of obedience that is greater than the obedience accorded to any leader, namely, obedience to God and His Messenger,” Fadl wrote, claiming that hundreds of Egyptian jihadists from various factions had endorsed his position.

Why my emphases? Because of my recent arguments with fellow war-on-terror conservatives, regarding the nature of Islam, and what approach to use in dealing with a religion of 1.5 billion, that seems to have a serious anger management problem.

Andrew McCarthy, author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad, estimates that perhaps 20% of Muslims are an issue, when it comes to Islamic terror and Islamism. They are a vocal, “dynamic minority”, he said yesterday in an interview on the Dennis Prager Show. Most readers find Spencerian agreement with McCarthy in his assessment of the Islamist threat. But I do not think he goes so far as to condemn Islam as a whole, falling into the pitfalls of educated religious bigotry.

Can terrorists be reformed? Yes. Dr. Fadl may still be an Islamist whose values we still differ strongly with; but if he rejects the violence of terrorism and is a legitimate, influential voice for Islamic scholarship, then he is an important chess piece in winning the Long War.

The fact that a major, influential player in the “jihad” movement has now come out in rejection of violence as a method to spreading Islam should be welcomed and encouraged. And he is not alone:

Another important event occurred in October 2007, when Sheikh Abd Al-’Aziz bin Abdallah Aal Al-Sheikh, the highest religious authority in Saudi Arabia, issued a fatwa prohibiting Saudi youth from engaging in jihad abroad.

~~~

Sheikh Salman alAwdah, an influential Saudi cleric whom Mr bin Laden once lionised, wrote an “open letter” condemning Mr bin Laden. “Brother Osama, how much blood has been spilt? How many innocents among children, elderly, the weak, and women have been killed and made homeless in the name of al-Qaeda?” Sheikh Awdah wrote. “The ruin of an entire people, as is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq . . . cannot make Muslims happy.”

If we are going to win the War against Islamic Terror, it will not be by violently eradicating 1.5 billion plus Muslims into extinction, but by converting hearts and minds to reject terrorism; by convincing those who practice Islam that what they have been told by the Zawahiris regarding persecution from the West, is propaganda and lies. al-Qaeda has murdered more Muslims than President George W. Bush; and they have deceived and misled many more.

Islam critics claim that Islam cannot be reformed (unless, of course, it’s in the direction of more violence), that it’s incompatible with democracy, that there is no such thing as “radical” Islam. But a “pacified” Islam is exactly what was and has been taking place in Muslim countries. Many Muslims have accepted living under secular governments and not Sharia. It is the wahhabists, salafi fundamentalists, and modern “jihad” movement, as instigated by the likes of Zawahiri, Dr. Fadl, and Sayyid Qutb, who wish to derail the secular modernization of the Islamic faith- what they see as the erosion of “true” Islam- with their own backward reformation movement.

But al Qaeda is the enemy of us all, including Islam. it is influential modern works of Islamist scholars, such as Dr. Fadl’s ” “The Compendium of the Pursuit of Divine Knowledge” as much as anything found in the Koran or Hadith, from which “jihadis” draw their inspiration and motivation. Good, peaceful Muslims also read from the Koran. Not from the interpretive writings on Islam by radicalizers such as Sayyid Qutb and Abdul Qader bin Abdul Aziz (Dr. Fadl’s pen name under which he wrote the Compendium used for al Qaeda recruitment).

Today, Dr. Fadl’s most recent book “undermined the entire intellectual framework of jihadist warfare.” and is “a trenchant attack on the immoral roots of Al Qaeda’s theology”. And that’s a good thing.

There is an ideological/theological split in the “jihad” movement, and we should take advantage of that. Merely condemning Islam as an evil religion, as some commenters have done on my previous posts of this nature, does nothing to encourage this tearing asunder and fomenting of an ideological “civil war”.

If Islam wishes to survive beyond the 21st century, it will not be by embracing the romanticized, revisionist delusions of political Islamic scholars who wish to reform Islam away from secularized compatibility and modernity, and back toward 7th and 12th century intolerability and past glory.

