Western citizens who
become warriors
defending Islam.


SCOTT SHANE ESSAY

WASHINGTON - America’s attention was riveted last month by the drama of the generals: Stanley McChrystal, whose indiscretions in Rolling Stone magazine got him fired on June 23, and his boss, David Petraeus, who stepped in to take direct command of the troubled Afghanistan counterinsurgency effort. But a startling scene in a Manhattan courtroom on June 21 may have had more to say than the command shake-up about the larger fight to contain Al Qaeda and its allies, and the limits of any general’s ability to affect its outcome.

At a plea hearing, Faisal Shahzad admitted trying to blow up a vehicle in Times Square on May 1. Calling himself “a Muslim soldier,” he explained his motivation: “avenging” the war in Afghanistan and American interventions in Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia.

“I am part of the answer to the U.S. terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people,” Mr. Shahzad said.

His candid confession raised two questions: Has the military’s stillexpanding fight against terrorism now become the fuel for terrorism, recruiting more militants than it kills?

And where does the Afghan war fit into the overall campaign against terror, when the enemy’s cause can lure a man like Mr. Shahzad, a former financial analyst for the Elizabeth Arden cosmetics company in Stamford, Connecticut, and a naturalized American citizen?

The questions take on particular urgency because Mr. Shahzad’s flubbed bombing was the latest of a dozen plots since last year aimed at American targets. And in case after case , plotters have cited America’s still-growing military entanglement in the Muslim world as proof that the United States is at war with Islam.

The Obama administration’s Afghan strategy still commands broad support from Democrats and Republicans and from outside specialists, who offer a familiar catechism.

Now that the Taliban have taken the initiative again, only a concentrated NATO effort can prevent their return to power, with a possible new base for Al Qaeda, officials say.

“Even in an age of virtual reality, Al Qaeda can’t do large-scale training and mobilization unless they control some terrain,” said Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who supports the current policy. If the terror network attracts young Muslims now, he said, imagine its appeal if NATO abandoned the field and the militants could claim victory.

“It would be a huge symbolic defeat for the United States, as it was for the Soviet Union,” said Mr. Boot, who is writing a history of guerrilla war and terrorism. “It would greatly embolden Al Qaeda.”

Proponents of the current escalation point out as well that even Mr. Shahzad was not turned into a terrorist solely by the Web. He met face-to-face with leaders and trainers of the Pakistani Taliban before crossing the line into violence. So allowing extremists more room to operate on either side of the Afghanistan- Pakistan border would be a dangerous mistake, officials say.

Still, many scholars who study terror see the risks and benefits differently.

“The more deeply we’re involved in that region, the more likely it is that we’ll have terrorist attacks here,’’ said Scott Atran, who interviewed many young Muslim men about the lure of terrorism for his new book, “Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (Un) Making of Terrorists.”

“These lost, young guys see the resistance as heroic and glorious,” Mr. Atran said. “Don’t give them the thrill of fighting the greatest army in the world.”

The accused in recent plots aimed at the United States all appear to have imagined themselves as warriors against the enemies of their faith. But the path to violence appears to involve less scripture than solidarity. “We Muslims are one community,’’ Mr. Shahzad told the judge at his plea hearing .

Even as the Obama administration smoothly handled the Mc- Chrystal flap and regrouped behind its Afghanistan policy, word came in a report in The New York Times on June 25 of diplomatic maneuvering between Afghan and Pakistani leaders that could result in a separate peace, potentially leaving the American generals with 100,000 troops and no one to fight.

The trouble with terrorism is what the theorists call asymmetry. Hundreds of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of troops, and the best generals on the planet can be undercut by a disgruntled accountant, commanding the world’s attention with a bomb that didn’t even explode.


HEADS OF STATE