State Sponsors of Terrorism (2 of 4)

This focus on "state sponsors" has been central to the Bush Administration's astonishing neglect of necessary anti-terrorism measures, both before and after the 9/11 attacks.

Continuing with Gen. Clark's Winning Modern Wars on the development of the current situation, Clark recounts the rise of al-Qaeda, "[f]orged in the struggle against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and organized originally by the United States with Saudi funding and Pakistani support." After the Soviet withdrawal for Afghanistan, Bin Laden's group began to expand its activities in the Middle East and other areas.

In 1993, the World Trade Center was attacked by Islamic extremists associated with Al Qaeda. And Al Qaeda became one of several different organizations seen as increasingly hostile to Americans. It was only after the bombing of the Khobar Towers barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996, in which nineteen Americans were killed, that we seemed to become clearly focused on the specific threats directed against us.

And this new threat was indeed different from the nature of the Cold War challenge from the Soviet Union. Although al-Qaeda formed alliances with so-called failed states like the Sudan and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, they were not a proxy organization for inter-state rivalries. Their ideology was largely based on an extremist version of Islam and they drew most of their recruits, as Clark says, "from the anger, ignorance, and despair within 'moderate' Arab regimes we supported."

The danger posed by nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists also became a new focus of nuclear nonprofileration concerns.

Clark criticizes even the Clinton Administration for being too concerned with Iraq as a potential ally of al-Qaeda. Not only was there no evidence of such an alliance, it was always highly unlikely. Saddam "was a controlling personality, hardly likely to give destructive weapons to a group of Islamic extremists who were far beyond his control and viewed him and his state as an enemy." And by the late 1990s, it was becoming increasingly clear that transnational terrorism had to be viewed in a new context than the "state sponsor" paradigm.