Daniel Pipes

Steven Emerson and Daniel Pipes, both experts on the Middle East and Islamist terrorism, write in the Wall Street Journal that al-Qaeda is “planning new attacks on the US.” Their article is written as a response to the recent guilty verdicts in a New York court against four men accused of planning the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (see 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998). “Unfortunately,” Emerson and Pipes write, “the trial does almost nothing to enhance the safety of Americans.… Indeed, recent information shows that al-Qaeda is not only planning new attacks on the US but is also expanding its operational range to countries such as Jordan and Israel.”
Al-Qaeda Is ‘the Most Lethal Terrorist Organization Anywhere in the World’ – Emerson and Pipes also write that tens of thousands of pages from the trial transcript “provide a full and revealing picture of al-Qaeda, showing it to be the most lethal terrorist organization anywhere in the world.” The transcript shows that “al-Qaeda sees the West in general, and the US in particular, as the ultimate enemy of Islam. Inspired by their victory over the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the leaders of al-Qaeda aspire to a similar victory over America, hoping ultimately to bring Islamist rule here.”
Al-Qaeda Personnel Have Been Taught ‘How to Destroy Large Buildings’ – The article states that Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, has “set up a tightly organized system of cells in an array of American cities, including Brooklyn, NY; Orlando, Fla.; Dallas; Santa Clara, Calif.; Columbia, Mo.; and Herndon, Va.” Furthermore, according to Emerson and Pipes, court documents show that “[o]fficials of the Iranian government helped arrange advanced weapons and explosives training for al-Qaeda personnel in Lebanon, where they learned, for example, how to destroy large buildings.”
America Must Fight Al-Qaeda ‘as We Would in a War’ – Emerson and Pipes conclude that the recent trial “shows that trials alone are not enough” when dealing with al-Qaeda. They suggest that al-Qaeda operatives “are better thought of as soldiers, not criminals.” Therefore, they write, “To fight al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups… we must fight them as we would in a war.” This would mean that, “as in a conventional war, America’s armed forces, not its policemen and lawyers, are primarily deployed to protect Americans.” Furthermore, the two men opine: “If a perpetrator is not precisely known, then those who are known to harbor terrorists will be punished. This way, governments and organizations that support terrorism will pay the price, not just the individuals who carry it out.” [Wall Street Journal, 5/31/2001]
Writers Have Been Accused of Anti-Muslim Bias – Emerson and Pipes are controversial figures. Emerson, an award-winning investigative reporter, has been called “the nation’s foremost journalistic expert on terrorism” by the New York Post. [Harvard Crimson, 10/22/1999] And White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke called him “sort of the Paul Revere of terrorism.” But according to Brown University’s alumni magazine, he spent the 1990s “fighting to be taken seriously, and fending off charges of racism and anti-Muslim bias.” [Brown Alumni Magazine, 11/2002] Pipes, a foreign policy analyst, and commentator on terrorism and Islam, “appears regularly in the US media, where he is regarded as an authority on the Middle East,” The Guardian will report. Arab-Americans, however, “regard him as a Muslim basher and a staunch supporter of Israel.” According to The Nation, he “labored in comparative obscurity during the 1990s, writing a series of books and articles that advanced a hard line on Arab countries… and darkly warning that Muslim Americans posed a threat to the United States.” [Guardian, 9/10/2001; Nation, 4/22/2004]