CHAPTER TEN

THE WAR AND TERRORISM SCENARIOS

America’s enemies smell blood in the water.

Though I have been writing and speaking about this for years, I remain stunned by how few Americans realize that the leaders of al Qaeda and Iran have explicitly been pursuing a policy of economic jihad against the United States. Yet consider the following quotes:

“If their economy is destroyed, they will be busy with their own affairs rather than enslaving the weak peoples. It is very important to concentrate on hitting the U.S. economy through all possible means.”

—Osama bin Laden, December 2001[237]

“We will also aim to continue, by the permission of Allah, the destruction of the American economy.”

—Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, top deputy to Osama bin Laden, September 2002[238]

“Alongside the mujahadeen in Afghanistan, we bled Russia for ten years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat. . . . We are continuing this policy to bleed America to the point of bankruptcy. . . . Al Qaeda spent $500,000 on [the 9/11 attacks], while the incident and its aftermath have cost America more than half a trillion dollars. This meant that, by the grace of God, every dollar al Qaeda spent cost America a million dollars and a huge number of jobs. . . . This demonstrates the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan.”

—Osama bin Laden, October 2004[239]

“No politician can be found in the United States who is capable of saving the U.S. economy from this move toward the valley of downfall.”

—Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, April 2008[240]

“These days, [although] no incident has as yet occurred, oil prices have risen from $12 to $120 a barrel. Now try to calculate how high [the price] of this essential commodity will rise if the enemy acts in a foolhardy manner.”

—Mohammad Ja’far Assadi, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, August 2008[241]

The weaker the United States has grown economically, the more emboldened those who wish us harm have become—both to exacerbate our economic woes in the hopes of triggering our implosion and to steadily build their own strategic, conventional, and unconventional forces to prepare for the day when they believe they can overtake us or even destroy us.

The Threat of War

The good news: the United States remains the world’s only superpower. At the moment, America has the world’s most fearsome nuclear weapons force and the world’s most powerful and effective Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. It is critical that we maintain strong national defenses, maintain and enhance our ability to project force wherever we need to around the world, and keep a clear eye on our vital national interests.

What are these interests? I believe there are five:

1. We must always safeguard U.S. national security, including carefully protecting our homeland, our coastlines, and our borders.

2. We must prevent major threats by other powers to dominate or control Europe, East Asia, or the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.

3. We must maintain access to foreign trade.

4. We must protect Americans at home and around the globe against threats to their lives and well-being.

5. We must maintain unfettered access to resources, particularly energy resources, while specifically developing and defending our own energy resources.[242]

The bad news: other nations, ideologies, and religious movements are hell-bent on subverting, severely damaging, or outright incapacitating us. They are determined to remove from us the title of “world superpower” and claim it for themselves. Long ago they recognized this would not be easy to accomplish, but they have been patient and persistent, and they increasingly believe the U.S. will soon implode just as the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations imploded in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Real and serious threats to our vital national interests are emerging (and in some cases, reemerging) from countries like Russia, China, North Korea, and Pakistan. Each has conventional forces that could threaten our interests. Each has developed chemical and biological weapons. Each has developed nuclear weapons. Each has also developed ballistic missiles capable of delivering these weapons against our homeland or against our allies. What’s more, these nations are forming strategic regional alliances against us, and they are selling weapons and technologies to each other and to other enemies of the United States.

While some of these countries could attack us directly, they could also choose to attack our access to oil in the Middle East or our trade routes in Asia, across the Atlantic, through the Panama Canal, or through the Suez Canal in hopes of bringing us to our knees financially. They could seek to unleash terrible biological attacks that would shut down international travel and trade. They could release computer viruses that would attack our banking and financial institutions and our communications systems. Now is no time to lower our guard. An open society like the United States is vulnerable to attack—especially at a time of economic weakness.

The Russian Threat

Russia, for example, is becoming increasingly hostile to the United States and is seeking to intimidate and bully our allies while threatening our interests.

