My friends Jim Fallows and Steve Clemons have both criticized in harsh
terms the conservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin for what
they see as a fearmongering post about the possible origins of the
Norway attack. (Ta-Nehisi joins in as well.) Jim writes, in a post headlined, "The Washington Post Owes the World an Apology for This Item,"
Read it and weep. On the Post's site Jennifer Rubin first quotes the Weekly Standard, in a rushed item about the Norway horror:>>We don't know if al Qaeda was directly responsible for today's events, but in all likelihood the attack was launched by part of the jihadist hydra. Prominent jihadists have already claimed online that the attack is payback for Norway's involvement in the war in Afghanistan.Then she goes on to argue on her own: Moreover, there is a specific jihadist connection here: "Just nine days ago, Norwegian authorities filed charges against Mullah Krekar, an infamous al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist who, with help from Osama bin Laden, founded Ansar al Islam - a branch of al Qaeda in northern Iraq - in late 2001."
Jim goes on to write:
No, this is a sobering reminder for those who think it's too tedious to reserve judgment about horrifying events rather than instantly turning them into talking points for pre-conceived views. On a per capita basis, Norway lost twice as many people today as the U.S. did on 9/11.
Steve Clemons writes to demand that Rubin apologize personally for her post. You can read Steve here.
The question arises, then, why did Jennifer Rubin make this outrageous assertion about jihadism and Norway?
Well, perhaps it was because she was reading the Atlantic. Shortly
after the bombing in Oslo, The Atlantic re-posted on its home page a
very interesting piece from last year by Thomas Hegghammer and Dominic
Tierney entitled "Why Does al Qaeda Have a Problem With Norway?" You
can read it here.
In the piece, Hegghammer and Tierney discuss why Norway, against all
odds, has become a favored target of al Qaeda. They give several
reasons, among them fallout from the Danish cartoon crisis, and
Norway's participation in the war in Afghanistan. And then they bring
up a third possibility: The presence in Norway of the aforementioned
Mullah Krekar:
Which brings us to the third theory: Norway's treatment of the Iraqi Kurdish Islamist Mulla Krekar. Onetime leader of the Islamist guerrilla group Ansar al-Islam, Mulla Krekar came to Norway as a refugee in the early 1990s and spent years secretly shuttling between Oslo and Kurdistan until his arrest in September 2002. Although terrorism charges were dropped in 2003, he has been officially declared a threat to national security and placed under house arrest awaiting deportation to Iraq. For many Islamists, Mulla Krekar's treatment demonstrates Norway's subservience to the cruel whims of the United States.
But there is little or no evidence that al-Qaeda cares enough about Mulla Krekar to seek vengeance. He was never part of Bin Laden's organization, and his fate hardly stands out in the post-9/11 world, with its Guantanamos and CIA "black sites."
It may be pointless to search for a single grievance to explain the recent plot. Most likely, a combination of factors placed Norway on the jihadists' radar. In al-Qaeda's binary worldview, Norway is part of the "Jewish-Crusader alliance." Not a platinum member, perhaps, but a member nonetheless. If you're not with al-Qaeda, you're with the United States.
Norway has long been considered a legitimate but low-priority target. Frustrated by the difficulty of striking key adversaries like Britain and the United States, al-Qaeda seems to be moving down the food chain.
So
it would have been possible, from reading The Atlantic alone, to
suspect al Qaeda involvement in the Norway attacks. I myself suspected
this, and wrote so, in a post entitled "Mumbai comes to Norway." I suspected al Qaeda's involvement for three
reasons:
1. The coming deportation of Mullah Krekar;
2. The fact
that this was a dual-point attack -- downtown Oslo, and the youth camp,
almost simultenously. Multiple, simultaneous targeting is a hallmark of
al Qaeda.
3. (And this is the obvious one) Europe has been under
sustained attack from Islamist terrorists for a decade. In fact, most
acts of mass terrorism in recent history have been conducted by radical
Islamists, usually under the organizational framework of al Qaeda. To
be sure, I wrote into my coverage a bunch of "to be sure" statements,
along the lines of "if this in fact a jihadist attack," and, "perhaps
this was an act of right-wing extremism," but I certainly suspected al
Qaeda involvement initially. I imagine that Norwegian intelligence also
suspected al Qaeda initially.