Read the entire Lawrence Wright article. And also Peter Wehner’s take on it.

Hat tip: Hugh Hewitt
(*UPDATE*: Curt posts part of yesterday’s Hewitt interview with Lawrence Wright)

Related post: CiA tells Congress Al Queda is losing hearts and minds

"I reached Afghanistan, and I could not believe my eyes," Azzam would later recall in his countless videos and speeches around the world.  "I felt as if I had been reborn."  In his renderings, the war was primeval, metaphysical, fought in a landscape of miracles.  The Afghans, in his tableau, represented humanity in a pristine state – a righteous, pious, pre-industrial people – struggling against the brutal, soulless, mechanized force of modernity.  In this war, the believers were aided by the invisible hands of angels.  Azzam spoke of Russian helicopters being snared by ropes, and he claimed that flocks of birds functioned as an early warning radar system by taking wing when Soviet jets were still over the horizon.  Repeatedly in his stories mujahideen discover bullet holes in their clothes when they themselves are not injured, and the bodies of those who are martyred do not putrefy but remain pure and sweet-smelling.

The struggle of Islam, as Qutb had framed it, and as Azzam deeply believed, was against jahiliyya – the world of unbelief that had existed before Islam, which was still corrupting and undermining the faithful with the lures of materialism, secularism, and sexual equality.  Here in this primitive land, so stunted by poverty and illiteracy and patriarchal tribal codes, the heroic and seemingly doomed Afghan jihad against the Soviet colossus had the elements of an epochal moment in history.  In the skillful hands of Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, the legend of the Afghan holy warriors would be packaged and sold all over the world.

Later in the book:

It was death, no victory in Afghanistan, that summoned many young Arabs to Peshawar.  Martydom was the product that Azzam sold in the books, tracts, videos, and cassette tapes that circulated in mosques and Arabic-language bookstores.  "I traveled to acquaint people with jihad," Azzam said, recalling his lectures in mosques and Islamic centers around the world.  "We were trying to satisfy the thirst for martydom.  We are still in love with this."  Azzam visited the United States each year – Kansas City, St. Louis, Dallas, all over the heartland and the major cities as well – looking for money and recruits amoung the young Muslims who were mesmerized by the myths he spun.

He told stories of the mujahideen who defeated vast columns of Soviet troops virtually single-handed.  He claimed that some of the brave warriors had been run over by tanks but survived; others were shot, but the bullets failed to penetrate.  If death came, it was even more miraculous.  When one beloved mujahid expired, the ambulance filled with the sound of humming bees and chirping birds, even though they were in the Afghan desert in the middle of the night.  Bodies of martyrs uncovered after a year in the grave still smelled sweet and their blood continued to flow.  Heaven and nature conspired to repel the godless invader.  Angels rode into the battle on horseback, and falling bombs were intercepted by birds, which raced ahead of the jets to form a protective canopy over the warriors.  The miracle stories naturally proliferated as word spread that Sheikh Abdullah was paying for mujahids who brought him wonderful tales.

The lure of an illustrious and meaningful death was especially powerful in cases where the pleasures and rewards of life were crushed by government oppression and economic deprivation.   From Iraq to Morocco, Arab governments had stifled freedom and signally failed to create wealth at the very time when democracy and personal income were sharply climbing in virtually all other parts of the globe.  Saudi Arabia, the richest of the lot, was such a notoriously unproductive country that the extraordinary abundance of petroleum had failed to generate any other significant source of income; indeed, if one subtracted the oil revenue of the Gulf countries, 260 million Arabs exported less then the 5 million Finns.  Radicalism usually prospers in the gap between rising expectations and declining opportunities.  This is especially true where the population is young, idle, and bored; where the art is improverished; where entertainmen – movies, theater, music – is policed or absent altogether; and where young men are set apart from the consoling and socializing presence of women.  Adult illiteracy remained the norm in many Arab countries.  Unemployment was among the highest in the developing world.  Anger, resentment, and humiliation spurred young Arabs to search for dramatic remedies.

