Unrealistic Scenario

Submitted by Alex (United States), Jun 20, 2007 at 17:58

I almost always agree with what Dr. Pipes has to say, and I appreciate the need to warn Americans of a more regularized threat of terrorism coming from Islamists in this country in the near future, but the scenario predicted in this article has some flaws. First, Islamists intent upon jihad inside this country lack the territorial contiguity and population numbers to sustain an insurgency like that directed against Israel. Short, more spectacular acts performed by discrete sleeper cells at critical junctures in the relationship between Islamist leaders and both their followers and their sponsoring states seem more likely here, with smaller attacks being confined to test-runs.

Second, al Qaeda has already told us of its plans to attack in this country after 9/11, and those plans are different than the ones presented in this scenario. In his video message to the American people immediately preceding the 2004 presidential elections, Osama bin Laden--rather than threatening to attack all 50 US states and the District of Columbia--said that only those US states that voted for Bush would be attacked (http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sa&ID=SA1404).

Al Qaeda elaborated on this theme in February of 2006, by threatening two waves of attacks, a first smaller one directed at the states who voted for Bush--followed by an offer to all states to negotiate separately with al Qaeda and secede from the union--and then a larger attack on all states to punish us for not taking al Qaeda up on its offer (http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page= archives&Area=sd&ID=SP111206).

These differences do not suggest an alternative strategy for fighting militant Islam than that which Dr. Pipes has proposed, only a different version of events with chiefly tactial significance, but such differences, in my humble opinion, are important nonetheless.

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