Bin Laden as a Revolutionary

Robert Snyder's main argument in "Hating America: Bin Laden as a Civilizational Revolutionary" is that not only is all the literature written about September 11th confusing strategy and tactics but that people fail to look at Bin Laden as a revolutionary.

The attacks against the United States on September 11th were in Snyder's view a tactic that was part of a much grander strategy. The actual attacks on the United States were a tactical maneuver designed to maximize destruction and kill as many westerners as possible. However there were much broader strategic motives behind the September 11th attacks, one of which was to alienate and weaken the moderate pro western Muslim states from the rest of the Islamic community. This point matters greatly when questioning why it matters if September 11th was a tactic or strategy because a tactic would have been a militant maneuver to achieve a direct attainable goal while a strategy would have greater planned goals using tactics as a means to an end.

A plan to destroy the world trade center itself would be considered a tactic but Snyder argues that this was not the case. Although the destruction of the twin towers and the hit on the pentagon were the goals of the 19 hijackers they were not the sole goals of Bin Laden. These attacks were essentially a means to an end. Even though the attacks did do great harm to the United States not only in way of their destruction in full or partial to key landmarks and infrastructure but the attacks took thousands of civilian lives and hurt the morale of the American people as well. Surely Bin Laden knew that he would not be able to destroy the United States with one mighty blow and that these attacks would be the waking of a sleeping giant. So why would Bin Laden do this if he knew that the United States would use all its resources and military might to try and destroy him? Like Snyder I would argue that drawing the United States into a war was the strategy behind the planning of these attacks. Snyder takes this a step further and believes that Bin Laden's declaration of war in 1996 and subsequent attacks to the U.S embassies in Africa and the attack on the U.S.S Cole were early attempts at drawing the United States into war. Since the U.S response was mild in terms of military response to these attacks it's likely that Bin Laden thought only an apocalyptic attack against the United States on its own soil would prompt the response he wanted.

Snyder argues that the grand strategy was to externalize his conflict and polarize the Muslim world. By drawing America into war Bin Laden was hoping to destabilize the moderate Muslim states making them ripe for Islamic revolution and to force them against the west. Snyder feels that Bin Laden is a civilizational revolutionary because he is trying to unite a region and culture but not a nation state to fight against the west and its culture and ideas. In Snyder's view Bin Laden is trying to use religion and the evils of globalization as a rallying call to arms for the Islamic people.

For the most part I agree with Robert Snyder's assessment of the attacks on September 11th. The attacks themselves were a military tactic but there were greater goals than just attacking the United States. Bin Laden views his cause, as a war of civilizations; the attacks on the United States were a declaration of war and the civilians killed were collateral damage. The west views him as a terrorist murderer who leads a radical movement. Unfortunately there is always a gray area. What makes Bin Laden's attacks against civilians any different than the state sponsored firebombing of civilians in Dresden and Tokyo during the Second World War and in Vietnam by the United States? As much as I disagree and am disgusted by Bin Laden and his tactics I feel that I am able to empathize with his cause. In order to understand why they hate us and our way of life we must put ourselves in their shoes. One could always argue that one man's terrorist is another man's revolutionary.

Question#1

The third part of Carnes Lord's three-part strategy for winning GWOT involves the suppression of the Pakistani theological schools, the purging of Islamic elements from public universities, and the creation of new state controlled educational institutions. Lord's idea and its implementation could be very influential in the GWOT. These schools breed the next generation of terrorist by indoctrinating the students with Islamic fundamentalism, thus making these schools an important source of recruits for Al-Queda. Many known terrorist have attended these theological schools or schools that have strong Islamic Elements. At one time these schools were the only