History While It’s Happening

There’s a story told, I think, in Lake Wobegon Days, where Garrison Keillor talks about writing a short story that gets lost in transit. And he can’t recover it. And it haunts him as possibly the best story he ever wrote, now lost to the world.

So, I attempted to write this blog last week, not quite a week into the debacle happening in Afghanistan. I couldn’t finish on Thursday, because of overscheduling myself. So I work on Friday night, after all the Friday tasks. I was just finishing and getting ready to copy to post when Word stopped responding. It was molasses slow. So was everything on my computer. I couldn’t even get the screen that tells me program usage to come up. I knew the file had saved—it’s typically on auto-save mode. So I turned off the computer to reboot.

When I tried opening it, the file was corrupted. I went through all the possible ways the various messages told me to try to recover it. Nothing worked. I couldn’t even find previous versions on my online drive. Mr. Spherical Model started some programs to look for malware or problems. That eventually turned up nothing.

Sometimes you just have to cut your losses. Finally, I set about recovering what I could. I’m using a lot of links in this post, so I went through my online history to find all the URLs I’d visited. And I wrote a quick outline of the points I’d made, while I could still remember them.

So I’m trying again today. Did I lose the best post ever? Frankly, I was still in the mode of gathering information and trying to process it. My purpose was to record the history in live time, suspecting it will be important to remember in the future. And, who knows, maybe the things I’ve come across over the weekend are a worthwhile addition.

 

Rep. Dan Crenshaw and Rep. Mike Waltz
image from the podcast

Two Views

There are two views about the past 20 years in Afghanistan. I don’t know which is correct. When I listen to the arguments, I tend to agree—while I’m listening. And then I hear the other side and feel pulled a different direction. Neither of the views ought to have led to what is happening.

The first view is that we are better off fighting the enemy overseas than on our own soil. My US Rep. Dan Crenshaw expresses this very well. In a podcast a week ago, August 15, he spoke with former Army Ranger US Rep. Mike Waltz. Here’s something I learned: The war in Afghanistan has been in a peaceful stasis for some time—18 months without a casualty. Calling what we do there an endless war, or nation building, while ignoring multiple other places where we keep a military presence to maintain peace is more political than strategic. This view is definitely worth listening to:

·         “The “No More Endless Wars” Crowd Got Exactly What They Asked For” Dan Crenshaw podcast with Rep. Mike Waltz, August 15, 2021. 

The other view is that we should avoid all international entanglements, a view led by Sen. Rand Paul. But there are nuanced views of that, including that we needed to take out the Taliban, but then we needed a quick end to that mission. Jason Buttrill, chief researcher for Glenn Beck, was deployed to Afghanistan right after 9/11. He gives this view:

·         “Former Marine: Afghanistan FAIL should result in 'MASSIVE' Biden admin resignations” Jason Buttrill with Glenn Beck, August 17, 2021. 

With some time passing, I’m not always sure where to credit details. But somewhere in what I heard there is polling that shows over 70% of Americans have wanted us out of Afghanistan. Pres. Trump made that promise and set up a timeline, along with agreements the Taliban would have to keep in order to make it happen. Another 70% say Biden botched the exit, which seems obvious to the whole world—except maybe the president, his close staff, and the US State Department.

 

Losing the Peace

Americans know how to win wars. We did it spectacularly in World War II, so well that, as Great Britain saw the end of its global imperial period, it felt content stepping back on the world stage, because the United States was there to step up.

But what we now know is that the US cannot be trusted to “help” any country in its fight against tyranny—because at some point Democrats will get elected and lose the peace. And break our promises.

We won Vietnam. Democrats got us into the fight. Then Republicans struggled through the tough part, and we won. Then Democrats in Congress refused to fund the support we had promised in order to keep the peace. The local people struggled on against communist insurgents for two years before the fall of Saigon.

Joe Biden in the 1970s
image found here

Incidentally, Joe Biden has been around Washington that long. Back in 1975 he was the leading voice insisting that the US should not evacuate a single Vietnamese who had helped the US during the war, feeling no compunction about leaving them to be tortured or killed at the hands of the communists. (See also.) 

In 2010, he told a US diplomat, who had asked him about our duty to avoid a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, "F--- that, we don't have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger got away with it."  

Who knew he could be so consistent about anything? Well, not totally. In 2015, he was in favor of inviting in Syrian refugees—especially if we didn’t vet them. 

Anyway, Democrats subjected Vietnam to decades of communist tyranny. Those who escaped, the many Vietnamese boat people, are among our neighbors. And they've been good neighbors. But they lost their home country.