Vladimir Putin, the highly provocative and controversial Russian leader, threatened in 2008 to aim nuclear-armed Russian missiles at American allies in Eastern Europe if the U.S. placed missile-defense systems there.[243] During the brutally cold winters of 2006 and 2009, Russia cut off oil and gas supplies to Ukraine, a democratic ally of ours, to undermine the government there, force Ukrainians to pay drastically higher energy prices, and warn the rest of Europe, which relies on Russian gas supplies, not to cross the Kremlin. In 2008 Russia actually invaded the nation of Georgia, another of our democratic allies in Eastern Europe. More recently, Putin denounced America as a “parasite.” He told students in Russia that the U.S. “is living beyond its means and shifting part of the weight of its problems onto the world economy, acting to some extent as a parasite on the global economy and its dollar monopoly position.”[244]

Russia, meanwhile, is selling advanced weaponry and even nuclear technology to Iran and other countries opposed to the U.S. The Kremlin has both strategic and conventional forces that could move southward to threaten Israel and attempt to gain control of the oil-rich Middle East. Indeed, as I wrote about in detail in my book Epicenter, Bible prophecies found in Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39 indicate that Russia will form an alliance with Iran, Turkey, Libya, Sudan, and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa to come against Israel in the last days. Trends over the last two decades—and notably in the past few years—suggest we are getting increasingly close to the fulfillment of the “war of Gog and Magog” prophecies.[245]

We must, therefore, be increasingly vigilant about this red storm rising. When Russia was the core of the Soviet Union, her leaders in the Kremlin actually threatened to “bury” the United States, and today, in light of certain leaders’ words and actions, we cannot assume they have all abandoned this objective.[246]

The Chinese Threat

China is also a serious concern for the United States.

Beijing has a huge and growing conventional military along with its significant nuclear force. Together with an increasingly well-equipped air force, navy, and ground forces—including the launch in 2011 of its first aircraft carrier and the intensive development of a ballistic missile capable of destroying American aircraft carriers—Beijing has the ability to cut off our trade routes in the Pacific Rim, deny us passage through the Panama Canal (which they now effectively own), or seize the democracy of Taiwan, one of our key allies in East Asia.[247]

Yes, China is heavily engaged in commercial trade with the U.S., which binds our countries together. And no, China is not currently posing a direct military threat against us. But Beijing’s national strategy is known as taoguangyanghui, which can be translated as, “Hide our capabilities; bide our time.”[248] That is exactly what the Chinese are doing: carefully—at times stealthily—building their military forces while biding their time and waiting for the best moment to move. A careful study of the writings and sayings of the Communist leaders in Beijing clearly indicates they want to dominate the Pacific Rim and become a world superpower, if not the world superpower.

There should be no question that some Chinese leaders are prepared to use lethal force—even nuclear weapons—against the United States when and if they feel the time is right or if the U.S. gets in the way of one of their most cherished objectives. In late 1995, a top Chinese general told a Clinton administration official that the U.S. would not defend Taiwan if China were to attack and seize the technology-rich island democracy. Why? Because Americans “care more about Los Angeles than they do about Taiwan,” the general said in a statement widely perceived as a Chinese threat to rain nuclear weapons down on the California city if the U.S. were to get in China’s way.[249]

Then came this headline in the New York Times in 2005: “Chinese General Threatens Use of A-Bombs If U.S. Intrudes.” “China should use nuclear weapons against the United States if the American military intervenes in any conflict over Taiwan, a senior Chinese military official said Thursday,” the Times reported. “‘If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition onto the target zone on China’s territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons,’ the official, Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu, said at an official briefing.”[250]

China, along with other countries around the world, is also developing additional strategies to threaten us, including increasingly advanced cyberwarfare capacities to infiltrate, corrupt, and take down the computer systems that run our national defenses and national economy; antisatellite weapons to disrupt our military and civilian communications systems; and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) capabilities that could suddenly and catastrophically render our electrical and electronic networks, including our communications and banking systems, ineffective. As with the Russians, we dare not let down our guard with the Chinese.

The Iranian Threat

The Islamic Republic of Iran is of particular concern because its senior leaders believe that the Islamic Revolution that began in 1979 is now reaching its climax. They have stated publicly that the end of the world is increasingly close at hand. They have taught that the way to hasten the arrival or appearance on earth of the so-called Islamic messiah known as the “Twelfth Imam” or the “Mahdi” is to destroy Israel, which they call the “Little Satan,” and the United States, which they call the “Great Satan.”

