Dov Zakheim Jonathan Schanzer Amitai Etzioni
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$12 FALL 2011 VOLUME 18, NUMBER 4 Ian Johnson September 11: The Muslim Brotherhood Flourishes in Europe One Decade Later Franck Salameh Classical Arabic’s Decline Dov Zakheim Steven Plaut Israel’s Academic What 9/11 Has Wrought Fifth Column Nidra Poller Al-Dura Jonathan Schanzer Hoax Revived Early Warnings Ignored Damla Aras Sudan’s Ticking Time Bombs Amitai Etzioni David Barnett Toward a Nonviolent, and Efraim Karsh Pluralistic Middle East Azzam’s 1948 Threat against Israel Plus . • Reviews by Khashan, Levinson, Phelps, Rabil, Schwartz, and the Editors • Operationally: The Forum exerts an active in- fluence through its projects, including Campus Watch, Islamist Watch, the Legal Project, and the Forum Washington Project. www.MEForum.org • Philanthropically: The Forum distributes nearly $2 million annually through its Education Fund, The Middle East Forum works to define and promote helping researchers, writers, investigators, and ac- American interests in the Middle East and to protect the tivists around the world. 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Gerber Susan Gardos Bleich Myrna Linsenberg Donald G. Ginsberg Benjamin Gordon Efraim Karsh Seymour G. Mandell Eugene M. Grant Brian Grodman Director Michael Mooreville N. Richard Greenfield Lawrence K. Grodman Jeremy T. Rosenblum Martin Gross Irene Pipes Amy Shargel Milton S. Schneider Leon Korngold Mark H. Rubin Managing Director William Seltzer David J. Kudish George A. Violin Murray H. Shusterman Joshua Landes Harry C. Wechsler Edward M. Snider Donald M. Landis David Wolf Ronni Gordon Stillman Robert J. Levine Maxine Wolf FALL 2011 VOLUME 18, NUMBER 4 SEPTEMBER 11: A DECADE LATER 0 3 Dov S. Zakheim, What 9/11 Has Wrought The assaults exerted a heavy yet surmountable toll on the United States 15 Jonathan Schanzer, Early Warnings Ignored A group of Republican congressmen issued unheeded alarms on jihadist terrorism 27 Amitai Etzioni, Toward a Nonviolent, Pluralistic Middle East Washington can attain a consistent and pragmatic Middle East policy 39 Ian Johnson, Europe’s Underestimated Islamists Unnoticed, the Muslim Brotherhood has become Europe’s foremost Islamist force 47 Franck Salameh, Does Anyone Speak Arabic? The decline in classical Arabic use reveals the fallacy of an “Arab nationalism” 61 Steven Plaut, Israel’s Tenured Extremists Jerusalem’s academic bashers have increased; so has public opposition to them 71 Nidra Poller, The Muhammad al-Dura Hoax and Other Myths Revived Despite massive evidence to the contrary, the Dura fiction remains intact 79 DATELINE: Damla Aras, Sudan’s Ticking Time Bombs South Sudan’s independence opens a Pandora’s box for Khartoum 85 DOCUMENT: David Barnett and Efraim Karsh, Azzam’s Genocidal Threat Found: The original 1948 document containing the Arab League’s warning REVIEWS 89 Stephen Schwartz, “New Age” Islam Two books represent failed attempts to respond to Islamism 91 Brief Reviews Ibn Saud’s legacy ... The Iran-Iraq war ... Talking to terrorists ... The Cairo geniza / 1 Editor Publisher and Review Editor Efraim Karsh Daniel Pipes Senior Editors Assistant Editor Patrick Clawson Hillel Zaremba Denis MacEoin Michael Rubin Editorial Assistant Managing Editor William Aquilino Judy Goodrobb Board of Editors Fouad Ajami James R. Russell Johns Hopkins University Harvard University David Cook Franck Salameh Rice University Boston College Martin Kramer Philip Carl Salzman The Shalem Center McGill University Timur Kuran Saliba Sarsar Duke University Monmouth University Habib C. Malik Robert B. Satloff Foundation for Human and Humanitarian Rights The Washington Institute for Near East Policy in Lebanon Sabri Sayarø James Phillips Sabancø University The Heritage Foundation Kemal Silay Steven Plaut Indiana University University of Haifa Lee Smith Dennis Ross Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. Steven L. Spiegel Barry Rubin University of California, Los Angeles Global Research in International Affairs Center Kenneth W. Stein Emory University 2 / MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY FALL 2011 September 11: A Decade Later What 9/11 Has Wrought by