In the early 90s, when we won the first Gulf War in Iraq, quickly and decisively, the Democrats gave that victory away by refusing to hold Saddam Hussein accountable to the terms of the cease fire. Bill Clinton kept letting them cross one red line after another, until finally, as a way to distract from the Lewinsky affair, he bombed what turned out to be an aspirin factory, rather than one of several actual arms production facilities we were supposed to be able to freely inspect.

We won again in Iraq starting in 2003, when they were a key state sponsor of terrorism. We took out Saddam Hussein this time, and worked to help the people recover from his tyranny, for which they were grateful. (I heard this from them myself.)  But Obama managed to lose that semi-stable peace, giving rise to the ISIS caliphate. Nothing we could do about that but take in unvetted refugees, he insisted. Until President Trump got elected and then wiped out ISIS swiftly. Done.

So, in Afghanistan, we had won a peace, and kept the Taliban at bay for two decades. No more 9/11-style terrorist attacks on our soil. Their numbers were minimal, and the few remaining were hiding out in caves or hovels just over the border in Pakistan. If you need to review the history, I recommend Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.

I don’t know whether Trump’s intention to pull out of Afghanistan emboldened them. That is possible. But Trump’s plan was to make our leaving contingent on their keeping the terms of peace. If they didn’t, they should expect to feel the full weight of the US military. Some think that means he would have kept a minimal force there indefinitely.

Biden’s interpretation of an exit plan was to bug out of Bagram Air Force base in the middle of the night, not even giving notice to the Afghani commander, who showed up the next morning to that eerie emptiness. 

During our relative peace there, contractors were hired to do work in Afghanistan. The people Biden left there were tens of thousands of Americans—many along with families—doing work the US Government had urged them to do. Plus there were the many tens of thousands of Afghanis who had helped the US, as interpreters or otherwise, in the effort to build their infrastructure, military, and government—making them de facto enemies of the returning Taliban. These are the SIVs, the special immigrant visas.

A month ago the international terrorist threat was quite low, arguably the lowest it had been since 9/11. Now, with the Taliban claiming triumph over the US, recruitment and numbers are surging, and al-Qaeda, maybe even ISIS, are making a reappearance—incidentally while Biden has kept the southern border open to all comers.

By the way, on Friday, August 13, just as the chaos was getting underway, Homeland Security's Alejandro Mayorkas put out a bulletin on the heightened domestic terrorism threat—coinciding incidentally, a week later, with the admission that there was no coordinated attempt at insurrection on January 6th, but claiming that ordinary people are terrorists nevertheless (not the first time).

In July, Biden claimed there was no chance of a repeat of Saigon, with people clinging to helicopters lifting off embassy roofs. I think he failed to say he was fine with people clinging to airplane landing gear taking off from the tarmac of the only airport people can escape from, which is surrounded by Taliban. Biden’s creation makes Saigon look like just an ordinary bad day.

So I think it’s time we conclude that we must look at every possible victory as something Democrats will follow up to un-win.

Five days into the Afghanistan chaos, Biden
does a press conference and takes no questions.
Tweet from Michael P Pregent August 18

It is hard to imagine that things could go as wrong as they have out of simple incompetence. I think it’s only possible if you combine massive incompetence with hatred of America—which I think will be the historical summary of the Biden presidency.

Biden was busy vacationing at Camp David while this chaos was underway in Afghanistan. Finally, five days into the chaos, he showed up, gave a statement, and took no questions. Later on Wednesday he did an interview on ABC (more below), saying he couldn’t imagine why anyone saw anything wrong. Thursday he did a presser, taking four pre-approved questions. VP Harris has been absent from beginning to end. One report said she was heard to be screaming, “They’re not going to pin this on me!” True? I don’t know. But conceivable. Without comment, she’s continuing plans for a trip to Singapore. This administration is feckless at best, more likely evil.

In last Wednesday’s interview with George Stephanopoulos (full transcript here), Biden said there were no mistakes; everything was going as expected, and he didn’t see how things could have gone better.

Joe Biden during the interview with George Stephanopoulos
screenshots from here

Biden said, “No, I—I don’t think it could have been handled in a way that— there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing. I don’t know how that happens.”

Let me help here, with the strategic plan that—absolutely everyone else in the world could come up with:

·         Get the people out first.

·         Then get your equipment out—anything you don’t want getting into the hands of the enemy.

·         Then get the military out.

Here’s some the technology the US Military has left behind to be reverse-engineered by whichever enemies partner with the Taliban.