Martydom promised such young men and ideal alternative to a life was so sparing in its rewards.  A glorious death beckoned to the sinner, who would be forgiven, it is said, with the first spurt of blood, and he would behold his place in Paradise even before his death.  Seventy members of his household might be spared the fires of hell because of his sacrifice.  The martyr who is poor will be crowned in heaven with a jewel more valuable then the earth itself.  And for those young men who came from cultures where women are shuttered away and rendered unattainable for someone without prospects, martyrdom offered the conjugal pleasures of seventy-two virgins – "the dark-eyed houris," as the Quran describes them, "chaste as hidden pearls."  They awaited the martyr with feasts of meat and fruits and cups of the purest wine.

The pageant of martyrdom that Azzam limned before his worldwide audience created the death cult that would one day form the core of al-Qaeda. 

Of course, trying to bring hope and democracy to these countries is a fools errand right?  Bringing hope, freedom, education to the Middle East may be the only way to defeat terrorism in the long run and if we had never even tried what would future generations have said of us?    

First, for those, specifically on the left, who continually state bin Ladens beef with the United States was due to our country having had our troops on "sacred" land, ie Saudi Arabia, Lawrence writes about the Peter Arnett interview in March of 1997 in which we get from the horses mouth what his beef really is. 

What is even more interesting for those on the left who state we should stop supporting Israel, we should leave Iraq, just give them what they want and they will be happy, bin Laden’s words should wake your ass up:

Bin Laden cited American support for Israel as the first cause of his declaration of war, followed by the presence of American troops in Arabia.  He added that American civilians must also leave the Islamic holy land because he could not guarantee their safety.

In the most revealing exchange, Arnett asked whether, if the United States complied with bin Laden’s demands to leave Arabia, he would call of his jihad.  "The reaction came as a result of the aggressive U.S. policy toward the entire Muslim world, not just the Arabian Peninsula," bin Laden said.  Therefore, the United States has to withdraw from any kind of intervention against Muslims, "in the whole world."  Bin Laden was already speaking as the representative of the Islamic nation, a caliph-in-waiting.  "The U.S. today has set a double standard, calling whoever goes against its injustice a terrorist," he complained.  "It wants to occupy our countries, steal our resources, impose on us agents to rule us…and wants us to agree to all these.  If we refuse to do, it will say, ‘You are terrorists.’"

If we look at the beginning of al-Qaeda in 1988 there are two meetings, which Lawrence writes about, that began al-Qaeda.  On August 11th, 1988, Sheikh Abdullah Azzam chaired a meeting  with bin Laden, Abu Hafs, Abu Ubaydah, Abu Hajer, Dr. Fadl and Wa’el Julaidan.  Notes were taken and Lawrence writes:

Although the notes don’t reflect it, a vote was taken to form a new organization aimed at keeping jihad alive after the Soviets were gone.  It is difficult to imagine these men agreeing on anything, but only Abu Hajer voted against the new group.  Abu Rida summarized the meeting by saying that a plan must be established within the suitable time frame and qualified people must be found to put the plan into effect.  "Initial estimate, within 6 months of al-Qaeda, 314 brothers will be trained and ready."  For most of the men in the meeting, this was the first time that the name al-Qaeda had arisen.  The members of the new group would be drawn from the most promising recruits among the Arab Afghans, but it was still unclear what the organization would do or where it would go after the jihad.  Perhaps bin Laden himself didn’t know.

Few people in the room realized that al-Qaeda had already been secretly created some months before by a small group of bin Laden insiders.  Bin Laden’s friend from Jeddah, Medani al-Tayeb, who had married his niece, had joined the group on May 17, the day after Ramadan, so the organizational meeting on August 11 only brought to the surface what was already covertly under way.

On Saturday morning, August 20, the same men met again to establish what they called al-Qaeda al-Askariya (the military base).  "The mentioned al-Qaeda is basically and organized Islamic faction, its goal is to lift the word of God, to make HIs religion victorious," the secretary recorded in his minutes of the meeting.

Later Lawrence writes:

The leaders of al-Qaeda developed a constitution and by-laws, which described the utopian goals of the organization in clear terms: "To establish the truth, get rid of evil, and establish an Islamic nation."  This would be accomplished through education and military training, as well as coordinating and supporting jihad movements around the world. 

