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Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=4558
Two Faces, One Terror
(Front Page Magazine/Wall Street Journal) Fouad Ajami - Iraq and al Qaeda are two main tributaries of Arab radicalism. Saddam and the leaders of al Qaeda offered the masses that flocked to their banners an absolution from responsibility, and a dream of revenge. It was the sparing of Saddam in 1991 that nourished al Qaeda, and gave it ammunition and an ideological pretext for targeting America. The banners America's enemies in the region unfurl - secular or religious - are of no great significance. It is the drive that animates them that matters - a determination to extirpate American influence from their world, and a view of history that lays the failings of the Arab world at the doorsteps of the distant American power.