Julian Ropcke tweet of weapons left behind
image found here

It wasn’t just Americans abandoned in this far-flung land. Our allies had people there as well. Biden lied and said he had contacted them all and they were in agreement with his plan. News is that British PM Boris Johnson was essentially put on hold for 36 hours before his phonecall would be taken by Biden. (Another story said 24 hours for Biden to make the phonecall to PM Johnson.) Our NATO allies are livid. They are considering sanctioning him. And they are scrambling to find ways to rescue people.

On the Mark Levin show, retired British Colonel Richard Kemp, former chairman of the Cobra Intelligence Group, said this: 

The whole world just became vastly more dangerous.  The US Government, President Biden humiliated the United States. He humiliated the United States Army. In my opinion—and I don’t say this lightly, and I’ve never said it about anybody else, any other leader in this position: People have been talking about impeaching President Biden. I don’t believe President Biden should be impeached. He’s the Commander in Chief of the US Armed Forces, who has just, essentially, surrendered to the Taliban. He shouldn’t be impeached; he should be court-martialed for betraying the United States of America and the United States Armed Forces.

I agree that impeachment is too good for him. However, I don’t see a legal path in the Constitution to court-martial our president. But removing him one way or another is looking likely. And sooner rather than later. Shaming him ought to bring about a resignation—except that he has no shame.

 

Turning Tide

The media—and Biden’s subordinates—are turning on him, pointing out the lies. An early indicator was CNN reporter Clarissa Ward, from on the ground at the airport in Kabul, showing the chaos—in stark contrast to everything Biden and his spokespeople say.

Stu Burguiere offers a collection of Clarissa Ward posts, around midpoint in this episode:

·         “The Afghanistan Evacuation Debacle: An American Embarrassment” Stu Burguiere, Ep 331, August 20, 2021. 

Tucker Carlson points out how odd this negative reporting is, along with the contradictions by military and intel sources. He says it has to be coordinated, and this shows they are now turning against him.

·         “Tucker Carlson Tonight 8/22/21” 

Journalist/Commentator Mr. Reagan (Christopher Kohls) offers his analysis of this sudden distancing from Biden, and thinks their timing might be off.

·         “Why Has the Media Turned on Biden?” August 22, 2021. 

And add this one:

·         “Liberal Reporters Turn on Biden, SLAM Him for Handling of Afghanistan” Glenn Beck on Facebook, August 20, 2021. 

 

Rescue

Jason Buttrill, on The Blaze program The News & Why It Matters, was discussing the difficulty of just telling people, “Make your way to the airport in Kabul.” He shared this map, from Michael P. Pregent, showing the difficulty people face.

Michael Pregent graphic of Afghanistan situation
shared on The News & Why It Matters August 17.
screenshot from here

So I looked for Michael Pregent’s twitter feed and found it to be a useful source for updated reporting, including good graphics. Pregent said, on August 18, that this is the worst foreign policy decision in his lifetime, and it may go down as the worst foreign policy decision ever.

Tweet from Michael P Pregent August 23, 2021

Afghanistan is a mountainous desert, riddled with mines and IEDs. And it’s now occupied by the Taliban, making death a likely outcome for cross-country travelers intent on getting to the only airport to exit. I don’t remember who to credit with saying, “Does Biden think you can just call an Uber?” Add to the danger, the Taliban is already threatening to kill all Christians in particular. They’ll kill any American, foreigner, or Afghani who helped the NATO allies, but they have a special hatred for Christians.

One story Glenn Beck passed along was from an American Christian missionary, in her mid-20s, who recognizes her life is threatened and she may not make it home. She contacted her family and let them know she is at peace with her impending death.

Last Wednesday Glenn Beck detailed the difficulty Christians are facing and asked his audience to help fund the rescue being planned by The Nazarene Fund, which has been successful in rescuing many Christians from Syria and other world hot spots. They estimated a cost of about $4,000 per individual, and they had a goal to rescue 3-5,000. $4,000 X 5,000 = $20 million. So that was the goal. In less than two days they reached $22 million. (We felt the call and added our comparative widow’s mite.) This morning, everything was ready, but the US State Department refuses to offer permissions or any other type of support. Department of Defense has been helping as they can, but the State Department seems to think if they help it’s an admission that the reality exists. 

·         “THIS Is The Reality Of Afghanis Today: ’30Minutes That’ll Change Your Life’ Part 1” and “Forget Government. YOU Can Be A LEADER: ’30 Minutes That’ll Change Your Life’ Part 2”  Glenn Beck Radio blog, August 18, 2021.

