Seymour Hersh posed the question, in an address in the Terrace Room, that in order to understand foreign policy "in Iraq and worldwide since Sept. 11, 2001, we have to know: How did we get to where we are?"
Our state and federal governments are more receptive daily to warnings and better prepared to prevent further terrorism than ever before. Some review is necessary in order to comprehend how invaluable the George W. Bush administration is and has been in the direction of foreign policy. It has helped to counter terrorism, specifically working in Iraq and neighboring areas to neutralize key sources of state-sponsored terrorism. In fact, it has been more effective than either the administration of his father or of William Jefferson Clinton.
Sept. 11 proved all but Rabbi Meir Kahane wrong. The administration in Washington, D.C., is learning the lessons of time and is no longer fooling with them. Senator Kerry, stuck in a Vietnam time warp, still believed in an alliance of France, Germany, Russia, the United Nations and Saddam Hussein, despite proof they robbed the starving Iraqi children of more than 10 billion dollars of humanitarian aid. Senator Kerry and Mr. Hersh blindly endorsed them in their mindless quest for a world view that both Arafat and Bin Laden welcomed.
Nov. 5, 2004 also marked the 14th year since Rabbi Kahane was assassinated by the acknowledged Al-Qaeda precursor, Egyptian El Said Nosair. In 1990, Nosair was a leader of the internationally infamous anti-American Jersey City Mosque under the direction of Sheik Abdul Rahman. Not until this administration did city, state and federal law enforcement consider the Sheik and his mosques relevant to any international picture.
Arab suicide "Freedom fighters," to quote George Carlin, terrorized civilian population centers throughout Israel for decades but were not generally reported to be terrorists, even when repeatedly targeting babies in mothers' arms. While the United States remained untouched, the world press maintained an attitude similar to its 1930's attitude to the Nazis. Arab-Muslim extremists studied this attitude and knew that we continuously would let them get away with almost everything. Democracies oftentimes fail to recognize the imminence of crime and evil.
In March of 1997, an Egyptian Muslim gunned down over a dozen people on the roof of the Empire State Building. I was having dinner with Commissioner Howard Safir following my broadcasts of accusations of Arab-Muslim state-sponsored terrorism upon New York landmarks. The Commissioner told me that I didn't know what I was talking about and had deferred to the standard government line of depression-based murderers, failing to account for another defaced rifle meticulously acquired in Florida. New York still wanted to quiet fears of terrorist patterns, no matter how logical.
The press also downplayed these patterns of terrorism. When an Egyptian pilot deliberately crashed a civilian commercial plane into the sea, I was among a mere few who immediately told a disbelieving media audience that I believed the crash was not accidental, nor a result of depression. Instead, I concluded it to be part of a calculated, ongoing pattern of attack, coordinated by the same international cells that would only intensify over the years, for which we remained unprepared. Years later, meaningful investigation, the reading of withheld and released Arabic records, and belated Egyptian cooperation confirmed my initial assessment.
The U.S. Navy also had bragged that it was prepared for everything, but then came two Sheiks and a camel in a rowboat. I toured the U.S.S. Cole, the largest destroyer proudly on display for the Brooklyn Memorial Day 2000 celebration, only to be horrified to learn that its very next port of call was Yemen, another Arab-Muslim "ally."
I voiced alarm that Arab-Muslim terrorists enjoyed a free haven there, similar to the pirates in the Islands of the Caribbean in the 1600s. Displaying their awesome defenses, crew and officers assured me that my misgivings were silly. In the fall suicide bombing off a port in Yemen, only the true American bravery of the captain and his crew saved the ship from being lost. Three years were required to repair the damage that killed almost 20.
Given the history of terrorism at the World Trade Towers, one might expect these Arab-Muslims to be able to hijack four planes of civilians simultaneously. Decades before, Yassir Arafat had invented airline hijacking, as well as simultaneous, multiple, civilian hijackings. The mastermind of the first 1993 attack that almost collapsed the World Trade Towers, Ramsi Yosef, almost captured and destroyed 15 planes in one swoop just a few years later. At that time, he famously promised that the World Trade Towers would topple "just as soon as the money became available." It was no leap of imagination for terrorists to carry box cutters instead of machine guns.
Instead of the Clinton administration acting on such precautions, everyone from First Lady Hillary Clinton to Teresa Heinz Kerry fell over themselves contributing to the notorious blinds fundraising for Arab terror groups stumping throughout the country. Belatedly, Clinton refunded $50,000 of it when the use of the money was exposed in the middle of a Senate campaign, and the recipients were placed on a terror watch list.
In 1998, towering American embassies in two African countries, Tanzania and Uganda, were blown sky high, causing thousands of casualties. Bin Laden quickly took credit in a taped promotion to recruit more Arab-Muslim terrorists for increasing training camps. Bin Laden and his Arab-Muslim armies were fully functioning, growing with impunity and on the move over the 1990s, without having to face American forces or meaningful retaliation.
President Clinton's increasingly enthusiastic embraces of Yassir Arafat without results and farcical responses to burgeoning, worldwide terror networks were all the posters Arab-Muslim extremists ever needed. Fortunately, now we have an administration in Washington that the majority of this country recognizes as prepared to take a stand against the Hitlers of today. Up to now, the State of Israel had to do that by itself, in the face of not only worldwide isolation but often European collaboration with the terrorists. God bless America.
Shannon Taylor is a Tufts alumna, class of 1976.