Dov S. Zakheim veryday American images of the war on terror—the legacy of 9/11: Government buildings surrounded by ugly concrete blocks. Pennsylvania Avenue, the street that Ethe White House—once known as the “people’s house”—faces, no longer open to traffic. ID cards required everywhere. Airline passengers waiting patiently in line to take off their shoes, belts, jewelry—and to have their bags searched and perhaps their bodies as well. Fans searched as they enter football stadiums. People on the watch for suspicious characters—including those who might take photos of bridges and tunnels. People fearing to retrieve lost bags in case they are booby trapped. Increased government surveillance of individual Americans, including their telephone calls overseas. Americans have become so inured to those inconveniences that they take them in stride. Economically, however, this impact has exceeded a trillion dollars if the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is added to that of domestic security measures and the pri- mary, secondary, and tertiary effects of the losses incurred on 9/11 itself.1 Prior to that date, the U.S. budget was in surplus; the national debt was declining. Ever since then, the debt has been climbing unceasingly while the budget has once again plunged into ever increasing deficits that have undermined the government’s ability to provide for infrastruc- ture modernization, for upgrading the nation’s failing primary and secondary schools, and for the social security and health care expectations of its aging “baby boomer” population, the large cohort of Americans born soon after World War II. changes in U.S. national security strategy. Hav- TERRORISTS: ing previously focused on the emergence of a A NEW KIND OF ENEMY new “peer competitor” akin to the Soviet Union— many analysts assigned that role to China— The years since the attack on the Twin Tow- Washington now assigned top priority, in deed ers and the Pentagon have also resulted in major if not in word, to combating terrorism. From a nation at peace at the dawn of the new millen- nium, the United States became a nation at war, Dov S. Zakheim was U.S. undersecretary of de- fense (comptroller) and chief financial officer from 2001-04. He is a senior advisor at the Center for 1 “US Security Spending since 9/11,” National Priorities Project, Strategic and International Studies, senior fellow Northampton, Mass., May 26, 2011. The direct impact of 9/11 on the U.S. economy in terms of business interruption was $109 at the CNA Corporation, and a member of the billion. See Adam Z. Rose, et al., “The Economic Impacts of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and September 11 Terrorist Attacks: A Computable General Equilib- rium Analysis,” Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Afghanistan. Policy, vol. 15, no. 2, art. 4. Zakheim: 9/11 Consequences / 3 fighting multiple wars from which it has yet to prisons.2 Such allegations were also leveled at emerge. the United States3 and sparked a major debate The enemy that the United States faced was over what constituted torture and what actions one that differed markedly from those of years were within the bounds of the Geneva conven- past, and, as a result, posed a series of new moral tions. The debate has raged for almost as long dilemmas for U.S. policymakers, especially in the as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and has matter of captured enemy combatants. With the been further fueled by the killing of Osama bin exception of the Iraqi army, which was soundly Laden, based on evidence of some terrorists and quickly defeated in March and April 2003, who were subjected to measures that many ob- the forces opposing the United States consisted servers described as torture.4 All in all, in the of irregulars for whom Western notions of the post-9/11 era, Washington has yet to find a bal- laws of war and international law generally were ance between its security and intelligence re- completely meaningless. quirements and the rights, or at least privileges, On the other hand, the United States found of those it has captured in the act of seeking to, itself under great pressure to apply those legal or actually, doing it harm.