·         “Taliban reportedly going 'door-to-door' looking for Christians to kill them” Phil Shiver for The Blaze, August 19, 2021. 

·         “Glenn Beck's audience raises staggering $22 million in 2 days to rescue Christians trapped in Afghanistan” Sarah Taylor for The Blaze, August 20, 2021. 

·         Glenn Beck Radio Program, followup interview with Rudy Attallah, CEO of The Nazarene Fund, August 23, 2021. 

 

Keeping the Historical Record

The reports and commentaries I've collected this past week is mainly to keep the historical record. If we individuals keep the record, maybe we’re less subject to being deceived when we’re inevitably lied to.

I used The Blaze and The Epoch Times quite a lot, but there are certainly other good sources—like I said, even CNN reporting on the ground. So this is just a snapshot, mostly from last week, showing the vast distance between Biden administration claims and reality:

WEAPONS ABANDONED

·         “Shocking videos show just how many US military weapons are now in the hands of Taliban terrorists” Chris Enloe for The Blaze, August 18, 2021. 

·         “US Black Hawk Helicopters, Airplanes, Rockets Captured by Taliban; Refugees Coming” Facts Matter with Roman Balmakov, August 18, 2021. 

BIDEN VERSION

·         “President Biden indicates there was no way to exit Afghanistan 'without chaos ensuing'” Alex Nitzberg for The Blaze, August 18, 2021. 

·         “Biden claims military advisers never told him to keep troops in Afghanistan, but multiple reports say otherwise” Phil Shiver for The Blaze, August 19, 2021. 

·         “Democratic lawmaker says US military isn't responsible for getting Americans to Kabul airport safely” Chris Pandolfo for The Blaze, August 19, 2021. 

·         “Psaki has Total TRAINWRECK When Reporter Asks If Americans Will Make It Out of Afghanistan” press conference clip posted by Glenn Beck on Facebook, August 18, 2021. 

 

This guy giving a State Department update was
so pleasant and calming, I really hoped he would
tell the truth. But he didn't.
Tweet from Michael P Pregent, August 21

REALITY

·         “An internal State Department memo in July reportedly warned of Kabul collapse” Alex Nitzbeg for The Blaze, August 19, 2021.  

·         “Biden reportedly ghosted UK, ignored PM Johnson for 36-plus hours amid Afghanistan fallout” Phil Shiver for The Blaze, August 19, 2021. 

·         “Taliban militants fire into crowd to disperse protests, reportedly kill at least three people and injure dozens” Chris Pandolfo for The Blaze, August 18, 2021. 

·         “VIDEO: Desperate Afghani mothers throw their babies over barbed wire to allied troops in order to protect their children from Taliban” Sarah Taylor for The Blaze, August 19, 2021. 

·         “Taliban fighters are 'hunting down' journalists, carrying out revenge executions against Afghans who worked with the West” Phil Shiver for The Blaze, August 20, 2021. https://www.theblaze.com/news/taliban-fighters-hunting-down-journalists-revenge-executions

·         “Two Afghan stowaways who plunged to their deaths after clinging to US plane ID'd as teen brothers who scavenged from trash to care for mother: Report” Sarah Taylor for The Blaze, August 18, 2021. 

·         “What? - Americans Have To Pay For Their Trip Home From Kabul?” Donald Trump, Jr. post on Rumble, August 20, 2021. 

·         “DoD ADMITS Out Of 2,000 Evacuees, Only 300 AreAmericans” Dinesh D’Souza post on Rumble, August 19, 2021. 

·         “Shapiro Breaks Down What's Actually Happening in Afghanistan” Ben Shapiro highlights on Facebook, August 16, 2021. 

 

PERSPECTIVES

·         “Fed-up Sen. Sasse sends clear message to Biden about 'hostage situation' with Americans and allies trapped in Afghanistan: 'Go get them'” Chris Field for The Blaze, August 19, 2021. 

·         “WATCH: Details of Trump’s Afghanistan exit plan suggest it would ‘NOT have been this way’” BlazeTV staff, August 20, 2021. 

·         “Why Biden’s Afghanistan failure wouldn’t have happened under Trump” Glenn Beck Radio, August 17, 2021. 

·         “No, Biden Can’t Blame Trump for The Afghanistan Withdrawal Disaster” Margot Cleveland for The Federalist, August 16, 2021. 

·         “WW2 Heroism Exemplifies OUR DUTY To Help Afghanistan Today” Glenn Beck Radio, August 20, 2021. 

·         “Glenn: Biden’s IMPEACHABLE response to Afghanistan is NOT Us” Glenn Beck Radio, August 20, 2021. 

