| A taste: go read the whole thing. |
Instead I tend to see 9/11 like this: Middle Eastern regimes, almost all of them, but most notably Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia use various so-called non-state actors to advance their regional interests and deter each other. For instance, Syria's relationship with Jordan's branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Action Front, and Jordan's friendliness toward the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, means that these two states effectively deter each other--if you use Islamists against me, I will unleash Islamists on you.
Al Qaeda, as a transnational outfit, seems to be a group that has been supported, manipulated and penetrated by a whole number of Middle Eastern security services, including but not exclusive of the Saudis, Egyptians, Syrians, Libya, Pakistan, and Iraq before Saddam's downfall. This is not to say that any of these regimes have Al Qaeda or any of these terror organizations under their thumb; when you have a group of people with weapons, money and a deadly ideology it is difficult to manage them very closely. I think this is what happened on 9/11--one of these outfits had the wherewithal to carry its war elsewhere and they did, to the United States. |