To: JohnM who wrote (68380 ) 1/24/2003 3:38:45 PM From: jcky Read Replies (2) | Respond to I still like Doran's argument that 9-11 grows out of a civil war but I think bin Laden had taken that to a civilizational level by then. If he got a civilizational response--US sees itself as going to war against all Muslims, the immediate product would have aided their aims in Saudi Arabia, certainly, but also in Egypt. Remember much of this started in Egypt. Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam and contrast it with Doran's recent essays in FA ("Palestine, Iraq, and American Strategy" and "Somebody Else's Civil War") then an interesting picture begins to emerge in the Mideast. The most prominent change has been a shift in strategy by Islamists in the last decade, or so, to redirect attacks from the "near enemy" to the "far enemy." So while Doran may still be correct with his assertion that 9/11 was hatched with the intent of starting a civil war to topple muslim regimes untrue to sharia, I think the civilizational war component has greater influence than the civil war component, perhaps unintentionally, for the simple reason that Islamic efforts to target near enemies have been an abysmal failure in recent memory. The net result of 9/11 has been to codify the Islamist movement into strengthening terrorist cells, infiltrating societal infrastructures (military and civilian) and employing recruitment plans in the West to buy time and build the critical mass needed to support the effort to topple the near enemy at home. By advertising a successful jihad against the far enemy, a foundation of legitimacy is projected: an act in which the Islamist have been unable to achieve with the near enemy.