·         “Glenn is FIRED UP about Joe Biden’s SHAMEFUL embarrassment in Afghanistan” Glenn Beck Radio, August 20, 2021. 

·         “Actually, the Taliban are an enemy.” Ted Cruz posts clip of spokesman John Kirby refusing to call Taliban the enemy, on Facebook, August 20, 2021.  

Misguided Search for Meaning

Along with the rest of the country, I’ve been trying to make some sense of the senseless terrorist murders in Orlando.

I am working on a theory that this—and a number of other challenges to civilization—are related to a misguided search for meaning.

Going back in history, for a moment, this is from The Looming Tower, by Lawrence Wright, concerning the Six-Day War in Israel:

After years of rhetorical attacks on Israel, Nasser demanded the removal of UN peacekeepers in the Sinai and then blockaded the Strait of Tiran to Israeli shipping. Israel responded with an overwhelming preemptive attack that destroyed the entire Egyptian air force within two hours. When Jordan, Iraq, and Syria joined the war against Israel, their air forces were also wiped out that same afternoon. In the next few days Israel captured all of the Sinai, Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights, while crushing the forces of the frontline Arab states. It was a psychological turning point in the history of the modern Middle East. The speed and decisiveness of the Israeli victory in the Six Day War humiliated many Muslims who had believed until then that God favored their cause. They had lost not only their armies and their territories but also faith in their leaders, in their countries, and in themselves. The profound appeal of Islamic fundamentalism in Egypt and elsewhere was born in this shocking debacle. A newly strident voice was heard in the mosques; the voice said that they had been defeated by a force far larger than the tiny country of Israel. God had turned against the Muslim. The only way back to Him was to return to the pure religion. The voice answered despair with a simple formulation: Islam is the solution.

There was in this equation the tacit understanding that God sided with the Jews. Until the end of World War II, there was little precedent in Islam for the anti-Semitism that was now warping the politics and society of the region Jews had lived safely—although submissively—under Muslim rule for 1,200 years, enjoying full religious freedom; but in the 1930s, Nazi propaganda on Arabic-language shortwave radio, coupled with slanders by Christian missionaries in the region, infected the area with this ancient Western prejudice. After the war Cairo became a sanctuary for Nazis, who advised the military and the government. The rise of the Islamist movement coincided with the decline of fascism, but they overlapped in Egypt, and the germ passed into a new carrier (p. 38).

So, there was a loss, among Muslims in these Middle Eastern countries, of the sense that they were right, or possibly better than their neighbors as they had supposed. The way they saw it, God no longer favored them. So it was up to them to get back in God’s graces—by doubling down on being more of what they had been.

Fascism is an idea of coercion. It is extreme. They see a need to be extreme in order to assert their superiority. As with the Nazis before them, the fascist Muslims asserted their superiority through coercion, force, and death to the unbelieving or the different.

I wrote some months ago, after the Paris and San Bernardino attacks, about the siege in Mecca. The perpetrators of that terrorist attack were executed. During that one-month window between the end of the siege and the executions, the Soviets attacked Afghanistan.

Abdullah Azzam, who, according to The
Looming Tower (from which this photo
is taken) "issued a fatwa in 1984 that called
upon Muslims everywhere to 'join the caravan' of
the Afghan jihad.

It was a mythos that got Osama bin Laden. He had a teacher at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, a Palestinian named Sheikh Abdullah Azzam. According to Wright, Azzam

embodied in a modern fashion the warrior priest—a figure that was as well established in Islamic tradition as the samurai in Japan. Azzam combined piety and learning with a serene and bloody intransigence. His slogan was “Jihad and the rifle alone; no negotiations, no conferences, no dialogues” (p. 95).

Azzam started traveling to Peshawar to help in the Afghan resistance. His descriptions were a recruiting tool, catching the imagination of bin Laden. As Wright explains,

The Afghans, in his tableau, represented humanity in a pristine state—a righteous, pious, pre-industrial people—struggling against the brutal, soulless, mechanized force of modernity….

The struggle of Islam, as Qutb had framed it, and as Azzam deeply believed, was against jahiliyya—the world of unbelief that had existed before Islam, which was still corrupting and undermining the faithful with the lures of materialism, secularism and sexual equality. Here in this primitive land, so stunted by poverty and illiteracy and patriarchal tribal codes, the heroic and seemingly doomed Afghan jihad against the Soviet colossus had the elements of an epochal moment in history. In the skillful hands of Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, the legend of the Afghan holy warriors would be packaged and sold all over the world (p. 96).

