Friedman Op-Ed

July 4, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
At a Theater Near You ...
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN


London

I knew something was up when I couldn't get a cab. Then there were
sirens and helicopters whirring overhead. I stopped a passerby to ask
what was going on. He said something about a car bomb outside a disco
six blocks from my hotel. A few hours later, I finally found a taxi.
The driver warned me that it was nearly impossible to get across town.
Another bomb had been uncovered in a car park. Next day, more news: a
suicide bomber had driven his Jeep into an airport and jumped out, his
body on fire, screaming "Allah! Allah!"

Where was I? Baghdad? Kabul? Tel Aviv? No, I was in England. But it
could have been anywhere. The Middle East: Now playing at a theater
near you.

But this movie gets more confusing every time you watch it. When you
watched it on 9/11 it was about America's presence in the heart of
Arabia. And when you watched it on 7/7 it was about unemployed and
alienated Muslim youth in Britain. In Jordan not long ago it was about
a wedding at a Western hotel. In Morocco recently it was about an
Internet cafe. And two days ago in Yemen it was about seven Spanish
tourists who were killed when a suicide bomber drove into them at a
local tourist site. Wasn't Spain the country that quit Iraq to get its
people out of the line of fire?

Because these incidents are scattered, we're growing numb to just how
crazy they are. In the past few years, hundreds of Muslims have
committed suicide amid innocent civilians -- without making any
concrete political demands and without generating any vigorous,
sustained condemnation in the Muslim world.

Two trends are at work here: humiliation and atomization. Islam's
self-identity is that it is the most perfect and complete expression
of God's monotheistic message, and the Koran is God's last and most
perfect word. To put it another way, young Muslims are raised on the
view that Islam is God 3.0. Christianity is God 2.0. Judaism is God
1.0. And Hinduism and all others are God 0.0.

One of the factors driving Muslim males, particularly educated ones,
into these acts of extreme, expressive violence is that while they
were taught that they have the most perfect and complete operating
system, every day they're confronted with the reality that people
living by God 2.0., God 1.0 and God 0.0 are generally living much more
prosperously, powerfully and democratically than those living under
Islam. This creates a real dissonance and humiliation. How could this
be? Who did this to us? The Crusaders! The Jews! The West! It can
never be something that they failed to learn, adapt to or build. This
humiliation produces a lashing out.

In the old days, you needed a terror infrastructure with bases in
Beirut or Afghanistan to lash out in a big way. Not anymore. Now all
you need is the virtual Afghanistan -- the Internet and a few
cellphones -- to recruit, indoctrinate, plan and execute. Hence, the
atomization -- little terror groups sprouting everywhere. Everyone now
has a starter kit.

Gen. Michael Hayden, the C.I.A. director, recently noted in a speech
that during the cold war "the enemy was easy to find, but hard to
finish," because the Soviet Union was so big and powerful.
"Intelligence was important" back then, he added, "but it was
overshadowed by the need for sheer firepower."

In today's war against terrorist groups, said General Hayden, "it's
just the opposite. Our enemy is easy to finish, but hard to find.
Today, we are looking for individuals or small groups planning suicide
bombings, running violent Jihadist Web sites, sending foreign fighters
into Iraq."

I'd go one step further. The Soviet Union was easy to find and hard to
kill, but once it died, it was dead forever. It had no regenerative
power because it had no popular base. The terrorists of Iraq or London
are hard to find, easy to kill, but very difficult to eliminate. New
recruits just keep sprouting.

Of course, not all Muslims are terrorists. But it's been widely noted
that virtually all suicide terrorists today are Muslims. Angry
Norwegians aren't doing this -- nor are starving Africans or unemployed
Mexicans. Muslims have got to understand that a death cult has taken
root in the bosom of their religion, feeding off it like a cancerous
tumor.

This cancer is erasing basic norms of civilization. In Iraq, we've
seen suicide bombers blow up funerals and schools. In England, seven
out of the eight people detained in the latest plot are Muslim doctors
or medical students. Doctors plotting mass murder? Could that be? If
Muslim leaders don't remove this cancer -- and only they can -- it will
spread, tainting innocent Muslims and poisoning their relations with
each other and the world.