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Bin Laden's economic threat dismissed
By David McHugh
The Associated Press
Osama bin Laden claims to have bled the Soviet Union into bankruptcy as
an Islamic guerrilla fighter in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Could he do
the same to another hated superpower -- the United States?
The
al-Qaida leader's latest purported communication drove home the point
by calling on militants to stop the flow of oil to the West and
praising a Dec. 6 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Saudi Arabia, the
world's top oil producer.
In an audiotape posted on an Islamic
Web site Thursday, a man who U.S. officials believe was bin Laden
accused Westerners of subjugating the Middle East to plunder its oil.
"Go on and try to prevent them from getting oil," the speaker said.
"Concentrate your operations on that, especially in Iraq and the Gulf."
It was believed to be the first time a purported bin Laden tape in
effect called for attacks on the oil industry. But he has flaunted the
economic theme before, recalling in his most recent video how Afghan
mujahedeen "bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt" and
taunting the U.S. government over the size of its budget deficit --
which peaked at $413 billion last year.
Security and terrorism
experts suggest bin Laden's claims to be undermining the United States
economically are largely propaganda, noting the flexible, market-driven
U.S. economy is a far cry from the creaky, bureaucratic Soviet giant
that disintegrated in 1991.
Still, the economic argument gives
bin Laden a tool he can use to rally his supporters and inflate his
aura of success by claiming damage caused by other factors as his own
handiwork.
Spurred by the new audiotape, Muslim radicals using
chat rooms on Islamic Web sites debated Friday what weapons could be
used to attack an oil tanker in the strait of Hormuz in the Gulf.
Bin Laden "sees us as poised on this precipice, and he's going to push
us into the abyss," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Rand Corp.
As Bin Laden put it in his video aimed at Americans just days before
the Nov. 2 presidential election: "The real loser is you. It is the
American people and their economy."
The al-Qaida leader cites
the experience of Afghan mujahedeen fighters "in using guerrilla
warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers" to
drive the Soviets out.
Bin Laden was among U.S.-supported
Islamic fighters in Afghanistan, backed with money and weapons in hopes
of weakening Russia, the United States' opponent in the Cold War.
The Soviet comparison is aimed as much at bin Laden supporters as at
Americans, says Rand analyst Hoffman. "That's how he motivates and
animates people and addresses morale -- telling them, 'No one thought
we could achieve that feat, and by the same token no one thinks we can
achieve this feat of defeating the United States, but we will,'"
Hoffman said.
Retired Gen. William Odom, a scholar at the
Hudson Institute and an expert in the Soviet collapse, said bin Laden's
analogy is off base since the Soviet Union collapsed for reasons other
than Afghanistan, including the weakness of its state-run economy.
As far as spending on Iraq, Odom said damage to the U.S. economy is
attributable to the Bush Administration embarking on a costly war. In
the fall 2003, Congress approved $87.5 billion for the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan and $25 billion more last spring, and Bush is expected to
request another $75 billion to $100 billion early in 2005.
"If
we're stupid enough to go off and do something like that, bin Laden can
justly crow about it," Odom said. "But I don't think he can take credit
for having caused it."
Odom believes no al-Qaida strategy can topple U.S. dominance.
"In an operational sense, U.S.-made policies, not bin Laden's actions,
have risked putting the United States in a very serious situation," he
said.
Terrorists "have never brought down a liberal democracy,"
Odom said. "Terrorists like bin Laden can cause trouble but they're not
a strategic problem, they're a tactical nuisance."
Princeton University economist Alan Krueger said, "The U.S. economy is too large and diverse to be sunk by terrorism."
"The U.S. government budget is overflowing with red ink because of the
Bush tax cuts and the aging of the baby boom generation, not because of
Osama bin Laden," Krueger said in an e-mail.
On the video, bin
Laden asserted al-Qaida is the cause of U.S. losses in battle: "All we
have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point East to
raise a piece of cloth on which is written 'al-Qaida,' in order to make
the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and
political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other
than some benefits to private companies."
Hoffman noted that
bin Laden also tried to take credit for U.S. economic difficulties
after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks that toppled the World Trade
Center, including the sharp drop of the NASDAQ stock market and
corporate scandals such as Enron.
Bin Laden has "an excellent
understanding" of economic targeting, said Magnus Ranstorp, director of
the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St.
Andrew's University in Great Britain. But he would need a bigger strike
to hurt the United States -- one aimed at a critical part of the
economy, such as shipping or financial exchanges, Ranstorp said.
"Unless they strike at the stock exchange, unless they strike at the
exact critical nodes in our infrastructure, I think the economy can
certainly absorb that," Ranstorp said.
This summer, federal
authorities raised the terror alert for financial institutions after
uncovering an alleged al-Qaida plot to attack the Citicorp building and
the New York Stock Exchange in New York; the International Monetary
Fund and World Bank buildings in Washington; and the Prudential
Financial Inc.'s headquarters in Newark, N.J. The alert has since been
lifted.
Intelligence indicated al-Qaida had conducted
surveillance of the buildings, U.S. authorities said. Although the
information dated back several years, counterterrorism officials noted
that al-Qaida has a record of extensive planning and plotting.
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