[iwar] [fc:Waging.The.'War.Of.Ideas']

Washington Times
December 9, 2003
Waging The 'War Of Ideas'
By Frank Gaffney Jr.

In recent weeks, senior Bush administration officials have begun talking
about a heretofore largely neglected, and arguably decisive, front in the
War on Terror: the battlefield of "ideas." Unfortunately, as a powerful
cover story in this week's U.S.News & World Report makes clear, the United
States has for years remained essentially disarmed in this arena.
By contrast, its enemies - notably an array of Saudi princes, charities,
businessmen and front organizations - have been spending some $70 billion to
recruit, train and arm adherents around the world in the name of the central
idea being wielded against us, namely jihad or "holy war."

This U.S.News article was reported by one of the magazine's most highly
regarded investigative reporters, David Kaplan. Titled, "The Saudi
connection: How billions in oil money spawned a global terror network," Mr.
Kaplan's article documents the extent to which successive American
administrations turned blind eyes toward mounting evidence of Saudi
involvement in Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terror organization and its
counterparts.

According to Mr. Kaplan, "U.S. officials now say that key [Saudi government
and affiliated] charities became the pipelines of cash that helped transform
ragtag bands of insurgents and jihadists into a sophisticated, interlocking
movement with global ambitions. Many of those spreading the Wahhabist
doctrine abroad, it turned out, were among the most radical believers in
holy war, and they poured vast sums into the emerging al Qaeda network."
Mr. Kaplan quotes my colleague, Alex Alexiev, as saying, "The Saudi funding
program is 'the largest worldwide propaganda campaign ever mounted' -
dwarfing the Soviets' propaganda efforts at the height of the Cold War."
If Saudi Arabia's investment in the weaponry and infrastructure of the war
of ideas has been staggering, so have its results. Mr. Kaplan cites the
Saudi weekly Ain al-Yaqeen as saying the funds produced "some 1,500 mosques,
210 Islamic centers, 202 colleges, and nearly 2,000 schools in non-Islamic
countries."

Unfortunately, many of these Saudi-bankrolled institutions are in the United
States. The kingdom's investments in this country have produced the base for
radical, intolerant and violent Muslims - known as Islamists - to mount a
Fifth Column threat from within.

Last week, a new example of the potentially devastating gravity of this
threat was revealed by the Wall Street Journal. It has previously been
reported that Abdurahman Alamoudi, a prominent Washington-based activist who
made no secret of his pro-Islamist sympathies, was able to secure the right
for his own and a like-minded institution to train at least nine of 14
Muslim chaplains for the U.S. military.

The Journal discovered that Alamoudi - who is currently in jail on charges
of laundering $340,000 in Libyan terrorist-related funding - was able to
secure a similar arrangement for between 75 and 100 so-called "Islamic lay
leaders." Their job was to minister to Muslims in the armed forces when the
chaplains were unavailable. The institutions used to train chaplains
received Saudi funds. The lay leaders got their training from an Institute
for Islamic and Arabic Studies described by the Journal as "an arm of the
Saudi government." All these organizations appear to have engaged in
Islamist indoctrination.

Mr. Kaplan's article suggests the Saudi government is now cracking down on
the monster its ideas and funds have created around the world. They may
indeed be doing so at home, for reasons that have more to do with preserving
the House of Saud's hold on power than with any real conversion about the
unacceptability of the Islamofascism that they have enabled elsewhere.
Apart from ostensibly disowning the Institute for Islamic and Arabic Studies
after the Journal story ran, however, there is not much evidence they have
abandoned the war of ideas they and their clients have been waging
elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the United States government remains woefully ill-equipped to
fight back in the war of ideas. Shortly after September 11, Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - who has understood the importance of this front
from the get-go of the War on Terror - tried to give the Pentagon a focal
point for such efforts. Regrettably, the Office of Strategic Influence was
taken down within months by unfounded rumors it would disseminate false news
stories to promote American objectives.

Last week, the newspaper that gave currency and international attention to
such fraudulent claims, the New York Times, breathlessly reported that an
attempt to do the same thing was being quietly done through a contract with
a consulting firm, SAIC. The Times was affronted by the wording of the Sept.
17, 2003, contract for a $300,000 study:

"Our inability to seize the initiative in the 'War of Ideas' with al Qaeda
is perhaps our most significant shortcoming so far in the war against
terrorism. We do not fully understand al Qaeda and its relationship to
supportive communities in the Islamic world, and so are not yet able to
develop an effective strategy for countering its propaganda in those
communities, let alone for winning the information campaign in the war
against terrorism."

Far from being embarrassed by or opposed to this exceedingly modest
initiative - as the Times suggested several Defense Department officials
were when confronted with the SAIC contract - the U.S. government should be
mobilizing every available resource to alter the damning ideas about us
being assiduously promoted by the Saudis and their proxies around the world.
If we do otherwise, we are unlikely to be able to hold our own in the War on
Terror, let alone win it.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is the president of the Center for Security Policy and
a columnist for The Washington Times.

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Received on Wed Dec 10 06:35:11 2003