President Mubarak has forgotten some things...

Submitted by Joshua Truax (United States), Apr 8, 2003 at 20:06

In addition to what Mr. Pipes has already pointed out, Mr. Mubarak has also apparently forgotten how unique Osama bin Laden is/was in the terrorist world. Unless Mubarak knows of 100 Muslim multimillionaires out there who have been motivated to use that money and those connections to finance large-scale terrorist operations over global networks, I'd say he is exaggerating things considerably.

He also forgets another thing (as do all too many journalists, I might add): There is more to militant Islam than merely anti-Americanism. Those Muslims who embrace militant Islam don't do so because they see a bunch of pictures of dead Iraqi civilians on al Jazeera. They embrace militant Islam because they have come to believe in the tenets and principles OF militant Islam. For other Arabs and Muslims who reject the militant Islamist ideology, but do still have a quarrel with America and Israel, that animosity alone won't be enough for them to join the ranks of the militants. More likely those people will give rise to alternative political movements such as secular Arab nationalism, which admittedly could end up posing their own challenges for America in the years to come, but are unlikely to inspire the kind of fervor that culminated in 9/11/2001.

We may see 100 more homicide bombers, or more likely 100 more pieces of cannon fodder, but 100 more terrorists with the global influence of bin Laden? I don't think so.

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