Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

Towers have long captured the collected imagination of human kind. Whether it was the Tower of Babel in the Bible, or the Eiffel Tower in Paris , or the Chicago Water Tower, or especially the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, towers characterize technology, political power and even sexual potency.

The 2001 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers was not a happenstance assault. The terrorists chose those buildings in particular because these structures were in the heart of the world’s greatest economic center.

In Freudian terms, destroying the towers represented a symbolic castration of the United States in the eyes of the Muslim world. From the terrorist perspective, attacking these centers sent a most auspicious message to the world of Islamic jihadists: The United States’ days of being the No. 1 superpower are finished; the nation has been castrated by the forces of radical Islam; it is only a matter of time before Islam eventually conquers all of the United States and the Western world.

Ten years later, most of our country has barely come to terms with the greater implications of Sept. 11, 2001, and its symbolic significance. As a seminal event, the terrorists revealed just how vulnerable we were (and still are) to those forces poised to strike at her again. As the beacon and vanguard of democracy and liberty in the Western world, radical Islam views the attacks of Sept. 11 as the opening salvo of a new kind of jihad against the United States precisely because it champions freedom, liberty, and the right for self-determination – anathemas that threaten the feudalistic mentality of radical Islam. By attacking the Pentagon, Islamic extremism attempted to once again castrate the United States before the Muslim world.

Ten years later, the mastermind of the plot, Osama bin Ladin is now dead; yet as Iran inches closer toward its goal of constructing nuclear weapons, you can be sure that their henchmen-the Al Qaeda-will be doing everything in their power to destroy our country. Al-Qaeda and the Iranian mullahs have been working very closely together in their effort to diminish American power and influence in the Middle East and world. Like the mythical hydra, no sooner is one head of the beast cut off, another rises up in its place. Americans feel uneasy for very good reason, and we would be wise to stay vigilant and continue to strengthen our military. I wish we could banish the reticence to use the phrase, “Islamo-fascism” because that’s exactly what the world is facing.

Ten years later, we give pause to the horrendous attack on the Twin Towers in Manhattan. As a country, it seems that we often lack the foresight to anticipate such attacks, even though there the dots have not been connected.

In February 1993, Ramzi Yousef tried to bring down the World Trade Center with a truck bomb. Fortunately for our nation at that time, the terrorists killed only six, but wounded a thousand. Master terrorist Omar Abdel Rahman and his cohorts, had plans to blow up the Holland and Lincoln tunnels and other important New York landmarks.

At the time, our country thought the mere idea of destroying the towers seemed unlikely; how could terrorists achieve such a thing?

The 9/11 attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise. Islamist extremists had given plenty of warning that they meant to kill Americans indiscriminately and in large numbers. Although Osama Bin Ladin himself would not emerge as a signal threat until the late 1990s, the threat of Islamist terrorism grew over the decade.

In February 1993, a group led by Ramzi Yousef tried to bring down the World Trade Center with a truck bomb. They killed six and wounded a thousand. Plans by Omar Abdel Rahman and others to blow up the Holland and Lincoln tunnels and other New York City landmarks were frustrated when the plotters were arrested.

In early 1995, police in Manila uncovered a plot by Ramzi Yousef to blow up a dozen U.S. airliners while they were flying over the Pacific. In November 1995, a car bomb exploded outside the office of the U.S. program manager for the Saudi National Guard in Riyadh, killing five Americans and two others. In June 1996, a truck bomb demolished the Khobar Towers apartment complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. servicemen and wounding hundreds. The attack was carried out primarily by Saudi Hezbollah, an organization that had received help from the government of Iran. Iran has been supporting every terrorist organization and attack in the Western world. As one study shows:

“While in Sudan, senior managers in al Qaeda maintained contacts with Iran and the Iranian-supported worldwide terrorist organization Hezbollah, which is based mainly in southern Lebanon and Beirut. Al Qaeda members received advice and training from Hezbollah. Intelligence indicates the persistence of contacts between Iranian security officials and senior al Qaeda figures after bin Ladin’s return to Afghanistan. Khallad [bin Attash, a high-level Al-Qaeda operative has said that Iran made a concerted effort to strengthen relations with al Qaeda after the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, but was rebuffed because bin Ladin did not want to alienate his supporters in Saudi Arabia. Khallad and other detainees have described the willingness of Iranian officials to facilitate the travel of al Qaeda members through Iran, on their way to and from Afghanistan. For example, Iranian border inspectors would be told not to place telltale stamps in the passports of these travelers. Such arrangements were particularly beneficial to Saudi members of al Qaeda. Our knowledge of the international travels of the al Qaeda operatives selected for the 9/11 operation remains fragmentary. But we now have evidence suggesting that 8 to 10 of the 14 Saudi "muscle" operatives traveled into or out of Iran between October 2000 and February 2001 . . . "

"In October 2000, a senior operative of Hezbollah visited Saudi Arabia to coordinate activities there. He also planned to assist individuals in Saudi Arabia in traveling to Iran during November. A top Hezbollah commander and Saudi Hezbollah contacts were involved. Also in October 2000, two future muscle hijackers, Mohand al Shehri and Hamza al Ghamdi, flew from Iran to Kuwait. In November, Ahmed al Ghamdi apparently flew to Beirut, traveling—perhaps by coincidence—on the same flight as a senior Hezbollah operative. Also, in November, Salem al Hazmi apparently flew from Saudi Arabia to Beirut.

In mid-November, we believe, three of the future muscle hijackers, Wail al Shehri, Waleed al Shehri, and Ahmed al Nami, all of whom had obtained their U.S. visas in late October, traveled in a group from Saudi Arabia to Beirut and then onward to Iran. An associate of a senior Hezbollah operative was on the same flight that took the future hijackers to Iran. Hezbollah officials in Beirut and Iran were expecting the arrival of a group during the same time period. The travel of this group was important enough to merit the attention of senior figures in Hezbollah."

Later in November, two future muscle hijackers, Satam al Suqami and Majed Moqed, flew into Iran from Bahrain. In February 2001, Khalid al Mihdhar may have taken a flight from Syria to Iran, and then traveled further within Iran to a point near the Afghan border."[1]

Iran must be confronted, or civilization will pay the price through Iranian operatives and its allies. We know that the Iranians and the Al Qaeda have been involved in Iraq and Afghanistan combating our soldiers with their roadside bombs and other sophisticated weaponry. When are our leaders going to take the fight to Iran, before they take the fight to us again-and again?! To start, every asset Iran has in this country needs to be frozen. Europe must also cooperate, otherwise they will fall to Islamic fascism as they did with Nazism during WWII.

Until we learn to recognize the forces of Islamic fascism that stand united to destroy us, I fear we will see more devastation like we saw on 9/11, 2001. I pray that I am wrong.

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Notes:

[1] http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch7.htm