Lawrence writes about a speech bin Laden gave in the bin Laden family mosque in Jeddah in which he railed against the plight of the Arab world, and blamed it all on the US:

At first, it was difficult to grasp the basis of bin Laden’s complaint.  The United States had never been a colonial power, nor for that matter had Saudi Arabia ever been colonized.  Of course, he was speaking for Muslims in general, for whom American support of Israel was a cause of anguish, but the United States had been a decisive ally in the Afghan jihad.  The sense of humiliation he expressed had more to do with the stance of Muslims in the modern world.  Their lives were sold at a discount, bin Laden was tellnig his hometown audience, which confirmed their sense that other lives – Western, American lives – were fuller and more worthwhile. 

Bin Laden gave them a history lession.  "America went to Vietnam, thousands of miles away, and began bombing them in planes.  The Americans did not get out of Vietnam until after they suffered great losses.  Over sixty thousand American soldiers were killed until there were demonstrations by the American people.  The Americans won’t stop their support of Jews in Palestine until we give them a lot of blows.  They won’t stop until we do jihad against them."

Ok, so we understand what the goals of al-Qaeda was and is.  The formation of an Islamic state.  To stop the support of Israel by the West.  Not because we are in Iraq, not because we were in Saudi Arabia.  If none of these things had happened they would still wage jihad against us.  They hate what we stand for, they hate we are "unbelievers", and they hate that we support Israel.

But lets look at the central argument in the al-Qaeda/Iraq connection.  The left will constantly state that bin Laden would never support secular Saddam, or Shiites.  But wait a minute, when he moved to Sudan he formed a relationship with Hasan al-Turabi, who also envisioned a international Muslim community with Sudan as it’s headquarters:

Although bin Laden distrusted Turabi – hated him, even – he experimented with one of Turabi’s most progressive and controversial ideas: to make common cause with Shiites.  He had Abu Hajer advise the members of al-Qaeda that there was only one enemy now, the West, and the two main sects of Islam needed to come together to destroy it.  Bin Laden invited Shiite representatives to speak to al-Qaeda, and he sent some of his top people to Lebanon to train with Iranian-backed group Hezbollah.  Imad Mugniyah, the head of Hezbollah’s security service, came to meet bin Laden and agreed to train members of al-Qaeda in exchange for weapons.  Mugniyah had planned the 1983 suicide car bombings of the US Embassy and the U.S. Marine Corps and French paratrooper barracks in Beirut, which killed more then three hundred Americans and fifty-eight French soldiers and had led to the prompt withdrawal of American peacekeeping forces from Lebanon.  That precedent had made a profound impression on bin Laden, who saw that suicide bombers could be devastatingly effective and that, for all its might, America had no appetite for conflict.

He didn’t like working with them, but he would indeed work with those he despises to succeed in  destroying the west, and the best way to do that was to inflict mass casualities on America.  Do it enough and he hoped we would capitulate.

So far from being unwilling to work with Shiites, far from being only out to get us out of Saudi Arabia or Iraq, their goal is the destruction of the West and the promise of a new, powerful, Muslim nation to spread the word and get rid of the unbelievers. 

He begins by describing the man who was behind this change, Mamdouh Salim aka Abu Hajer al-Iraqi, a Kurd from Iraq who was a colonel in Saddam’s army during the war with Iran but fled to Iran not long after.  He became bin Laden’s religious advisor and as such held great sway:

Besides being bin Laden’s friend, Abu Hajer was his imam.  There were remarkably few among the members of al-Qaeda who had any extensive religious training.  Despite their zealotry, they were essentially theological amateurs.  Abu Hajer had the greatest spiritual authority, by virtue of having memorized the Quran, but he was an electrical engineer, not a cleric.  Nonetheless, bin Laden made him head of al-Qaeda’s fatwa committee – a fateful choice.  It was on Abu Hajer’s authority that al-Qaeda turned from being the anti-communist Islamic army that bin Laden originally envisioned into a terrorist organization bent on attacking the United States, the last remaining superpower and the force that bin Laden and Abu Hajer believed represented the greatest threat to Islam.

