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David Horovitz: Three Years Later

The president made it sound so simple, and in a sense it is -- a simple struggle between good and evil. But three years after 9/11, that renewed terrible proof of man�s unspeakable potential contempt for his fellow man, pursuing the war on terrorism has long since been revealed as extraordinarily complex. It is a battle for the highest stakes which requires absolute cooperation between all who strive to prevent the killings of innocents, yet it has been deeply compromised by self-interest, manipulation, internal dissent and cowardice.

It has not helped, of course, that the man leading the struggle is himself a figure of such controversy, whose family has maintained alliances and financial interdependencies with the leadership of the country that spawned most of 9/11�s killers, Saudi Arabia. Saudi policy in the last generation has been characterized by an absolute internal contradiction. The unelected leadership has enjoyed almost unlimited access to the father and son Bush-led America (having invested some $1.5 billion in the "House of Bush and its allied companies and institutions," according to Craig Unger�s powerhouse critique "House of Bush, House of Saud"). Its mega-wealthy oil sheikhs have bought up a goodly portion of the U.S., and they have armed themselves with a mind-numbing $200 billion worth of the very best of American military technology. Simultaneously, that same Saudi leadership, as its price for domestic quiet, has allowed the most virulently anti-Western and anti-Semitic strains of Islamic extremism to dominate the education of its people -- and helped fund the export of that education, via mosques worldwide, to corrupt impressionable Muslims everywhere, most certainly including the U.S.

The untenability of that internal contradiction was exposed by the fact that the overwhelming majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi. Now that the Saudi regime is itself being targeted by the killers it allowed to flourish, it is trying to thwart them and to duck responsibility. But this reverse has come too late: too late to put the Al-Qaeda genie back in the bottle, and almost certainly too late to save the House of Saud. The implications for Israel of a deepened descent into Muslim extremism in a Saudi Arabia so well-armed can only compound the nightmares presented by the imminent probability of a nuclear Iran.

The fact that both he and his father had long directly benefited from warm relations with the Saudi leadership may have undermined George W. Bush�s ability to fairly assess, and thus try to confront, the threat posed by Saudi-hatched extremism before 9/11. (It almost beggars belief to learn that, in the summer of 2001, the U.S. began operating a "Visa Express" system by which Saudi nationals could gain visas to the U.S. without so much as setting foot in American consular offices, a security lacuna promptly and delightedly exploited by several of the hijackers.) His Saudi ties may have harmed President Bush�s ability, too, to properly prioritize the arenas for counter-terrorism in the wake of 9/11.

As the newly released bipartisan U.S. 9/11 Commission Report elaborates in lucid, horrific detail, Al-Qaeda capitalized ruthlessly

in the years when it was able to freely run arms-procurement networks and training camps for tens of thousands, with consequences we must fear have been only partially felt to date. And Al-Qaeda today, as bin Laden�s former bodyguard Nasser Ahmad Al-Bahri all-too plausibly asserted in an August interview with a London-based Arabic daily, is no longer "an organization in the true sense of the word," but, rather, "an idea that has become a faith" to heaven knows how many adherents.

Dismay over Bush�s Saudi sensibilities, and over his questionable focus on Iraq, are by no means the only factors that have decimated domestic American support for his version of the war on terror and prevented the establishment of the worldwide coalition -- of intelligence networks, security cooperation and military force -- without which the threat will not be overcome. The struggle is also hamstrung by the cowardly tendency of numerous Western regimes to distance themselves from its front lines, and to try to appease the attackers by blaming the victims, in the misplaced hope that this will secure their own immunity.

The Commission�s Report deeply depresses with its roster of missed opportunities to foil 9/11 -- when the attacks were still being planned by a relatively vulnerable bin Laden, when his pilots took their courses at U.S. flight schools, when their colleagues arrived at immigration, and at the airport security screenings on the terrible day itself. But the report depresses still more in providing so little to suggest that international capabilities have much improved since -- as the August 24 twin bombings of Russian airliners, with the loss of 90 more innocent lives, bitterly confirm.

Amid all the international criticism of its policies in fighting terror, Ariel Sharon�s Israel has unarguably fared increasingly well in recent months -- the security fence and the waves of arrests having markedly raised the percentage of intercepted bombers. But terror must be tackled in the field and in the mind. And what Sharon�s Israel emphatically has not done, not yet anyway, is complicated the extremists� ideological battle for recruits.

As Americans agonize over which presidential candidate will have the capability to keep their country safer -- a proven terror battler whose motivations and skills are so widely questioned, or an unproven opponent who may present the struggle in ways that appeal more widely -- Israel owes itself and its only significant ally rather more than the current political drift. Sharon needs to find the way to honor his oft-repeated commitment to his people and to the U.S. to evacuate settler radicals from illegal outposts, and to press ahead with policies that will at once keep terror at bay and reflect the desire for conciliation so widely shared by his countryfolk. If he lacks the party and parliamentary clout, then he should seek a new mandate from the people.

In one of the precious few moments of unadulterated national delight of late, Gal Fridman, the always confident but never arrogant first Israeli Olympic gold medalist, provided inspiration to Sharon, to this and future American leaders, and to the rest of the world in the war on terror. Fridman paid tribute to his slain predecessors, the 11 Israeli terror victims of Munich 1972. His victory encapsulated Israeli resolution since then, obliterating Iran�s sordid effort to humiliate Israel by directing one of its judo champions to withdraw rather than compete against the Jewish state. And he stressed, too, his and his country�s desire for peace. Those are some of the very messages that need to underpin the continuing battle, three years after 9/11: the need to stand resolute in the face of evil, the determination to overcome it, and the simultaneous relentless overtures for a better future.