Knowing not the enemy

David Ignatius:

Politicians who talk about the terrorism threat -- and it's already clear that this will be a polarizing issue in the 2008 campaign -- should be required to read a new book by a former CIA officer named Marc Sageman. It stands what you think you know about terrorism on its head, and helps you see the topic in a different light.

Sageman has a resume that would suit a postmodern John le Carre. He was a case officer running spies in Pakistan, and then became a forensic psychiatrist. What distinguishes his new book, "Leaderless Jihad," is that it peels away the emotional, reflexive responses to terrorism that have grown up since Sept. 11, 2001, and looks instead at scientific data Sageman has collected on more than 500 Islamic terrorists -- to understand who they are, why they attack and how to stop them.

The heart of Sageman's message is that we have been scaring ourselves into overexaggerating the terrorism threat -- and then by our unwise actions in Iraq making the problem worse. He attacks head-on the central thesis of the Bush administration, echoed increasingly by Republican presidential candidate John McCain, that, as McCain's Web site puts it, the United States is facing "a dangerous, relentless enemy in the War against Islamic Extremists" spawned by al-Qaeda.

The numbers say otherwise, Sageman insists. The first wave of al-Qaeda leaders, who joined Osama bin Laden in the 1980s, is now down to a few dozen people on the run in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan. The second wave of terrorists, who trained in al-Qaeda's camps in Afghanistan during the 1990s, has also been devastated, with about 100 hiding out on the Pakistani frontier. These people are genuinely dangerous, says Sageman, and they must be captured or killed. But they do not pose an existential threat to America, much less a "clash of civilizations."

It's the third wave of terrorism that is growing, but what is it? By Sageman's account, it's a leaderless hodgepodge of thousands of what he calls "terrorist wannabes." Unlike the first two waves, who were well-educated and intensely religious, the new jihadists are a weird species of the Internet culture. Outraged by video images of Americans killing Muslims in Iraq, they gather in password-protected chat rooms and dare each other to take action. Like young people across time and religious boundaries, they are bored and looking for action.

"It's more about hero worship than about religion," Sageman said in a presentation of his research last week at the New America Foundation, a liberal think tank here. Many of this third wave don't speak Arabic or read the Koran. Very few (13 percent of Sageman's sample) have attended radical madrassas. Nearly all join the movement because they know or are related to someone who's already in it. Those detained on terrorism charges are getting younger: In Sageman's 2003 sample, the average age was 26; among those arrested after 2006, it was down to about 20. They are disaffected, homicidal kids -- closer to urban gang members than to motivated Muslim fanatics.

Sageman's harshest judgment is that the United States is making the terrorism problem worse by its actions in Iraq. "Since 2003, the war in Iraq has without question fueled the process of radicalization worldwide, including the U.S. The data are crystal clear," he writes. We have taken a fire that would otherwise burn itself out and poured gasoline on it.

...

Sageman is attempting to make the case for pulling back to the strategic defensive in the war being waged against us by al Qaeda. He is wrong on several counts. Bin Laden's strategy was to draw the US into a quagmire in Afghanistan. Just as he was being routed there and before he could rally jihadis to help him in Afghanistan, the US invaded Iraq which caused al Qaeda to have to divert its resources to a war that was not in an area as conducive to insurgency warfare. Bin Laden and al Qaeda have suffered a strategic defeat in Iraq as more and more Sunnis have been disillusioned by the tactic of killing non combatants. this led to the Anbar awakening and the spreading disgust with al Qaeda in Iraq as well as in other Arab countries.

While his forces are in retreat in Iraq, bin Laden has swung back to Afghanistan and Pakistan where he is creating even more enemies. In fact the war we are waging against radical Islam is creating a backlash against the movement that is resulting in the very weakening that Sageman describes as the third phase. Sageman's theory gets it just backwards when it comes to dealing with the threat of radical Islam. If we followed his advice, al Qaeda would see it as a victory. It is part of their magical thinking and Islam that makes them such an illogical enemy. If we go back to the strategic defensive as suggested, it will give al Qaeda time and space to regroup and plan more attacks.

What Sageman is suggesting is that we blow the end game.