Ian
Boyne
On Wednesday the highly respected Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press revealed in its authoritative poll that "far more Americans say reducing America's overseas military presence, rather than expanding it, will have a greater effect in reducing the threat of terrorism," in a stinging contradiction to the stance of the Bush
administration.
In a report on American public attitudes to the war on terror five years after the September 11 terrorist attacks, titled 'Diminished Public Appetite for Military Force and Mideast Oil', Pew revealed that despite the rhetoric of the hawkish Bush administration, "most Americans do not believe that the ability of the terrorists to launch another attack against the U.S. has been diminished." Rather, as much as 62 per cent says the terrorists' capabilities are the same or greater than before the Bush-launched War on Terror. The poll showed that Americans believe that non-military approaches - such as decreasing U.S. dependence on Middle East oil and avoiding involvement with the problems of other countries - would be more effective in reducing America's vulnerability to terrorism.
This is a major rejection of the ideological foundations of the neo-conservatives who wield power in the Bush administration. The British Economist magazine, no left-wing publication, in its lengthy editorial, 'Five Years On' in its September 2 edition, says that "An honest tally of the record since September 11 has to conclude that the number of jihadists and their sympathisers has probably multiplied many times since then. It has multiplied, moreover, partly as a result of the way America
responded." Ouch! This is exactly what left-wing critics like Noam Chomsky and liberals have been saying.
Searing critique
Chomsky, for example, has just published his Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy, a searing critique of America's foreign policy. This is perhaps Chomsky's finest work yet, heavily documented and tightly reasoned. But conservative voices like the Economist carry greater weight in conventional circles, so let's read further what the leader writer has to say about September 11 five years on.
Referring to Bush's Iraq adventure, the Economist says, "Three and a half years on, fighting and terrorism kill hundreds every month, providing the jihadists with both a banner around which to recruit and a live arena in which to sharpen their military skills."
It is not only Iraq which is glaring in the evidence that the war on terror is not being won by America. Afghanistan is also a mess. Afghanistan has just harvested its biggest opium crop ever, up by a staggering 59 per cent from last year and big enough to cover 130 per cent of the entire world market. Says the well-known liberal commentator Robert Scheer on the website of America's leading liberal magazine The Nation: "The bad news for the rest of us is that in Bush-liberated Afghanistan, billions in drug profits are financing the Taliban."
Says Scheer mockingly: "Remember them, the guys who harboured the Al Qaeda terrorists, who gifted us with the 9/11 attacks five years ago, that President Bush promised to eliminate? Well, it turns out that while he was distracted with Iraq, the patrons of terrorism were very much in business where the 9/11 attack was hatched, turning Afghanistan into a narco-state that provides a lucrative source of cash for the 'evildoers' Bush forgot about."
The Centre for Strategic and International Studies, one of America's leading think-tanks, also issued its analysis of 9/11 five years on last week. In a report titled 'Five Years After 9/11: Accomplishments and Continuing Challenges', the centre lists as
continuing challenges "the rise of autonomous self-starter (terrorist) cells; failure to create enduring security in Afghanistan and Iraq; a metastasised jihadist threat; public diplomacy undermined by perceived U.S. unilateralism; U.S. moral authority eroded by Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib etc., and democracy and development assistance agendas viewed sceptically in many countries."
Bush's foreign policy
The Bush administration's approach to foreign policy, especially in its first term, has angered and alienated the international community and America's traditional allies, and this has cost the U.S. severely in the war on terror. Its lack of credibility is a major constraint on its global action. America has learnt the bitter lesson - because the Bush administration arrogantly refused to listen to even critics from within the foreign policy establishment - that you cannot really go it alone, no matter your hegemonic power.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, whose obnoxiousness is only approached by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, said in the heyday of the promulgation of the Bush Doctrine of Pre-emotion that, "There is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world - that's the United States - when it suits our interests and when we can get
others to go along."
Remember that our own black 'brother', former Secretary of State Colin Power, had more finesse but was equally offensive, if not in tone, when he instructed the U.N. that they could try being relevant by adopting the U.S. and U.K.'s war plans for Iraq or they could become just a debating society. Fortunately for the world, much of that arrogant rhetoric and political incorrectness has been corrected in the second Bush administration, and in the President's major address last week at the Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bush wisely made references to the fact that the United Nations, European allies and even the former Clinton administration expressed grave concerns about Saddam Hussein's weapons programme, in seeking to justify his war decision.
But as the Economist said "Loathsome though he was, Saddam Hussein had no link to Al-Qaeda of the September 11 plot. Moreover, the pre-war claims of America and Britain that he had defied the Security Council by keeping his banned chemical and biological weapons and continuing to seek nuclear ones, turned out to be false. In the battle of world opinion, this mistake, if such
it was, had calamitous
consequences."
Propaganda line
The later concocted propaganda line that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was to advance freedom and democracy is hardly credible. Says the Economist: "Such arguments no longer sell in the West, let alone the Muslim world. If it was about dictatorship, what about the dictatorship the West continues to embrace in Saudi Arabia and the quasi-dictatorship in Pakistan?" It's a question the Bush administration and the embattled Tony Blair don't like to face.
Unfortunately, there is something pivotal which often gets lost in all the legitimate criticism of America and the America-bashing which takes place, and it is this: The Bush administration might be hypocritical in its foreign policy stance etc., etc., but we cannot lose sight of the fact that Al-Qaeda and Islamic extremism are objective
evils in the world. We tend to be so obsessed with America's wrongs that we forget that terrorism is a real threat to all of us and to the essence of our civilisation.
We face a common enemy with the United States: The enemy of Islamic fanaticism and totalitarianism. Bush was absolutely right in telling his audience in North Carolina that these Islamic terrorists are ̉an enemy bound together by an ideology. These are not folks scattered around that are kind of angry and lash out at an opportune time. These are people that believe something and their beliefs are totalitarian in nature. They believe you should not be able to worship freely. They believe in the use of violence to achieve their objectives. Their stated objectives are to spread their totalitarianism throughout the Middle East". And they would want to see it spread throughout the world.
President Bush might have his own narrow reasons for containing the spread of terror, and America's uncritical support for Israel might even contribute to the spread of terror, but his staunch ideological opposition to terrorism is on target. Liberty is a universal good. People must be free to say ̉to hell with Islam" without being issued with Fatwas. Islamic fundamentalists taking over countries is not a good thing. A world moving toward the vision of Bin Laden or even moderate Muslims who would impose Sharia and other repressive Islamic laws would not be a good thing.
We must never let our opposition to U.S. foreign policy blind us to some of the objective evils America is opposing. Totalitarianism - be it communist, Islamic Fundamentalist or Christian - is objectively evil. The Christian Crusades and Inquisition were evil. As were the brutal Communist purges and barbarities which went under the name of revolution.
Undermines moral authority
My quarrel with America is that it undermines its own moral authority and its commitment to democracy when it behaves arrogantly, unilaterally and hypocritically (For example, by supporting tyrants and despots just because they support the U.S.) A U. S. which is truly moral would be a plus for democracy and freedom in the world. I reject reflexive anti-Americanism. It serves no good.
The September 11 attacks against America constituted an attack on freedom, decency and morality everywhere. It was not just a tragedy for America, but the world. But America must realise that its own actions in the world have a great impact on the reactions of others. Justice is indivisible. Hence a Middle East policy which accords justice to the Palestinians and other Arabs is one which must be pursued vigorously. But America's transgressions in the Middle East should never serve as a justification for terrorism.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. Email ianboyne1@yahoo.com
