Don’t Create a New Al Qaeda (The New York Times)

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[[{“type”:“media”,“view_mode”:“media_large”,“fid”:null,“attributes”:{“class”:“media-image alignright size-full wp-image-46755”,“typeof”:“foaf:Image”,“style”:“”,“width”:“100”,“height”:“100”,“alt”:“The New York TImes”}}]]In a New York Times opinion piece, Dartmouth’s Daniel Benjamin and co-author Steven Simon write about the conflict between Egypt’s military leaders and the Muslim Brotherhood and the threat the crisis poses for the West.

“As the violence increases, and the radicalization of Islamists deepens, Egypt’s crisis threatens to add fuel to the ongoing terrorist activity across North Africa and to spawn a new wave of attacks against Western targets just as the anti-Islamist crackdown that began in the late 1970s aided the rise of Al Qaeda,” they write.

“America must do its best to ensure that those outside Egypt who remember the cycle of repression and radicalization that paved the way to 9/11 regularly remind those inside Egypt who appear determined to forget it.”

Benjamin is the Norman E. McCulloch Jr. Director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding and the former top counterterrorism official for the U.S. State Department.

Read the full opinion piece, published 1/6/13 by The New York Times.

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