Why did these men turn against America, a highly religious country that so recently had been their ally in Afghanistan?  In large part, it was because they saw America as the locus of Christian power.  Once, the piety of the Muslim mujahideen and the Christian leaders of the U.S. government had served as a bond between them.  Indeed, mujahideen leaders had been considerably romanticized in the American press and had made tours through American churches, where they were lauded for their spiritual courage in the common fight against Marxism and godlessness.  But Christianity – especially the evangelizing American variety – and Islam were obviously competitive faiths.  Viewed through the eyes of men who were spiritually anchored in the seventh century, Christianity was not just a rival, it was the archenemy.  To them, the Crusades were a continual historical process that would never be resolved until the final victory of Islam.  They bitterly perceived the contradiction embodied by Islam’s long, steady retreat from the gates of Vienna, where on September 11 – that now resonant date – in 1683, the kind of Poland began the battle that turned back the farthest advance of Muslim armies.  For the next three hundred years, Islam would be overshadowed by the growth of Western Christian societies.  Yet bin Laden and his Arab Afghans believed that, in Afghanistan, they had turned the tide and that Islam was again on the march.

Now they faced the greatest military, material, and cultural power any civilization had ever produced.  "Jihad against America?" some of the al-Qaeda members asked in dismay.  "America knows everything about us.  It knows even the label of our underwear."  They saw how weak and splintered their own governments were – empowered only by the force of America’s need to maintain the status quo.  The oceans, the skies, even the heavens were patrolled by the Americans.  America was not distant, it was everywhere.

Al-Qaeda economists pointed to "our oil" that fueled America’s rampant expansion, feeling as if something had been stolen from them – not the oil, exactly, although bin Laden felt it was underpriced – but the cultural regeneration that should have come with its sale.  In the woefully unproductive societies they lived in, fortunes melted away like snow in the desert.  What remained was a generalized feeling of betrayal.

Of course, oil had brought wealth to some Arabs, but in the process of becoming rich hadn’t they only become more Western?  Consumerism, vice, and individuality, which the radical Islamists saw as the hallmarks of modern American culture, threatened to destroy Islam – even the idea of Islam – by blending it into a globalized, corporate, interdependent, secular commercial world that was part of what that these men meant when they said "America."  But by defining modernity, progress, trade, consumption, and even pleasure as Western assaults on Islam, al-Qaeda thinkers left little on the table for themselves.

If America owned the future, the Islamic fundamentalists laid claim to the past.  They were not rejecting technology or science, indeed, many of the leaders of al-Qaeda, such as Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Hajer, were men of science themselves.  But they were ambivalent about the way in which technology weakened the spirit.  This was reflected in bin Laden’s interest in earth-moving machinery and genetic engineering of plants, on the one hand, and his rejection of chilled water on the other.  By returning the rule of Sharia, radical Islam could draw the line against the encroaching west.  Even the values that America advertised as being universally desirable – democracy, transparency, the rule of law, human rights, the separation of religion from governance – were discredited in the eyes of the jihadis because they were Western and therefore modern.  Al-Qaeda’s duty was to awaken the Islamic nation to the threat posed by the secular, modernizing West.  In order to do that, bin Laden told his men, al-Qaeda would drag the United States into a war with Islam – "a large-scale front which it cannot control."

Many on the left say that the whole reason radical Islam is at war with us is because we have troops on "sacred" soil.  But as Lawrence writes, this is not the case.  While it pissed them off for sure, the real reason they are at war with us is to ensure that their vision of Islam takes over the world.  Because there is only Islam, and competing religions cannot survive.

Zawahiri established his medical practice at a Kuwaiti-backed Red Crescent hospital, which, like most of the aid institutions in the city was dominated by members of the Muslim Brotherhood.  They hated him because of a lengthy diatribe he wrote, called Bitter Harvest, in which he attacked the Brothers for collaborating with infidel regimes – that is to say, all Arab governments.  He called the Brotherhood "a tool in the hands of tyrants."  He demanded that they publicly renounce "constitutions and man-made laws, democracy, elections, and parliament," and declare jihad against the regimes they formerly supported.  Privately funded, this handsomely produced book appeared all over Peshawar.  "They were available free of charge," one of the Brothers, who was working in Peshawar at the time, recalls.  "When you would go to get food, the clerk would ask if you wished to have one of these books, or two?"