What’s more, they have explicitly vowed to annihilate the United States and Israel and have urged Muslims to envision a world without America and Zionism. They believe Allah has chosen them to create chaos and carnage on the planet. The key leaders in Iran seem determined to accomplish their apocalyptic, genocidal mission. They are steadily enriching uranium and developing nuclear weapons. Tehran is building alliances with Russia, China, and North Korea and has cooperated with those countries on the development of offensive and defensive weapons systems. For example, they are building and buying increasingly longer-range ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads. These missiles are capable of hitting Israel and our allies in the Middle East and Europe. Before long, Iranian long-range missiles will be able to reach the continental United States. Already, Iran (along with several other countries) has the ability to attack the U.S. homeland or our allies around the world by firing short- and medium-range missiles from commercial container ships.[251]

Iranian leaders also continue to aggressively export their Islamic Revolution to countries throughout the Middle East and around the world. They are harboring scores of al Qaeda terrorists and leaders inside Iranian cities and allowing terrorists to crisscross their territory. They are making a concerted effort to enlarge the reach of terrorist operations by building strategic alliances with other jihadist organizations, regardless of their theological differences. They claim to be building a network of between forty thousand and seventy thousand suicide bombers ready to strike Israeli, American, and British targets.[252] What’s more, over the past decade they have sent suicide bombers, other insurgents, money, and weapons into Iraq and Afghanistan to attack American and coalition forces.

Also troubling are the alliances Iran is making with countries like Venezuela, an increasingly hostile Turkey, and an Egypt troubled by growing chaos, all of which are demonstrating growing anti–U.S. sentiments. Some dismiss Iran as a nuisance and not a threat, but the mullahs and ayatollahs who rule Tehran and believe in the coming of the Twelfth Imam are truly evil and must not be overlooked or underestimated, for to misunderstand the nature and threat of evil is to risk being blindsided by it.

The Threat of Al Qaeda and Other Terror Groups

The events of September 11, 2001, taught us the hard way that terrorism—especially from radical Islamic jihadists such as al Qaeda and the Taliban, but also from the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, Hamas, and other non-state actors—represents a clear and present danger to the United States. Unfortunately, even after a decade of hot war with the jihadists, this is still true.

In Inside the Revolution, I posed the question “How many Radicals are there worldwide?” To find the answer, I looked to authors John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, who in 2007 published Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. Esposito is a professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University and founding director of the school’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. Mogahed, herself a devout Muslim, is executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. The book these two experts wrote presents the findings of “a mammoth, multiyear Gallup research study . . . the largest, most comprehensive study of contemporary Muslims ever done.”[253]

The good news from their research was that approximately 93 percent of Muslims worldwide fit Esposito and Mogahed’s definition of a “moderate”—peaceable, nonviolent, and traditionally religious but unlikely to pose a threat to Western security interests. The deeply disturbing news, however, was that about 7 percent would be classified as Radicals. That is, they are supportive of anti-American and anti-Western terrorism, believe it is fully justified, and thus are sympathetic of and potentially helpful to violent Islamic extremists. Unlike the moderates, these people pose a serious threat to American national security and to our allies and interests worldwide.

While 7 percent may at first seem like a relatively small number, the implications of such results are daunting. Seven percent of 1.3 billion Muslims equals 91 million people. It may comfort some Americans to know that the vast majority of the world’s Muslims are peaceful people. But it is far from comforting to know that 91 million Muslims are politically radicalized. After all, were these 91 million people to form their own country—the Islamic Republic of Radicalstan, for example—they would represent the twelfth-largest country on the planet, having about twice the population of Spain, nearly three times the population of Canada, almost ten times the population of Sweden, and more than twelve times the population of Israel. What’s more, some researchers say Gallup’s 7 percent figure significantly underestimates the number of Radicals out there, meaning there may be many more.[254]

What does this mean for the U.S. in terms of national security? For one thing, if the U.S. and our NATO allies completely withdraw from Afghanistan before the country is secure and the government in Kabul is truly stable and capable of using its military and police forces to keep terrorists out of the country, Afghanistan could once again become a safe haven for our enemies. We must not take our eye off the ball. We must make sure the Afghan threat is neutralized.

