The terrorists who attacked us the morning of September 11, 2001 had planned their aggression over the long term, had startegic ambitions, wanted cataclysmic results, and did so as a first wave in a much larger, all-out war against America and all it stood for. the closest example that would resonate with the pre-September 11 mind of most Americans was Japan's treacherous 1941 attack. The comparison is not perfect,however. But in an imperfect collective state od consciousness,it was an eye-opener. The pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor were not on their own mission. They were not frustrated individuals who decided one morning that Washingtom was evil and had to be punsihed.

They were not an isolated unit but part of an army, and their army was not without political leadership,an ideology, and geopolitical ambitions. They were not a mafia punishing the police,nor a gang retaliating against an officals. Likewise, Mohammed Atta and his men were a unit within a network-part of an international terror army, under a global command structure and political organization that in turn the fruit of an ideology, one that has penetrated many countries and governments and has been calling for a world war against America and western society as a whole. In the West by 2005, we have come some way in understanding this, but we still hav a long way to go.

Do you believe that Osama and his band of suicidal jihadists are reacting against American foreign policy?

Do you think that American actions in the Middle East are creating more jihadists, and that if we simply withdrew that the threat would diminish?

Do you feel that America is responsible for "why they hate us"?

If you do, then you have ingested a kind of ideological poison that is blinding you to the true nature of this threat. There is an antidote, and I suggest that if you read ONE book in the coming year on politics that you choose to read FUTURE JIHAD: Terrorist Strategies against America, by Walid Phares.
 

Phares has been studying this threat for a long time. As he says in the Acknowledgements, "This book is the result of a lifetime of observations and analysis. Its findings were drawn from decades of reading and research and patient listening to opinions expressed in a variety of forms."

To whet your appetite for future installments, or even better, to stoke your desire to purchase the book immediately and begin your own indepth study, I will quote some passages from the Introduction of the book:

• [About 9/11]: I felt very much alone: What I had known, researched, and watched building year after year was finally here, ravaging my new homeland.
• Those few of us who knew about the danger and had tried to warn about it had been voices crying in the wilderness (often against enormous personal and institutional hostility).
• I continued to remind audiences that the war had been in existence for far longer than had been acknowledged in the West. The United States was not attacked randomly, but as part of a planned offensive in the war. This was not a mere lunatic reaction to U.S. foreign policy by a handful of deranged men; the enemies who targeted the United States on September 11 had a plan based on previous successes, all carefully planned, justified, and executed.
• The terrorists who attacked us that morning had planned their aggression over the long term, had strategic ambitions, wanted cataclysmic results, and did so as a first wave in a much larger, all-out war against America and all it stood for.
• Regrettably, we must recognize that the fog of misinformation has not yet dissipated.
• On February 22, 1998, Osama bin Laden proclaimed to the world a front for jihad and declared war against infidel America. He based it on religious edicts.
• Hindsight is a psychological impediment to clear analysis. The collective experiences of Americans since September 11 makes it hard to realize that most of what has been learned since the attacks was not known before.
• Why didn't our national leaders address their public, the legislative branch, or the media during the ten years before the attacks, as strikes and operations were taking place from (at least) the early 1990s on? Why didn't the president address Congress after the August 1998 attacks against the embassies and ask for powers of war? Why wasn't the Taliban removed that year, instead of several years and thousands of lives later?
• In comparing my analysis of jihad tactics during the 1990s to the findings of the 9/11 Commision, one conclusion emerges: An obstruction of knowledge took place.
• It is not that the fundamentalists were operating in secret. Their abundant litarture, disseminated across continents, should have been enough to trigger academic attention, research, and advice. In fact, it did--but for over a decade the dominant academic elite simply dismissed the threat and called jihad a myth.
• I argue that the root of the denial was a full-scale cultural one, because I witnessed that denial firsthand throughout the decade preceding September 11.
• I exclaimed, "Yes, it was a failure of imagination, but it was caused by a failure of education."
• Was this a deliberate attempt by the education community to hide the truth?
• To put it bluntly, yes, future jihads have already started.
• There has been a fundamental misunderstanding about al Qaeda's ultimate goals. Strategic questions, such as what the jihadists want to achieve for the next decade or what al Qaeda's long-term plans are, are yet unanswered.
• In the text that follows, I attempt to answer such critical questions as: What are al Qaeda's future strategies against the United States? How long will this war last? Is the United States secure on the inside? Will it have to engage the jihadists worldwide in multiple campaigns, and if so, where? Do al Qaeda and its nebulous allies--including potentially non-Sunni groups such as Hezbollah--have a world strategy to defeat the United States? How is victory defined by jihadists? What are the critical components of U.S. victory?
• America must win the war of ideas--it must capture the minds of women, youth, and elite that form the foundation of the future. Americans must learn a higher, more difficult truth about the terrorists--and also about what and who allowed the jihadists to be successful until September 11 and beyond--so that they can begin the actual resistance.
• We can compare America's position today to the end of 1942. We have declared war against a new enemy and made some initial inroads, but the tide has not reversed. From their centers, the enemies are still waging global war against the West and the United States. In sum, major sacrifices are still ahead of us, and gigantic efforts and events are yet to occur. The high point of the conflict has yet to come.
• The answer is that al Qaeda has a world strategy--but it is not what we have thought or been led to believe it was. It is shaped by intellectual forces wider than the membership of the organization and far older than the cold war.
• Bin Laden had a plan, a substitute plan, and a counterplan. This book unveils them all. Al Qaeda strikes, but it then analyzes the subsequent reactions of its enemies. It has a long-term vision, but can revise its tactics as necessary. This book shows the real al Qaeda; I will also show how the dominant political culture in the West has helped to obfuscate it.
• Not only are the terror plans frightening; they are already underway on a global level.