The September 11th attack
Analysis
War exposes differences between Western, Islamic cultures

By George Gedda
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Osama bin Laden was just a small speck on the international horizon eight years ago when Harvard University professor Samuel P. Huntington wrote that global politics will be dominated by "the clash of civilizations."

International conflicts will be less likely to be based on ideology and economics, Huntington wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine. A more likely source are differences among civilizations — differences that, he said, "have generated the most prolonged and the most violent conflicts" over the centuries.

It's too early to say whether the West, in particular the United States, and the radical Islam embodied by bin Laden, are condemned to the type of conflict of which Huntington wrote.

But there is no doubt bin Laden and his allies have the will and even the means to carry out killing on a mass scale — as the events of Sept. 11 at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon made clear.

"The jihad (holy war) is today the duty of every Muslim," said Sleiman abu Ghaith, a spokesman for bin Laden's al-Qaida organization.

By Huntington's count, there are seven or eight major civilizations. Between the West and Islamic cultures, the differences appear to be accelerating, partly because of conflicting world views.

There is little resonance among Islamic countries for Western ideas of individualism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets and the separation of church and state, Huntington noted.

Governments in Islamic countries generally condemned the Sept. 11 attacks. But there has been tepid support at best for the U.S. air strikes on targets in Afghanistan that began on Sunday. Western European countries and other U.S. allies have, in contrast, been highly supportive of President Bush's response.

To the extent that there have been street protests in Muslim countries, virtually all appear to oppose the bombardment of Afghanistan. In Pakistan, thousands of supporters of the ruling Taliban regime in Afghanistan burned buildings and demanded holy war against America.

The administration has warned that it intends to root out terrorism wherever it may exist. Afghanistan is just a beginning.

But the secretary-general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, warned Monday that "any military strike on any Arab country will lead to serious consequences and will be considered an aggression against Arab states."

Bush could face an uphill climb in his attempt to forge an anti-terror coalition.

Huntington, writing in 1993, noted that the Gulf War coalition against Iraq started disintegrating not long after the Iraqi surrender in February 1991. Subsequent American attempts to demonize Saddam Hussein were largely ignored by what Huntington called "substantial sections of Arab elites and publics." As a result, Arab governments opposed or distanced themselves from Western efforts to apply pressure on Iraq, he said.

In a tamer time, terrorists used to avoid harming their victims lest they erode popular support. Casualties were rare. "Terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead," terrorism expert Brian Jenkins said 15 years ago.

Times have changed.