The same is true of Iraq. In my view, President Obama made a serious mistake by pulling all U.S. forces out of Iraq by the end of 2011. He seriously failed in his negotiations with Baghdad to maintain an American presence. We certainly made progress toward establishing a peaceful, stable Iraq, but by withdrawing precipitously, I am concerned the Obama administration may have unwittingly created a political and military vacuum that the Radicals of Iran, al Qaeda, and elsewhere could exploit, leading to new threats in Iraq to us, our allies, and our national interests.

We should all be deeply grateful to our brave and heroic military and intelligence forces for killing Osama bin Laden and capturing numerous top operatives since 9/11. At the same time, we must remember that the al Qaeda terrorist network and similar radical Islamic groups remain a major threat to the national security and economic vitality of the United States, the State of Israel, and our Western allies. While al Qaeda in particular has certainly been badly damaged by U.S. and coalition forces in recent years, they are by no means defeated. Rather, they are doing everything they can to reconstitute themselves in Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and elsewhere around the world. They are building new alliances, recruiting new jihadists, raising more money, acquiring more weapons, and plotting new attacks. We must remain vigilant.

The jihadists, after all, no longer want to merely frighten us; they want to annihilate us. They are no longer interested in merely inflicting minor damage on planes, trains, buses, restaurants, malls, and other “soft targets.” Rather, they are plotting to inflict catastrophic damage on the U.S. and our allies. To accomplish their objectives, they are actively seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction—chemical, biological, and nuclear—along with ballistic missiles capable of reaching all of Europe and the United States. They are recruiting followers who are religiously and ideologically committed to helping them carry out their plans and ready to infiltrate the American homeland and set off catastrophic attacks from the inside.

In 1998, Osama bin Laden was asked whether al Qaeda had nuclear or chemical weapons. Bin Laden’s response was that “acquiring weapons for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty. If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then I thank God for enabling me to do so.”[255] What was particularly troubling was that bin Laden made the statement the same year Pakistan tested nuclear weapons.

In the summer of 2002, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a Kuwaiti-born spokesman for al Qaeda, posted the following statement on the Internet: “Al-Qa’ida has the right to kill 4 million Americans, including one million children, displace double that figure, and injure and cripple hundreds of thousands.”[256]

In May 2003, al Qaeda unveiled a fatwa from a leading Saudi cleric that sanctioned the use of nuclear weapons against the U.S. and permitted the killing of up to 10 million Americans.[257]

During his tenure as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, George Tenet became convinced that al Qaeda’s top priority is to acquire nuclear weapons and detonate them inside the United States. In his 2007 memoir, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, Tenet wrote concerning his discoveries about al Qaeda’s intentions:

What we discovered stunned us all. The threats were real. Our intelligence confirmed that the most senior leaders of al-Qa’ida are still singularly focused on acquiring WMD. . . . Moreover, we established beyond any reasonable doubt that al-Qa’ida had clear intent to acquire chemical, biological, and radiological/nuclear (CBRN) weapons, to possess not as a deterrent but to cause mass casualties in the United States.[258]

Terrorists’ acquiring weapons of mass destruction is a nightmare scenario that we must avoid at all costs. To prevent the worst from happening, the U.S. and other Western governments must constantly remain vigilant. After all, what these fanatics need most in order to accomplish their goals are Western ignorance, apathy, and lack of moral clarity. If the West can be lulled to sleep, the Radicals will have a much better chance of pulling off a series of attacks that make 9/11 pale by comparison.

The Pakistani Threat

When I was writing Inside the Revolution, I interviewed Porter Goss, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency. For Goss, Pakistan stood near the top of the list of serious threats facing the United States. Pakistan, a country of questionable political stability, has more than one hundred nuclear warheads and many ballistic missiles and is a center for extreme Sunni fundamentalism. Should Radicals suddenly seize control of the country, or should the country disintegrate into chaos or civil war, Pakistan could in a matter of hours or days become the most dangerous country on the face of the planet.

