Author Description

September 11th was a watershed event and catapulted the United States into a war unique in our history. Al Qaeda and Associated Networks (AQAN) have proven to be imaginative and ruthless foes with a long term asymmetric erosion strategy targeted at the will of the American people. The intent of this strategy is to affect the withdrawal of U.S. influence from the Middle East in order to hasten the fall of corrupt, autocratic regimes in the region and establish an Islamic Caliphate. The U.S. strategy while well-crafted to attack terrorist organizations and protect the homeland does not sufficiently address some of the underlying causes of terrorism, is too state centric, and lacks a cultural perspective. September 11, 2001, was a seminal event in the history of power politics. Nineteen fanatics, not all of whom had western education, with scant financial resources, plunged the world's mightiest and most technologically advanced power into panic and precipitated a global political crisis. The aftereffects of their act militarized U.S. foreign policy, accelerated Russia's western orientation, eventually prompted growing fissures between America and Europe, intensified America's economic malaise, and altered the traditional American definition of civil rights. The weapons with which they accomplished all that were merely some box-cutters and a willingness to forfeit their own lives. Never before had so much pain been inflicted on so powerful many by so impotent few. Therein lies the dilemma for the world's only superpower: how to cope with an enemy that is physically weak but endowed with a fanatical motivation. Unless the sources of the motivation are diluted, attempts to thwart and eliminate the enemy will be to no avail. Hatred will breed replenishment. The foe can only be eliminated through a sensitive recognition of motives and passions that are not precisely defined but are derived from a shared quest of the militant weak to destroy - at all costs - the object of t