On terrorism, Bush maligns history and our intelligence

02 September 2006

There is something sad about a grown man playing children's make-believe war games in a tree house in grandpa's back yard which is how President George W. Bush came across Thursday night in his speech on the importance of winning the war in Iraq in the global battle against terrorism. Rarely does a leader of a great country like the United States malign history, his people's intelligence and the dignity of over a billion Muslims in one speech, but Bush did that Thursday night and will probably keep doing it for a while.

Terrorism is no joke or game, I know, and the attacks of September 11, 2001, and subsequent ones around the world were tragic and criminal deeds. Nobody has to tell us in the Middle East about terrorism's evil, because we suffer its negative impact in two ways - as victims of terror for many decades, and also as the owners of the societies that give birth to so many terrorists.

Yet Bush's response to terror remains hobbled by three constraints: misdiagnosing the causes and aims of terror; waging a "global war on terror" that has only expanded the problem by giving terrorists new reasons to cause havoc; and exaggerating the nature and extent of the terror threat to Americans and the world primarily for domestic political purposes. The cumulative consequences of such an approach have been devastating in various ways - to Bush's own political standing at home, American credibility and clout around the world, and the continued threat of terror around the world. The shortcomings of Bush's anti-terror approach are very clear, five years after the September 11 attacks, yet he keeps promoting historically inaccurate and morally deviant approaches to the problem that only make the problem worse in many cases.

The president's speech Thursday night was most compelling for its capacity to say nothing that he has not said repeatedly in the past three years, while adding new layers of misinterpretation and diversionary chaff that he sells to the American public on the basis of emotionalism, patriotism and nostalgia. His main thesis summed up his shameful misanalysis: "The war we fight today is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century.''

Really? The decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century is that launched by a small band of criminal deviants like Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri from Afghanistan, who play on the lost minds and restless psyches of young, mainly Arab and Pakistani men already angered by conditions in their societies? The terror problem is one that some good quality American high school guidance counselors could probably diagnose accurately, if given a chance to do so without the distorting dictates of domestic politics.

I can think of a lot more credible candidates for this century's decisive ideological battle - including fighting poverty, expanding equitable global trading patterns, promoting good governance and the rule of law around the world, giving ordinary people everywhere a sense of being treated with dignity and justice, safeguarding the global environment, and a few others.

Bush is wrong about the real threat from terror and has been wrong since he first had to deal with its impact. It is neither a global ideological movement nor does it plan to take the battle to the streets of Omaha and Memphis. His idea that different sorts of Islamic extremism and militancy form "a worldwide network of radicals that use terror to kill those who stand in the way of their totalitarian ideology'' is also a gross exaggeration - but one that fits comfortably into this neoconservative-driven Republican White House's view of the world and of its electoral imperative in the US.

Bush also does a disservice to the world and insults his own people's intelligence by mixing together into a single ideological movement and predatory threat what is in reality a range of very different movements, inspired by a wide range of local and global reasons. By linking Iraq, the recent Israel-Hizbullah war, Iran's nuclear ambitions, and Syrian policies as elements in a single threat that must be fought by America's freedom agenda, he highlights a common threat that does not exist in reality as a single, coordinated adversary. This is one reason why he and his administration are having such a hard time achieving their goals in the Middle East, or reducing the threat from terror attacks.

He also perpetuates his misreading of the problem and his ongoing insult to over a billion Muslims around the world by glibly and repeatedly speaking of Islam, fascism and terror in the same breath. This constant demonization of an entire religion that promotes piety, peace and justice as its core values is only creating conditions that generate new terrorists among the ranks of wayward and fearful young men living in Arab-Asian societies whose distortions and freak politics in many cases are heavily due to the impact of decades of American policies.

George W. Bush is responding to the terror of what started as a small band of miscreants with a shameful form of intellectual terror that has given them reason to recruit and expand. It is very sad when grown men who should know better behave like adolescents who get their kicks from fighting make-believe enemies in tree-house environments.

Rami G. Khouri writes a regular commentary for THE DAILY STAR.