I feel this is now the new Doomsday Scenario, if one of these nuclear weapons or this capability falls in the hands of irresponsible people who have declared that they want to wipe out our Western form of civilization because it is apostate. The all-too-possible nightmare of assassination, chaos, and anarchy in Pakistan could lead to the country’s nuclear capability falling into wrong hands. . . . It would be a disaster if the Pak military lost control of the serious weaponry in Pakistan—including WMD.[259]

I couldn’t agree more. One can only imagine the horrible implications to American and international security if Pakistani nuclear weapons should end up in the hands of al Qaeda or the Taliban—or the Iranians. America—known to many Pakistanis as the “Great Satan”—would suddenly be in grave danger.

For the foreseeable future, therefore, Pakistan is a country we must watch closely.

Do Americans Have the Resolve to Remain Engaged?

What I have briefly described are just a few of the emerging threats facing the U.S. There are many more. On numerous fronts—but particularly in the Middle East—we face what Winston Churchill once called a “gathering storm.” Evil is rising, and we must confront it decisively, or we risk being blindsided as we were at Pearl Harbor in 1941 or on September 11, 2001.

Will American leaders—and the American people—have the resolve to stay focused on national-security issues and remain engaged in a hostile world when economic and social problems are so pressing here at home? Will we invest the time, technology, and national resources it takes to defend ourselves from cataclysmic, paralyzing, even decapitating attacks by enemy states and terrorist organizations, even when budget cuts are needed elsewhere?

I hope so, but to be honest, these are open questions at the moment.

Admiral Mike Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made headlines in August 2010 when he publicly stated that “the most significant threat to our national security is our debt.” Mullen warned that if America’s debt continues eating up more and more of the federal budget, the Pentagon may not be able to fully and adequately defend the vital interests of the country. “The reason I say that is because the ability for our country to resource our military—and I have a pretty good feeling and understanding about what our national security requirements are—is going to be directly proportional . . . to help our economy,” Mullen said. “That’s why it’s so important that the economy move in the right direction, because the strength and the support and the resources that our military uses are directly related to the health of our economy over time.”[260]

The following month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly agreed with Chairman Mullen. In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Secretary Clinton said, “Our rising debt levels (pose) a national security threat.”[261]

Mullen and Clinton were right, of course. But that doesn’t mean the politicians will refrain from gutting the defense budget and calling it a “peace dividend.” I saw it happen when I first came to Washington in 1990 as the Cold War came to an end. I am concerned it will happen again.

What’s more, the winds of isolationism are moving across Washington and the nation. A growing number of Republican leaders have been calling for the U.S. to withdraw our forces as rapidly as possible from Afghanistan, echoing widespread sentiments among Congressional Democrats.[262]

Interest in taking decisive action to stop Iran from getting or using nuclear weapons has been hard to find in Washington in recent years. I was particularly surprised to see Senator John McCain signal that the U.S. would not fight another war in the Middle East and imply that he would not support such a war. In a live television interview during the ceremonies honoring the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Senator McCain—a war hero, leading hawk, and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee—told Fox News Sunday, “I think we did the right thing there [in Iraq and Afghanistan]. But I also think we have learned a lot of lessons. And frankly, I don’t think you are going to see the United States of America in another war in that part of the world.”[263]

Does that mean Senator McCain is ruling out any and all American preemptive military action to stop Iran from obtaining or using nuclear weapons? Does that mean the U.S. would not come to the defense of Israel if she were attacked by Iran or Russia or any other enemy? Does that mean the U.S. would not come to the defense of the democratic government of Iraq, were she invaded? Or defend our access to oil in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states? These are just a few of the scenarios that could warrant another war in the Middle East. No American wants another war in the region, but it was noteworthy to hear Senator McCain rule one out. If he wouldn’t support U.S. military action in the epicenter, how many in the U.S. Senate would?

Bottom Line

The Bible clearly indicates that there will be terrible wars and acts of terrorism and lawlessness in the last days. Could we see catastrophic wars or crippling terrorist attacks foisted upon the United States in the months and years ahead? Yes, this is very possible. Could such attacks cause or hasten the implosion of the U.S. as a world power? Yes, I’m afraid this, too, is possible. Indeed, even the constant threat of war and terrorism could, over time, lead to America becoming emotionally and spiritually exhausted, increasingly isolationist, or politically gridlocked. This, in turn, could cause us to become neutralized in terms of our involvement on the world stage, effectively leading to the end of the U.S. as the world’s only superpower. I shudder to think of the implications, but given our current trajectory, this possibility cannot be ruled out.