Magazine
How Osama Won the War on Terror
Bush is implicitly conceding victory to Al Qaeda by constantly invoking the fear of terrorists in his presidential campaign.
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In the weeks or months ahead, Osama bin Laden will likely be smoked out of a cave in the mountains along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Regardless of where and how he is found – dead or alive – he may already have won the war he launched on 9/11. President Bush never tires on the campaign trial of reminding Americans that 9/11 “changed” the country. Indeed, he ridicules his opponent John Kerry for failing to recognize that shift, for living, as he taunts, in a 9/10 world. By acknowledging the transformation that 9/11 wrought on the American psyche, Bush is implicitly conceding victory to bin Laden. No country, much less a terrorist group on the run and under siege, is any match for the overwhelming military power of the United States. By fixating exclusively on military superiority, President Bush fundamentally misunderstands Al Qaeda’s military and political strategy. Al Qaeda cannot, nor is it seeking to, defeat the United States militarily. It is barely even putting up a fight; its surviving leadership is mostly hiding out in caves. Even the sporadic deadly attacks its supporters muster in Afghanistan and Iraq (the foci of the U.S. military efforts), in real military terms, are inconsequential. But they are enough to service Al Qaeda’s tactical military objective, which is to keep Americans under a perception of perpetual siege and force them to succumb to their fears. The Bush administration’s policies ironically aid those Al Qaeda goals.
The Bush administration ceded tactical advantage to Al Qaeda not just in the military sphere. Its domestic and international agenda advance Al Qaeda’s strategic and political objectives as well. Al Qaeda and the terrorist groups it has spawned, hate the idea of America, which celebrates the human spirit, democratic ideals and individual liberty. These ideals have inspired generations of human rights movements worldwide, propelled the velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and are the beacons of hope for fledgling democracy movements from Africa to Asia. The Taliban and Al Qaeda loathe these very American ideals. All the more so, because they contrast them with the coddling of brutal dictators by the United States in major parts of the world, most especially the Middle East. The Bush administration’s war on terror provides political ammunition to Al Qaeda, which can now point to America’s retreat on its democratic principles as well. Long-cherished civil and political liberties and traditions were weakened under the PATRIOT Act. Aliens have been secretly detained, sometimes indefinitely without charges and access to lawyers, or even deported without a hearing. Citizens and noncitizens alike have been monitored and tapped without judicial oversight, and trials of terrorism suspects are underway before legally questionable military tribunals. Then there are the horrendous abuses of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay and calculated attempts to evade international law and the Geneva Convention on a disturbing scale. One of the most elevating images from World War II is that of Winston Churchill perched on the roof of the Air Ministry in the midst of the deadly Blitz of London by German warplanes “to watch the fireworks,” as he famously quipped. By contrast, the most striking presidential images on 9/11 are of Vice President Dick Cheney being grabbed by Secret Service agents and whisked to an underground bunker under the White House and of President Bush being secreted away at air force bases in Louisiana and Nebraska. Churchill’s courage in defying the Nazi planes was a testament to his bravery and epitomized his leadership in a time of war. Bush’s and Cheney’s scramble for cover in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and the administration’s policies since, have fed the public hysteria and fear so rampant in the country. President Bush could have defied the terrorists by standing resolute in preserving the most open society in human history that we have ever fashioned. Beyond threatening to come after the terrorists who brought down the Twin Towers, he should have blared into the bull horn on Ground Zero to Al Qaeda and the world: We are not afraid. He fell prey instead to the fear and paranoia that engulfed him and his administration at the start of this crisis and which continue to dog and hobble both his policy and presidential campaign to this day. In the process, President Bush ceded victory to Osama bin Laden, whose sole inspiration at this moment in his remote hideout must come from the powerful mystique that Bush has constructed around him and images of terror and terrified U.S. citizens that resonate in the president’s campaign commercials. If America is to ever claim victory in the war on terror, it must, in direct contrast to President Bush’s game plan, seek to revert to the very 9/10 world that he mocks John Kerry of living in. Naked in the Bush Bush’s Black Eye Defying the Imagination The False Choice Liberal Liars Heading for the Bush The Morality of War Naked in the Bush Bush’s Black Eye Defying the Imagination The False Choice Liberal Liars Heading for the Bush The Morality of War |
Vice President Dick Cheney warns ominously of chemical and biological attacks, even eerie mushroom clouds, in our cities. Those fears, combined with the ill-conceived color coded terrorist warning system and sporadic displays of police power in public squares in major cities, keep Americans on edge and serve to exaggerate and elevate Al Qaeda’s mystique.