So bin Laden was captured by that mythos and used it to recruit throughout his deadly career. It appealed to others like him—the wealthy and educated,

According to research by Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a sociologist in Cairo, most of the Islamists who had attacked the mosque in Mecca were young men from villages who had come to the city for schooling. The majority were the sons of middle-level government bureaucrats. They were ambitious and tended to be drawn to the fields of science and engineering, which accept only the most qualified students. They were not the alienated, marginalized youth that a sociologist might have expected. Instead, Ibrahim wrote, they were “model young Egyptians. If they were not typical, it was because they were significantly above the average in their generation.” (p. 58) This type continued in recruiting of Saudis to Afghanistan.

It was never about recruiting the disenfranchised, the poor, the oppressed striking out at an unfair world. It appealed to privileged college students, wealthy sons, the comfortable—who lacked purpose, principles, and a sense of meaning. The mythos described for them led them to go fight in far off Afghanistan—at least during a school break. Maybe longer if they got the thrill they sought.

Afghan fighters, the mujahideen, tolerated the Saudis such as bin Laden, but only barely. They were untrained, undisciplined, unworthy of trust in times of war. Bin Laden spent the first several years with a “fear of bodily participation,” (p. 100). Later, ashamed, he pushed for greater Saudi participation in Afghanistan. Bin Laden was often ill, and militarily unwise. But he eventually maintained a training camp in a strategically located mountain overlook called the Lion’s Den.

There was a single battle, near the end, in which this ragtag group prevailed, almost accidentally, at a critical time. It followed their worst defeat, a three-week siege, at the end of which bin Laden ordered the destruction of the camp so the Soviets had nothing to pillage.

The Saudi group hid within the forest and attacked one-by-one any Soviets that approached. Sometime during this assault, bin Laden fainted (claimed he was calm enough to fall asleep). It was confusion within the dense forest that led the remaining Soviets to overestimate the number of the enemy and give up the attack. As Lawrence Wright describes it,

Osama bin Laden, photo from
The Looming Tower, "in a cave in Jalalabad
in 1988, at about the time that he
began al-Qaeda"

From the Soviet perspective, the battle of the Lion’s Den was a small moment in the tactical retreat from Afghanistan. In the heightened religious atmosphere among the men following bin Laden, however, there was a dizzying sense that they were living in a supernatural world, in which reality knelt before faith. For them, the encounter at the Lion’s Den became the foundation of the myth that they defeated the superpower. Within a few years the entire Soviet empire fell to pieces—dead of the wound the Muslims inflicted in Afghanistan, the jihadis believed. By then they had created the vanguard that was to carry the battle forward. Al-Qaeda was conceived in the marriage of these assumptions: Faith is stronger than weapons or nations, and the ticket to enter the sacred zone where such miracles occur is the willingness to die (p. 120).

Bin Laden was presented a rifle taken off one of the killed Soviets, which he brandished thereafter. He had neither shot the rifle nor killed the Soviet. But that didn’t matter; it looked good for building the mythos.

This is only a quarter of the way into Wright’s book. There’s much more to the story on the way to 9/11. But I think this beginning gives us some clues. Islamist extremists are people who:

·         Seek something to give meaning to their lives.

·         Reinterpret what they see in the world to suit their version of reality.

·         Define an extreme version of belief as “good” and all else as “evil.”

·         Believe they are superior and dehumanize anyone not among them.

·         Tolerate no belief outside their orthodoxy.

·         Seek power over anyone not associated with them in full, or annihilation of any who cannot be coerced to submit.

·         Believe that whatever they do is justified.

·         Delight in hating all who believe differently.

I do not think it is a bad thing to seek meaning in our lives; I think we should all do that.

But seeking meaning only in the southern hemisphere of the Spherical Model—below civilization—leads only to savagery.

And coercion will never be the right way to persuade others to find shared meaning. Real conversion comes only by invitation, “by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned, by kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile.”[i]

It is undeniable that Islamist terrorists are the most dangerous of the savagery-loving meaning seekers today. And we should do all in our power to identify and defeat this enemy-of-all-that-is-good.

But they are not the only savagery-loving meaning seekers. I’m seeing connections I hadn’t seen before, which may explain in part why our president fails to identify the enemy, let alone protect us by defeating that enemy. I’ll talk that about in Part II.

