The enemy we fight

The U.S. was very slow to recognize the nature of the threat posed by al-Qaida.

That's how Sept. 11 happened.

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Now, it seems, the U.S. is irrationally and dangerously assuming that every terrorist threat it faces in the world connects somehow to al-Qaida.

This is how we're going to miss the next big attack on the U.S.

This is not to suggest that Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization should be taken lightly. But if our intelligence agencies and our law-enforcement authorities are totally focused on the threat from al-Qaida, they are missing the larger picture – the real danger.

A report this week in my online intelligence newsletter G2 Bulletin explains that U.S. policymakers and analysts are now going overboard giving credit to al-Qaida for virtually every attack that takes place in Iraq, on U.S. interests around the world and on our allies. Al-Qaida has become a bigger bogeyman than it is.

As our report in G2 Bulletin put it: "There are many murderous alliances and groupings in the shadowy world of militant Islam." As bad as it is, al-Qaida is just one. It should not be seen as a bigger monster – as "al-Godzilla" – than it is.

"The constant use of the term al-Qaida is a mythologization of an amorphous Islamic militant sub-culture," G2 Bulletin reports. "Those two words create not only fear, but also a plausible rationale, an almost exotic mystification of the unknown."

The report continues: "Without much awareness in the West of this buildup, Osama bin Laden has risen to the rank of an idol, an almost deified icon. Almost every militant Islamic splinter group favors the use of the al-Qaida term, or bin Laden's name, to create a super image of their own organization. The fear factor al-Qaida and bin Laden imprint on the Western psyche has not escaped their notice and they are all making excellent use of it. Thus they have succeeded in acquiring a secondary terror effect. It would be much better if the West would learn to minimize these images rather than taking them to such disproportionate heights."

"The term al-Qaida has become a weapon of mass fear," said an Australian agent with the Australian Security Intelligence Organization. He speculated that adding bin Laden's name to every terror event is damaging the overall campaign against terrorism by concealing the fact there is much more to Islamic terror than meets the eye."

Part of the temptation for identifying al-Qaida as the lone enemy we face is because we, as a nation, have never fully defined who it is we are at war with.

We say we are fighting a "war on terrorism." But it that accurate? In fact, a few hundred miles from Baghdad, we are calling on Israel to show restraint in the face of unrelenting attacks by terrorists. We are even calling for the creation of a Palestinian state that would be headed by the father of modern-day terrorism.

The truth is America has many enemies in the world. Al-Qaida is just one. Until we define whom we are trying to destroy there is no chance for success or victory in our war.

Suicide bombers struck and spectacular terror attacks happened long before al-Qaida began to plan Sept. 11. The U.S. and her allies were the targets of massive terror attacks conceived and born in the Middle East long before bin Laden became a terrorist. The U.S. is still an object of hatred in the eyes of radical Islam and of terror-supporting states governed by Islamo-fascism.

So, who are we at war with?

I have identified the enemy as the "global jihadists."

There are many groups fighting under this umbrella. They include al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and many others names less familiar. But they also include some familiar names not normally associated with our war on terror – Fatah and its offshoot, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Fatah is responsible for the death of more than 100 Americans, including at least one U.S. ambassador. But we don't treat it like an enemy. We fund it. We encourage it. We give aid and comfort to it.

It's time to get our heads straight. It's time to declare war on all the global jihadists. And it's time to pay attention to what our so-called "allies" are doing in aiding them – countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt.

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