In an essay in the book Present Dangers, edited by Kristol and Kagan and published in September 2000-a month before the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, Project Senior Fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht discussed the necessity of taking action to "check the lethality, if not the growth, of Taliban/bin Laden-style Islamic radicalism."
After the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000, Project Senior Fellow Gerecht and PNAC Deputy Executive Director Thomas Donnelly each published lengthy articles on Al Qaeda, bin Laden, and the war on terrorism in the October 30 Weekly Standard. Gerecht directly implicated bin Laden in the attack on the Cole and criticized the Clinton administration's failure to threaten the Taliban in Afghanistan and their backers in the Pakistani government in order to force the Taliban to stop harboring bin Laden and Al Qaeda. In urging a policy of force against Al Qaeda, Gerecht wrote this:
One can only hope that a Gore or Bush II administration will not repeat past mistakes. Yet the reluctance to use military force in the Middle East is clearly a bipartisan American reflex. The fear that serious military responses to terrorist attacks can lead to an endless series of attacks and reprisals is an understandable foreboding. But what ought to be clear is that whoever perpetrated the attack on the U.S.S. Cole isn't going to desist voluntarily. Two men vaporized themselves to express their hatred of the United States. By any true-believing standard, their act was a glorious success, quite sufficient to inspire others to follow. We cannot counter such determination and passion in a courtroom.… Our enemies, and the friends of our enemies, must know that an easygoing, corpulent, wealthy Western nation is, when it wants to be, an indomitable, bloody-minded force that will seek awful vengeance upon its foes.
In that same issue of the Weekly Standard, the Project's Deputy Executive Director, Tom Donnelly, complained that the Clinton administration did not recognize the attack on the U.S.S. Cole for what it was: "an act of war." Donnelly warned that the anti-American terrorists were "increasingly well organized, well armed, and well trained," and he predicted that "unconventional attacks like that on the Cole or on the Khobar Towers or the ambush of the Rangers in Mogadishu will continue." The American response, Donnelly argued, "should be to use the instruments of war-intelligence gathering and military force-not only to avenge them and deter similar acts, but also to frustrate the political aims of our enemies."
In July 2001, Gerecht, then director of the Project's Middle East Initiative, criticized the Bush administration's failure to improve upon the performance of the Clinton administration in seriously addressing the problem of Al Qaeda. Gerecht lamented Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's decision to withdraw U. S. Marines from military exercises in Jordan and to move ships anchored in Bahrain because of the threat of terrorist attacks, calling Rumsfeld's decision "an extraordinary triumph" for bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Gerecht further criticized the U.S. failure to respond to the attack on the U.S.S. Cole several months before. And he wrote, "The Saudi militant is unquestionably going to come at us again." Gerecht urged the adoption of a far more aggressive counter-terrorism policy-one much like that eventually adopted by the Bush administration after 9/11.
Despite this commentary by Project directors and fellows, including especially Reuel Gerecht's all-too-prescient forecast, we would be the first to admit that we, like so many others, paid too little attention to the threat from Al Qaeda prior to September 11. We do find it odd, however, to be criticized by someone who seems to have paid even less attention to that threat than we did. A quick search of Zakaria's writings prior to September 11, 2001 produces only one article on the threat of global terrorism, with no mention of Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden.
-------------------------
* In addition to sending out faxes, Project directors and fellows publish articles on many subjects, and these publications often receive more attention than the faxes. Some of the articles discussed above were also faxed out, along with other memoranda such as an October 17, 2000 commentary on VOA coverage of the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. By any standard, Zakaria's search was incomplete.
