9/11 Anniversary
The Wrong Strategy against Terror
Aref Assaf
Four years after 9/11 and the declaration of the "War on Terror" militant
Islamism is not on the retreat, and the US have since fulfilled the cliché of
the merciless superpower, fuelling further anti-Western sentiment.
The Bush administration's strategy against terror has been counterproductive.
We, however, mustn't be satisfied with itself either It's quite a cliché
to say that nothing would ever be the same anymore after September 11. But, of
course, this has a kernel of truth to it: that day four years ago brought about
a myriad of changes.
Far beyond the terrible mass murder in Manhattan that people followed on their
television screens around the world, September 11 - putting aside all the pathos
that George W. Bush could muster - confronted the United States with realities
that were already present in other parts of the world but had thus far not
affected the US.
Terrorism was not invented on September 11. The cold-blooded murder of innocent
civilians has long been used in other parts of the world as an instrument for
asserting inapt and fanatic political goals. But never before did a nation have
the idea of declaring a “war on terror” as an official political priority and
thereby fueling a world war of sorts.
The image of the merciless superpower
As if terrorists could be fought using conventional weapons. Tanks, bombers and
missiles are not appropriate means for fighting fanatic underground combatants -
even if it has been possible to prevent Al Qaida terrorists from further
establishing themselves as a institution in the public sphere. They were pushed
back into the underground, they are in part on the run, but they have not been
defeated.
Instead, the US has entered into a battle it can only lose. The US will lose
because it, too, has made innocent people into victims. It will lose because it
has thereby inadvertently played into the cliché of a merciless superpower and
into the hands of the demagogues on the other side, who have no trouble finding
signs of the "culture wars" they have already anticipated.
The world e mustn't be satisfied with itself
It would be wrong, however, to blame the US alone for everything. There is no
reason for the world community e to be satisfied with itself.
Even if they haven't officially joined in every US escapade. Because the many
world democracies have declared it their goal to support the democratization of
regions of the world that have until now been totalitarian, and they thereby
risk conflicts with those who think democracy is an evil Western invention.
The first inklings of democracy - for example in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and
now in Egypt-are encouraging, but still too small and fragile to constitute a
state. In part because they only serve to reinforce the status quo.
Four years after the attacks on the World Trade Center, the world is a different
place. But this is no reason for smugness. It is not a better world, but a more
dangerous, more confused, and more contradictory world.
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