Why Doesn't al-Qaeda Attack the US?
29-05-2008
by Michael Scheuer
With daily television coverage of suicide car-bomb attacks,
ambushes, drive-by shootings, stabbings, and other Intifada-type attacks around
the world, the question arises as to why al-Qaeda does not stage such
small-scale but deadly operations in the United States. From Washington and the
presidential campaign trail comes a cocky, multi-part answer: our massive
homeland security spending has worked; al-Qaeda is on the run and hiding; and/or
the U.S. military is fighting the Islamists in Iraq and Afghanistan so they
cannot come to America. There may be a mite of truth in each claim, but the
correct answer would be frankly to acknowledge that al-Qaeda would have no
trouble mounting the kind of attacks made against Israel in America – guns,
cars, militant Muslims, and open borders for other needs are all readily
available – but that, at this time, it has no interest in staging Intifada-type
attacks in the United States.
There are at least three solid reasons why al-Qaeda is not running an Intifada-like
campaign in the United States:
1.) Al-Qaeda does not want to fight the United States for any longer than
is needed to drive it as far as possible out of the Middle East, and its
doctrine for so doing has, in Osama bin Laden's formulation, three components:
(a) bleed America to bankruptcy; (b) spread out U.S. forces to the greatest
extent possible; and (c) promote Vietnam-era-like domestic disunity. Based on
this doctrine, al-Qaeda leaders have decided that attacks in the United States
are only worthwhile if they have maximum and simultaneous impact in three areas:
high and enduring economic costs, severe casualties, and lasting negative
psychological impact. Such an attack, they believe, would require significant
U.S. military participation in the post-attack phase – especially if the weapon
used is the nuclear device they have sought since the early 1990s – and thereby
reduce the military's ability to operate overseas. They also believe that a
greater-than-9/11 attack would greatly undermine the confidence of Americans in
Washington's ability to protect them. (NB: The usually deft Osama bin Laden also
has put himself in something of a box regarding another attack in America
because he pledged the next attack will be more destructive than 9/11.
Paradoxically, a spate of Intifada-type attacks by al-Qaeda in the United States
could well be good news because it probably would signal an admission by bin
Laden, et. al that they no longer have the capability to match or exceed the
attacks of 9/11 inside America.)
2.) Al-Qaeda appears to recognize the huge difference between attacking
Israel and attacking the United States. For Palestinian and Hezbollah
insurgents, Intifada-style attacks have sufficed; over the decades, the limited
number of casualties the Palestinians and Hezbollah have inflicted on Israel's
small population has repeatedly won concessions. Suicide attacks, ambushes, and
stabbings against America's 300-plus-million population would cause outrage, a
few casualties, and some panic, internal confusion, and perhaps limited
inter-ethnic-group violence. They would not, however, shift the strategic
balance in al-Qaeda's favor. Intifada-style attacks could not satisfy any of al-Qaeda's
three-part doctrine: they would not (a) cause U.S. bankruptcy, (b) require large
numbers of U.S. troops to clean-up after, or (c) significantly undermine
political cohesion. Indeed, there is reason to surmise that al-Qaeda's leaders
have concluded that attacks like those used against Israel – which intend to
cause deaths of women, children, and the elderly – would unite Americans rather
than divide them.
3.) Al-Qaeda leaders probably think, for the moment, that it would be
counterproductive to stage any but a larger-than-9/11 attack in America.
Currently, Bin Laden and his senior lieutenants are clearly off balance
vis-à-vis the United State because so much substantive success has accrued to
al-Qaeda's interests so quickly since 9/11. Neither al-Qaeda nor the Taliban
were destroyed in 2001; both escaped with most of their forces largely intact.
Each has regrouped, rearmed, and retrained in safe havens in the Pashtun tribal
lands that straddle the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The Pakistan army's
incursion into the tribal zone was defeated; the new, less-pro-U.S. government
in Islamabad is suing for peace with the tribes; and the Islamization of
Pakistan continues unabated. The Muslim world perceives that the U.S. military
is being defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has been further alienated by the
U.S. treatment of captured mujahedin. Finally, the U.S. economy is slowing,
Americans are severely divided over Washington's activities overseas, and none
of the three major presidential candidates are likely to drastically alter the
foreign policies all polls show are hated by up to 80 percent of Muslims. This
embarrassment of riches advances each part of al-Qaeda's doctrine for fighting
America – casualties, costs, and disunity – and it has been accumulated without
a follow-up-to-9/11 attack. While bin Laden might well risk this good fortune
for a chance to detonate a nuclear device in the United States, he certainly
would not risk it now for the sake of shooting up a half-dozen theaters, coffee
shops, and pizza parlors.
So, Americans can relax a bit, go to the movies or the mall, and stop afterwards
for coffee or pizza without worrying too much about al-Qaeda launching
small-scale attacks. For now, Americans should see themselves as being in
standby mode for the larger-than-9/11 attack bin Laden eventually will trigger
because the last two U.S. administrations and Senators McCain, Clinton, and
Obama have warned about the severe Islamist threat, while knowingly encouraging
its worldwide growth by championing status quo foreign policies that degrade
U.S. security, as well as by supinely appeasing their Saudi and Israeli masters.