---

[i] Doctrine and Covenants 121:41-42 

The Siege of 1979

When we’re in times like these—when killers appear on our streets and in schools and public places, and mow people down in the name of their god—it seems a matter of self-defense to understand them. I’m not talking about the sympathetic kind of understanding, the assumption that they must have had a good reason. There is no good reason for mass murdering innocent people. Least of all simply because they adhere to a different (or no) religion.

But there are enough of these radical Islamists in the world—including in our own country—that it can’t be a matter of mental illness, at least in the traditional meaning of that. It is a world view, including motivations and logic structure that leads to where they think this is a good, even moral, act, and if they die in the process all the better.

So, if we can understand what it is they’re thinking, we might be better able to thwart. And ultimately to stamp out.

In my effort to understand, one of the books I’ve started with is The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, by Lawrence Wright[i]. Eventually (after the holidays) I’m hoping to finish typing up my notes, and then maybe do a series of posts about what I’ve learned.

The Grand Mosque in Mecca during Hajj
page 4 of photos in The Looming Tower

But following the recent Paris and San Bernardino attacks, I thought I would go ahead and retell an event from 1979.

The siege of the Grand Mosque of Mecca began November 20, 1979. It was the final day of hajj, the annual gathering in the Muslim holy city of Mecca. Wright tells us this:

That morning at dawn, the aged imam of the Grand Mosque of Mecca, Sheikh Mohammed al-Subayil, had been preparing to lead the prayers of fifty thousand Muslims gathered for the final day of hajj. As he approached the microphone, he was shoved aside, and a burst of gunfire echoed in the hold sanctuary. A ragged band of insurgents standing among the worshippers suddenly pulled rifles from under their robes. They chained the gates closed, trapping the pilgrims inside, and killed several policemen. “Your attention, O Muslims!” a rough-looking man with an untrimmed beard cried. “Allahu akhbar!”—God is great—“The Mahdi has appeared!”

“The Mahdi! The Mahdi!” the armed men cried.

It was New Year’s Day of the Islam year 1400—the bloody inauguration of a turbulent new century. In some of the disputed oral traditions of Islam, the Mahdi (“the one who guides”) will appear shortly before the end of time. The concept of the Mahdi is a controversial one, especially in Wahhabi Islam, since this messiah is not mentioned in the Quran. Tradition says that the Mahdi will be a descendant of the Prophet and will carry his name (Mohammed bin Abdullah), and that he will appear during the hajj. Eventually, Jesus will return and ask his people to adhere to Islam. Together, Jesus and the Mahdi will fight the Antichrist and restore justice and peace to the earth.

The man claiming to be the Mahdi was Mohammed Abdullah al-Qahtani, but the real leader of the revolt was Juhayman al-Oteibi, a fundamentalist preacher and former corporal in the National Guard. The two men had been imprisoned together for sedition, and it was during that time, Oteibi claimed, that God had revealed to him in a dream that Qahtani was the Mahdi (p.88).

Saudi Arabia was not an old country. Tribes had been united under a king for only a few decades. The ruling family was, in some ways, all powerful. But they had a tenuous relationship with the clergy, which also wielded great power.

The insurgents’ goal was purportedly to overthrow the kingdom—to institute a theocracy in anticipation of the imminent apocalypse. The insurgents were known; they preached in mosques. Osama bin Laden would have heard them. While they were speaking openly against the government, in a country that was strictly controlled, “there was an ingrained reluctance on the part of the government to confront religious extremists” (p. 89).

So here was the Saudi government, along with the ulema (the clergy), faced with extremists in the Grand Mosque, where violence in any form is forbidden. Innocent people were being held hostage. Wright continues:

The king would face revolt from his own men if he ordered them to open fire within the sanctuary. On the other hand, if the ulema refused to issue a fatwa endorsing the government’s right to reclaim the mosque, they could be seen as siding with the rebels….

The leader of the ulema [the clergy] was Abdul Aziz bin Baz, blind, seventy years old, an eminent religious scholar but a man who was suspicious of science and hostile to modernity. He claimed that the sun rotated around the earth and that the manned landing on the moon had never occurred. Now bin Baz found himself in an awkward and compromised position: Oteibi had been his student in Medina. Whatever bargain was struck during the meeting between the ulema and King Khaled, the government emerged with a fatwa authorizing the use of lethal force. With this decree, Prince Sultan ordered an artillery barrage followed by frontal assaults on three of the main gates. They never got close to breaching the rebel defenses (p.90)

There were as many as five hundred insurgents inside the mosque. These included Saudis, Yemenis, Kuwaitis, Egyptians, and even some American Black Muslims. They had smuggled in stolen automatic weapons. Then they made use of the mosque’s hundreds of underground tunnels and chambers. They had snipers pick off any Saudi forces that came within view.

