In 1996 Osama bin Laden declared war on America, referring to "a clear conspiracy between the USA and its' allies [to destroy Islam]...." According to bin Laden, "The people of Islam awakened and realized that they are the main target for the aggression of the Zionist-Crusader alliance." As if he were leading a "national liberation" movement, bin Laden blamed the United States as a colonial oppressor, simplifying reality through the device of a conspiracy theory that makes all Americans co-authors of a genocidal campaign against the Islamic faithful (because U.S. leaders are elected by the American people). By falsely stating that America occupies Islam's holy places, and blaming America for Muslim deaths on three continents (where America, in fact, acted to save Muslim lives - in Bosnia, Somalia and Afghanistan), bin Laden displayed a cynical dishonesty.
Bin Laden's followers and associates have acknowledged that al Qaeda's "grand plan" aims at America's destruction. And so we wait, four years after 9/11, as the "blessed windbag" (and his chief deputy) continue to plead from the bowels of a remote cave. America's vigilance is undermined, in part, by al Qaeda's buffoonish ineffectiveness. No grand attack has occurred against the United States during a long and tedious interval. The purpose of bin Laden's propaganda, however, is not to inspire terror. He no longer frightens the typical U.S. citizen. Instead, the Americans are bored with him. The terrorist, like all political fanatics before him, is a bore. His followers are ignorant plodders finally unable to overcome the plodding ways of the CIA and FBI. If the situation isn't quickly reversed, bin Laden will wish he had died at Tora Bora. (And perhaps he did.)
America was stunned in the wake of 9/11, its sense of invulnerability shaken. But further attacks have not take place. Horror did not follow horror; only windy threats and pronouncements; small strikes against weaker, more vulnerable countries. Al Qaeda has nuclear weapons, we are told. Yossef Bodansky made this claim in 1999. Paul Williams confirms this notion, describing his sources to Ryan Mauro in a recent WorldNetDaily interview. Williams believes that bin Laden is about to unleash a nuclear assault on America. His sources are as follows: (1) Several members of the Chechen mafia; (2) The London Times; (3) Arab stories in Muslim magazines; (4) sources in the "former" Soviet Union "not only by Chechens but also the Russian Mafia"; (5) "a host of intelligence officials and weapons inspectors, including Hans Blix, former director of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency"; (6) British intelligence agents who "saw nuclear weapons being manufactured" by al Qaeda in Afghanistan; (7) and finally, bin Laden himself and his trusty sidekick, al-Zawahiri (who openly admit to possessing nuclear weapons). Doubtless we should fall over one another to credit the veracity of criminals from the "former" Soviet Union, Hans Blix and Afghanistan's version of a nuclear Potemkin village. Furthermore, we are obliged to believe whatever bin Laden says. (Because murderers and cutthroats never tell lies.) There are two possibilities here: Either bin Laden has nukes or somebody desperately wants us to believe that he has them, including bin Laden and the Russian mafia. That much is clear.
Williams reminds us that U.S. officials have openly said the nuclear threat from al Qaeda is real. It is not a matter of if, but when," said one U.S. general. But how are we to digest such a claim? Is it credible that a relatively small terrorist organization - smaller than the Belgian Army - could initiate a nuclear offensive against a superpower? Well, we must admit that such a thing is theoretically possible because America's borders are open and American counterintelligence is blind. As hard as it is to believe, America failed to penetrate the least of its enemy's satellites during the Cold War. In fact, when communism was about to collapse in East Germany the Soviet Bloc had over 6,000 spies embedded in the West German establishment. Meanwhile, the CIA's Milt Bearden admitted, "The harsh truth was that we didn't have any spies in place who could give us much insight into the plans of the East German government, or, for that matter, the intentions of the Soviet leadership in the Kremlin." And so it remains a "harsh truth" even now. We are transparent to our enemy, but they are a complete mystery to us. In the wake of 9/11 we didn't have effective agents in al Qaeda or Afghanistan, and the situation has been no different in Iraq. While Russia and China routinely steal America's political and military secrets the United States knows little about the mysterious East. The Cold War was like a boxing match in which the more powerful boxer was sightless. Ditto for the War on Terror. We haven't found bin Laden or al-Zawahiri, and we don't know how many operatives they have (or how many nuclear devices they've acquired, if any). It is an intolerable situation.
At this point in time anyone might attack the United States with nuclear weapons and we'd have no way of identifying the perpetrators. Even if the radioactive signature of the devices was of Russian origin, the Russians have already presented their alibi (in terms of Russian nukes sold to terrorists on the black market). It must be asked, not simply as a theoretical question, whether nuclear deterrence is even workable under such conditions.
One may brush al Qaeda aside and dismiss bin Laden as a cave-dwelling crank, yet there remains the emerging nuclear threat in Iran. Two books have recently come out on this subject: Jerome R. Corsi's Atomic Iran and Iran's Nuclear Option by Al J. Venter. According to Corsi, "The theocracy in Iran presents to the world a clear and present danger of nuclear war. The mullahs are mad religious zealots who will soon have access to nuclear weapons." He points to the ease with which illicit narcotics are regular smuggled across America's leaky borders. To show the madness of the "mad religious zealots" in Tehran, he describes the passage of a bill by Iran's parliament to enrich uranium. "As the assembly voted unanimously to enrich uranium," Corsi noted, "the members of [Iran's] parliament took up an eerie chant: 'Death to America!'" Venter's book further describes the Iranian Shi'ites as "provocative and driven" by a faith that emphasizes "martyrdom and victimhood" and thrives on self-marginalization.
The most interesting part of Venter's book deals with Russia's enabling role vis-à-vis Iran's nuclear ambitions. Venter quotes extensively from a paper written by Dr. Victor Mizin, a former Russian diplomat. "Russia has yet to shirk off its Soviet-era policy of external arms and technology transfers and aid to rogue states," noted Mizin. While it is true that Russia profits from arms sales to lunatic regimes, profit is not the decisive motive in a country that despises "bourgeois" values of profit and loss. "Iran is emerging as the exemplar for Russia's global positioning in the 21st century," wrote Mizin, who recognizes what Venter calls "the Machiavellian maneuvering at which President Vladimir Putin has proven adept." There is a powerful group behind Russia's anti-American mischief. This group, says Mizin, consists of representatives from Russia's military industrial complex and the special services. This is the group that "promotes ... developing traditional strategic and economic ties with China and India or such former Moscow clients as Iran, Syria, and North Korea, while maintaining only conditional token cooperation with Washington in the global arena." According to Mizin, this policy stems from "an inbred animosity toward America that goes back almost a century."
The Islamist nuclear threat, whether from al Qaeda or Iran, has Russian fingerprints. Admittedly, the strategic puzzle of our time is not fully or finally solved by this observation; but in the tedious days of our distracted vigilance it is important to know that the Cold War is still being waged (whether we recognize the fact or not).
