Khaleej Times : Who’s winning the war?

Who’s winning the war?

by ERIC S. MARGOLIS | September 10, 2006

THE anniversary of the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington has become a quasi-religious event here in North America as the media relives every moment of that dreadful day in deeply emotional detail.

Five years after the 9/11 attacks, here is where we stand: President George W. Bush’s ‘war on terrorism’ continues without relent and with no end in sight. As fast as groups of religious extremists are broken up — for example, in Egypt or Yemen — more spring up.

Intensified border controls have raised North America’s security. But dangerous gaps remain at sea and airports. This improved security has been in good part offset by new enemies of the US generated by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Terrorism and 9/11 are currently being furiously milked by the Bush Administration to rekindle fears among US voters as November elections approach. Just before the tight 2004 Bush-Kerry election, a Bin Laden tape threatening America boosted Bush’s rating four points, helping him win. A new Bin Laden tape showing two of the 9/11 hijackers surfaced last Thursday. One wonders if bin Laden wants to keep Bush and his Republicans in office.

Civil liberties. The hastily enacted US Patriot Act enabled governments to sweep away laws protecting individual rights and begin the torture, wire-tapping, surveillance, jailing without charges, and record mining found in totalitarian states.

In a wise, informative new book, Being Muslim, Canadian author Haroon Siddiqui describes how 83,000 mostly Muslim ‘terrorism suspects’ were arrested in the US and abroad. Only 40 were convicted of terrorism, 100 died in custody. These blanket arrests and a McCarthyite anti-Muslim witch-hunt, observes Siddiqui, have created a sense of psychological internment’ among seven million American and Canadian Muslims.

Afghanistan has turned from an anti-Al Qaeda operation into a classic 19th century colonial war against unruly Pashtun tribesmen costing $2 billion monthly. Washington has totally failed to impose a viable regime in Kabul. Afghanistan is producing 80 per cent of the world’s heroin, and output has surged 20 per cent this year. Taleban and its nationalist allies have put foreign occupation forces on the defensive. Americans are not being told the truth about the growing political, economic and military mess in Afghanistan.

Iraq. The war there, undertaken to get revenge for 9/11, grab oil, and help Israel, is clearly lost. So far, the US spent $300 billion and lost over 2,600 soldiers with nothing to show but chaos. Iraq has become a second Afghanistan, a magnet and incubator for angry Muslim jihadis. Washington US must find a way to extricate itself from this historic folly.

Al Qaeda. Originally with only 300 members, it has been demolished. But after five years and billions spent, with 22,000 US troops and an army of CIA agents still hunting them, Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri still remain elusive, mocking Bush, urging new attacks on the west. By simply surviving the US onslaught, they have won an historic victory. Al Qaeda has morphed into a worldwide anti-American movement whose force and numbers are spreading. Bin Laden failed to inflame Muslim religious passions, but he has been brilliantly successful at mobilising anti-western nationalist political fervor across the Muslim World.

Bin Laden focused the rage of 1.5 billion Muslims over the agony of Lebanon, Palestine, Chechnya, Iraq, Kashmir, and Afghanistan, inspiring violent homegrown groups worldwide and remains a hero for defying western might.

Mirroring Bin Laden’s extremist religious exhortations, anti-Muslim hatred and racism is boiling among American Protestant fundamentalists, whipped up by demagogic TV evangelists preaching anti-Islamic crusades, anti-Muslim hatred, and promoting doomsday mania.

Who is winning? In the early 1990’s, Osama bin Laden stated the only way to drive America’s influence from the Middle east was to attack the US economy and bleed America dry in a series of small wars. Afghanistan and Iraq fulfilled two of his scenarios. While the US bleeds billions and its overstretched military staggers, Bin Laden’s ideological movement flourishes.

How grave is the threat? Only nuclear weapons present a truly catastrophic threat to North America. Al Qaeda, so far, has none. Fanning terrorism fears makes good press and benefits politicians. But ‘terrorism’ is not an existential threat to the US, or even the major one. Since 9/11, 215,000 Americans have died in road accidents. That’s over 71 times the number of Americans killed by the so-called terrorists.

Disturbingly, many Americans — one poll says as many as 33 per cent — believe their government is covering up facts about the Sept 11 attacks, or was somehow even involved in them.

Eric S Margolis is a veteran US journalist who has long covered the Middle East. He can be reached at margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com