Another of Zawahiri’s colleagues from the underground days in Cairo arrived, a physician named Sayyid Imam, whose jihadi moniker was Dr. Fadl.  They worked in the same hospital in Peshawar.  Like Zawahiri, Dr. Fadl was a writer and theoretician.  Because he was older and had been the emir of al-Jihad during Zawahiri’s imprisonment, he took over the organization once again.  Zawahiri also adopted a nom de guerre: Dr. Abdul Mu’iz (in Arabic, abd means "slave," and mu’iz means "the bestower of honor," on of the ninety-nine names of God).  He and Dr. Fadl immediately set about reestablishing al-Jihad by recruiting new members from the young Egyptians among the mujahideen.   At first they called themselves the Jihad Organization, then they changed the name again, to Islamic Jihad.  But it was still the same al-Jihad.

The Kuwaiti-backed Red Crescent hospital became the center of a divisive movement within the Arab Afghan community.  Under the influence of an Algerian, Dr. Ahmed el-Wed, known for his bloody-minded intellect, the hospital turned into an incubator for a murderous new idea, one that would split the Mujahideen and justify the fratricidal carnage that would spread through the Muslim Arab countries immediately after the Afghan war.

The heresy of takfir, or excommunication, has been a problem in Islam since its early days.  In the mid seventh century, a group known as the Kharijites revolted against the rule of Ali, the fourth caliph.  The particular issue that triggered their rebellion was Ali’s decision to compromise with a political opponent rather then to wage a fratricidal war.  The Kharijites decreed that they were the only ones who followed the true tenets of the faith, and that anyone who did not agree with them was an apostate, and that included even Ali, the Prophet’s beloved son-in-law, who they eventually assassinated.

In the early 1970s a group surfaced in Egypt called Takfir wa Hijira (Excommunication and Withdrawal), a forerunner of al-Qaeda.  Their leader, Shukri Mustafa, a graduate of the Egyptian concentration camps, attracted a couple of thousand followers.  They read Qutb and plotted the day when they would gain sufficient strength in exile to return to annihilate the unbelievers and bring on the final days.  Meanwhile, they wandered in Egypt’s Western Desert, sleeping in mountain grottoes.

The Cairo press called Mustafa’s followers ahl al-khaf, "people of the cave," a reference to the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus.  This Christian folktale recounts the story of seven shepherds who refused to renounce their faith.  In punishment, the Roman emperor Decius had them walled up inside a cave in present-day Turkey.  Three centuries later, according to the legend, the cave was discovered and the sleepers awakened, thinking they had slept only one night.  There is an entire sura, or chapter, in the Quran, "The Cave," that refers to this story.  Like Shukri Mustafa, bin Laden would fasten onto the imagery that the cave evokes for Muslims.  Moreover, the modus operandi of withdrawal, preparation, and dissimulation that would frame  the culture of al-Qaeda’s sleeper cells was established by Takfir wa Hijira was early as 1975.

Two years later, members of the group kidnapped a former  minister of religious endowments in Cairo, Sheikh Mohammed al-Dhahabi, a humble and distinguished scholar who often spoke at the Masjid al-Nur, a mosque Zawahiri had frequented in his youth.  When the Egyptian government spurned Shukri Mastafa’s demands for money and publicity, Mustafa murdered the old sheikh.  His body was found on a Cairo street, hands bound behind him, part of his beard torn away.

The Egyptian police quickly rounded up most of the members of Takfir was Hijira and brought dozens of them to a hasty trial.  Shukri Mustafa and five others were executed.  With that, the revolutionary concept of expelling Muslims from the faith – thereby justifying their killing – seemed to have been stamped out.  But in the subterranean discourse of jihad, a mutated form of takfir had taken hold.  It still smoldered in Upper Egypt, where Shukri Mustafa had proselytized in his early years (and where Dr. Fadl was reared).  Remnants of the group supplied Zawahiri’s comrades in al-Jihad with the grenades and ammunition used to assassinate Anwar Sadat.  Some adherents carried the heresy into North African countries, including Algeria, where Dr. Ahmed learned of it.

