I think that there's been a lot of emotion in the posts above. That's understandable, if a little unfortunate.
My view (and it is only my view) is that whoever perpetrated the outrage in NY and DC this week is not a religious fanatic. The perpetrator may have enlisted religious fanatics to carry out the acts, but my understanding of terrorism is that it is usually carried out to achieve political, rather than religious ends.
Witness Northern Ireland and that sad farce last week when the loyalists gave the catholic kids going to school a hard time. Those ignorant morons on the street doing the yelling and jostling may well have been religiously motivated, but you cannot convince me that the leaders who called them out to do it had anything but political ends in mind. Come on!
Similarly, whoever was behind the attacks in the US will probably not give a monkey's toss for religion, but will have some purely political motive in mind. It's hard to know what that is, since no one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, and the most obvious suspect, bin Laden, has flatly denied it.
Oddly enough, I'm inclined to believe him. What possible motivation could he have for not putting his hand up to it if he was, indeed, responsible? Think of the increase in stature it would give him among his ostensible constituency! To say that he's denied it to avoid retribution is a nonsense. There's a $US15 million price on the man's head for heaven's sake. He's not worried about what Dubya thinks of him any more now than he was before the attack.
To get distracted by a few zealots dancing in the streets in Gaza or Ramalla or Islamabad or Peshawar or wherever is just silly. They're not players in the big game. And to start discussing the attacks in NYC and DC directly in terms of the Jewish/Arab issue is, in my opinion, fruitless.
I think there's a new player in the park, someone who has contacts within the Arab terrorism camp, but who has not been directly involved before. Why do I think this? Well, it's because the attacks were so well-planned and executed. Usually, there's a major error made (as in the first attempt on the WTC) due to a lack of training, of discipline or motivation.
And if I'm right, who could it be? Let's discount Saddam Hussein straight away. No way, no how, could he have engineered this one. It was simply beyond him. Ghadaffi? Don't make me laugh. Redoubtable though friend Muhamar may be, the Libyans are fringe players. Syria seems to have played itself out of the Arab fanaticism game. The Taleban couldn't organise a booze up in a brewery outside Kabul. Arresting a few foreign aid workers on charges of preaching Christianity is imaginative enough for them. Iran? Hardly. Pakistan? I'm running out of likely and unlikely Muslim-based suspects here.
That, again in my view, pretty much leaves the US's ostensible allies. Who has the most to gain from this attack on the US by Middle Eastern terrorists? If I were the FBI, I think I'd be looking at Saudi and Israel very diligently. Wouldn't you?
But if I am wrong, and the perpetrator is a lone wolf like bin Laden, if not actually bin Laden, how expensive would this have really been to pull off? Everyone is saying that it has to be big money. But even a cursory add-up doesn't actually come to all that much. $10-$20 million is chump change when it comes to terrorism.
Ann is right. The money will lead investigators to the source, or at least as close to it as they can come. And I only hope that the American agencies do their homework right before telling Dubya who they think did it. The consequences could be worse than any of us could imagine if America gets this one wrong.
For what it's worth.
