Seeker Blog

This Frontpage interview with David Keyes is well worth a read. Excerpt:

. . .
FP: Tell us the consequences if al-Qaeda achieves a foothold in Gaza.

Keyes: The existence of al-Qaeda anywhere, poses a grave threat to nations everywhere. Before September 11th, the presence of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, sheltered by the Taliban, raised little concern throughout the world. This was true on the security, as well as the human rights, level. Think: How many anti-Taliban rallies were held world-wide to protest the brutal oppression of women in Afghanistan before 2001? No, it took Operation Enduring Freedom to find something to protest. Those who sat silent as an entire population was enslaved by the Taliban somehow found time to protest the war it took to destroy that dastardly regime. Incidentally, the same was true of Saddam’s Iraq. The liberation of Iraq from the clutches of one of the worst tyrants of the 20th century, elicited more opposition than the Butcher of Baghdad’s own fascistic 30-year rule. Strange times we live in.

On September 11th, however, the world witnessed that the delusions of a relatively small number of fanatics could have the deadliest of consequences. Though the message had been sent countless times prior, from the seizing of American hostages in 1979 through the 1993 World Trade Center bombing up to the 1998 attacks on our embassies in Africa, few choose to take the threat seriously. The world—America included—was asleep at the wheel. Terrorism had been treated as a criminal problem and people like Mullah Omar, Abdul Rahman Yasin, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had little more to fear than the wrath of an American prosecutor armed with an arrest warrant. Unfortunately, these types of people don’t fear that type of response. What they have rightly come to fear is the U.S. 101st Airborne. Though bin Laden declared war on America in the mid-1990s, it was not until years later, after 3000 men, women and children had been slaughtered in a single morning that America decided to respond in kind. In short, we were not on war-footing against the forces of radical Islam and totalitarianism in the Middle East until it was far too late.

It would serve us well to remember that the deadly machinations of 9/11 were hatched largely in remote regions of Afghanistan, a far distance from America or Western civilization. It is in this context that the threat of al-Qaeda in Gaza should be viewed. Al-Qaeda has always sought security vacuums from which to operate, from Afghanistan in the 1980s to Somalia in the 1990s to the Waziristan provinces near the Pakistani border today. . .