Takfir is the mirror image of Islam, reversing its fundamental principles but maintaining the semblance of orthodoxy.  The Quran explicitly states that Muslims shall not kill anyone, except as punishment for murder.  The murderer of one innocent, the Quran warns, is judged "as if he had murdered all of mankind."  The killing of Muslims is an even greater offense.  He who commits such an act, says the Quran, will find that "his repayment is Hell, remaining in it timelessly, forever."  How, then, could groups such as al-Jihad and the Islamic Group justify using violence against fellow Muslims in order to come to power?  Sayyid Qutb had pointed the way by declaring that a leader who does not impose Sharia on the country must be an apostate.  There is a well known saying of the Prophet that the blood of Muslims cannot be shed except in three instances: as punishment for murder, or for marital infidelity, or for turning away from Islam.  The pious Anwar Sadat was the first modern victim of the reverse logic of takfir.

The new takfiris, such as Dr. Fadl and Dr. Ahmed, extended the death warrant to encompass, for instance, anyone who registered to vote.  Democracy, in their view, was against Islam because it placed in the hands of people authority that properly belonged to God.  Therefore, anyone who voted was an apostate, and his life was forfeit.  So was anyone who disagreed with their joyless understanding of Islam – including the mujahideen leaders they had ostensibly come to help, and event he entire population of Afghanistan, whom they regarded as infidels because they were not Salafists.  The new takfiris believed that they were entitled to kill practically anyone and everyone who stood in their way; indeed, they saw it as a divine duty.

Until he arrived in Peshawa, Zawahiri had never endorsed wholesale murder.  He had always approached political change like a surgeon: A speedy and precise coup d’etat was his lifelong ideal.  But while he was working in the Red Crescent hospital with Dr. Fadl and Dr. Ahmed, the moral bonds that separated political resistance from terrorism became more elastic.  His friends and former prison mates noticed a change in his personality.  The modest, well-mannered doctor who had always been so exacting in his arguments was now strident, antagonistic, and strangely illogical.  He would seize on innocent comments and interpret them in a weird and malicious manner. Perhaps for the first time in his adulthood, he faced a crisis of identity.

In a life as directed and purposeful as Zawahiri’s, there are few moments that can be said to be turning points. One ws the execution of Sayyid Qutb when Zawahiri was fifteen; indeed, that was the point of origin for all that followed.  Torture did not so much change Zawahiri as purify his resolve.  Each step of his life was in the service of fulfilling his goal of installing an Islamic government in Egypt as bloodlessly as possible.  But the takfiri doctrine had shaken him.  The takfiris convinced themselves that salvation for all of humanity lay on the other side of moral territory that had always been the certain province of the damned.  They would shoulder the risks to their eternal souls by assuming the divine authority of deciding who was a real Muslim and who was not, who should live and who should die. 

Zawahiri stood at this great divide.  On one side, there lay before him the incremental process of rebuilding his movement in exile, waiting for the opportunity, if it ever came, of returning to Egypt and taking control.  This was his life’s goal.  But it was only a small step toward the apocalypse, which seemed so much closer at hand when he viewed the other side of the divide.  There, across what he must have known was an ocean of blood, was the promise of the universal restoration of true Islam. 

For the next ten years, Zawahiri would be pulled in both directions.  The Egyptian option was al-Jihad, which he had created and defined.  The universal option had not yet been named, but it was taking shape.  It would be called al-Qaeda.

I felt compelled to post these pages of Lawrence Wright’s book to quell many on the left who state that the reason al-Qaeda, Osama, and the rest of the fanatics were angry at us….indeed the only reason, is due to our soldiers being on sacred ground.  While this may have been an excuse it is more then apparent that if we had not one footprint on that ground they would still find another excuse to make war against those who practice Democracy.