Turki, a member of the royal family whose government job was over intelligence, found himself put in charge of solving the threat. Among those he turned to was the Bin Laden family, whose construction company was working on the 20-year mosque renovation project. They had maps, utility layouts, and technical information.

Juhayman al-Oteibi, siege instigator
photo page 4 in The Looming Tower

Turki wanted to minimize casualties and damage to the Grand Mosque. While he puzzled that, Oteibi and minions controlled the public address system, and piped their message throughout the city. Among Oteibi’s demands were “adoption of Islamic, non-Western values and the rupture of diplomatic relations with Western countries, thus rolling back the changes that had opened the society to modernity.” They wanted the royal family thrown out of power, and royal money returned to the people. They also denounced the ulema, which had approved of the king’s rule. (pp. 91-92).

Turki’s grand plan turned out to be flooding the underground chambers, then using high-voltage lines to electrocute everyone inside. The problem was, there was no way to separate the perpetrators from the hostages. Plus, as Turki figured out, “You would need the entire Red Sea to fill it.” So that plan went nowhere.

The CIA was in Saudi Arabia, training Saudi Army Special Forces, not far away. But he didn’t turn to them. Instead Turki enlisted help from the French secret service. Count Claude Alexandre de Marenches came up with a plan to use gas. Turki insisted it be nonlethal.

But, Mecca is a holy city; non-Muslims are not allowed to enter. So that was a problem. They solved it by holding a brief ceremony “converting” the French forces to Islam. Then they went ahead with the gas plan. But it failed, probably because of the vastness of the caverns and too many directions gas could leak. Finally, full violence had to be used.

With casualties climbing, Saudi forces drilled holes into the courtyard and dropped grenades into the rooms below, indiscriminately killing many hostages but driving the remaining rebels into more open areas where they could be picked off by sharpshooters. More than two weeks after the assault began, the surviving rebels finally surrendered (p. 93).

The numbers were significant for a conflict within the “religion of peace”: 127 Saudi government forces killed, 461 injured. About 12 hostages were killed, and 117 rebels. “Unofficial accounts, however, put the number of dead at more than 4,000” (p. 94).

So, was there a Mahdi? Not as advertised.

[Oteibi’s] defiance had faded once the tragedy concluded. Turki went to see him in the hospital, where his wounds were being attended. Oteibi jumped off the bed, grabbed the prince’s hand, and kissed it. “Please ask King Khaled to forgive me!” he cried. “I promised not to do it again!” (pp. 93-94).

Right. The Saudi government executed him and 62 other insurgents by beheading on January 9, 1980, just a month after the siege ended.

What can we learn from this?

The civilized Muslim communities of the world are as plagued by radical Islam as the rest of us are. There is something truly evil about a group of fanatics who feel authorized to declare anyone who disagrees with them to be infidels subject to capital punishment, including those with more moderate views within their same religion. This plague may be cloaked in robes of piety, but it is not religious in the moral sense; it is power-seeking. It is tyrannical. It attempts to rule by force—just like any other political tyranny. And it submits in cowardice to superior force from those who refuse to tolerate it or surrender to it.

There are some incidental details that might be worth adding. During the first few days of the siege, Osama bin Laden and his brother Mahrous were arrested and investigated.

They were driving home from Al-Barood, the family farm off the road from Jeddah to Mecca. Authorities spotted the dust trail of their car coming out of the desert and thought they were fleeing rebels. At the time of their arrest, the brothers professed to be unaware that the siege had taken place. They stayed in custody for a day or two, but their social prominence protected them. Osama remained secluded in his house for a week. He had been opposed to Oteibi and the extreme Salafists who surrounded him. Five years later, however, he would tell a fellow mujahideen in Peshawar that Oteibi and his followers were true Muslims who were innocent of any crime.

Osama may have always been beyond the mainstream, reaching toward radical Islam. But he didn’t start out violent. From early on he was angry at the existence of Israel and decried injustice toward the Palestinians. And he decried having American military accepted on Saudi soil. But he was content to simply speak his dissatisfaction—until the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, a country his friend Jamal Khalifa claimed bin Laden had never heard of up until that point. The invasion happened during the month between the siege and the execution.

Another day we can discuss the influences that led him to turn violent, since that might help us predict that turn in others. We need to be able to accurately identify them, because violent radical Islam anywhere in the world is a savage plague against all civilization.

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[i] I wrote briefly about this book, about a man named Qutb, an early influence in radical Islam, in my response to the Paris attack, November 16, 2015.