Here’s the nub of the question: Are we fighting the Muslim Arab world in a replay of the Siege of Vienna? Or are we struggling with issues endemic to both the developing and developed world, which are, for specific reasons, more apparent right now in the Arab world?
This is a really important question to me.
First, please note that it really doesn’t significantly change the politics between us and the Arab/Palestinian world. From my point of view, it strips away some of my emotional reaction to their tactics, but the underlying conflicts remain what they are…which is something I haven’t yet seen clearly articulated (but will try and talk about more in the next few days)
It is important because if this theory holds water…and I’ll try in this post to succinctly articulate it so that folks can work with me to try and come up with some tests…we are in for some seriously challenging times as terrorism becomes more and more endemic not only through the Third World, where it is common, but in our own front yards.
Let’s present two alternate interpretations of recent events:
First, that we are in an undeclared war with the Muslim Arab world, who have used terrorist tactics against the Israelis for almost thirty years with some success, and who are now extending their tactics to the supporters of Israel (i.e. us).
This suggests that the overall cultural moment of the Muslim Arabs is aimed at both the destruction of Israel and the weakening of influence (if not overall weakening) of the United States.
The second possibility is that there is a rising tide of dissent, often led by the educated classes throughout the world; in the Arab world, the only survivable outlet is in protest against Israel and America, which fits neatly into the philosophical underpinnings of that educated dissent, which is the rejection of modernity and the Western concept of ‘progress’. But while the incoming wave is most visible where there are reefs…and so the fact that this viewpoint finds official support in the Arab world, for a variety of reasons…the wave is moving in along a very broad front.
Here are some individual (and sweepingly overgeneralized) facts to consider:
Africa is essentially becoming ungovernable, and subnational violence is rising everywhere the governments become too weak to repress it.
Parts of Asia look to follow Africa, with particular attention to India, where Hindu violence against Muslims, and Muslim violence against Hindus seems to be increasingly unsurpressible.
Latin America has similar problems with lost of national government legitimacy and increasing violence from subnational groups on the right and the left.
Now some of this looks like overt acts of directed terrorism; some like simple tribal or religious mob violence; some like high-intensity crime.
In Europe, we have a substantial rise in street crime, with the peaks…attacks on banks, jewelry stores, and armored cars by organized gangs armed with assault rifles and RPG’s…looking different from terrorist attacks only because there is loot to be taken away. We also have increasingly factionalized politics, and national politics explictly driven in some part by fear of further factionalization.
And here in the U.S. we are mirroring the level of European high-intensity crime (I just watched the LAPD tape of the North Hollywood bank robberies…) and in crime by subnational groups (the white-supremacist group that was robbing armored cars and banks). Add to this the increasing level of ‘mucker’ crimes, such as Columbine and the recent LAX shootings, and all that is missing is a philosophical framework in which to place this level of alienation and rage.
That framework exists, as above.
It supports and rationalizes attacks on ‘oppressive institutions’, and suggests that personal gratification and liberation can only be found in such violent attacks.
Andrew comments:

A personal note. I remember thinking on September 11th back to reading Fanon when I was an undergraduate bolsheveik. I remember feeling terrible, absolutely terrible, that I’d ever entertained the notion (from Fanon)that violence against civilians was an acceptable response to oppression. Hmmm…

These attacks will typically be symbolic, rather than practical.
In my younger days, as I learned about the mechanical underpinnings of cities…the commerce in energy, water, food and the dance of transportation on which life in any big city depends. I used to marvel at how easy it would be for ten or fifteen determined people to move Los Angeles toward the edge of habitability. If Al Quieda had meant to physically attack the US, instead of symbolically attack it, they would have attacked along one of those paths, or attacked the NSA or CIA headquarters. They had an opportunity to do something that would have genuinely weakened the U.S., as well as demoralized us.
Instead they attacked the symbols of American economic and military might.
Lee Harris’ article has received a lot of play in the Blogosphere. In the event that you’re one of the three people who haven’t read it, go now. Here’s something to whet your appetite:

…this does not change the fact that the final criterion of military success is always pragmatic: Does it work? Does it in fact bring us closer to realizing our political objectives?
But is this the right model for understanding 9-11? Or have we, like Montezuma, imposed our own inadequate categories on an event that simply does not fit them? Yet, if 9-11 was not an act of war, then what was it? In what follows, I would like to pursue a line suggested by a remark by the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen in reference to 9-11: his much-quoted comment that it was “the greatest work of art of all time.”
Despite the repellent nihilism that is at the base of Stockhausen’s ghoulish aesthetic judgment, it contains an important insight and comes closer to a genuine assessment of 9-11 than the competing interpretation of it in terms of Clausewitzian war. For Stockhausen did grasp one big truth: 9-11 was the enactment of a fantasy — not an artistic fantasy, to be sure, but a fantasy nonetheless.