"This terror will continue until we take Arab grievances seriously"
Our focus must now be on the conditions that allow Bin Ladenists to
recruit and operate
David Clark
Saturday July 9, 2005
The Guardian
It must now be obvious, even to those who would like us to think
otherwise, that the war on terror is failing. This is not to say that
the terrorists are winning. Their prospects of constructing the
medieval pan-Islamic caliphate of their fantasies are as negligible
today as they were four years ago when they attacked America. It is
simply to point out that their ability to bring violence and
destruction to our streets is as strong as ever and shows no sign of
diminishing. We may capture the perpetrators of Thursday's bombings,
but others will follow to take their place. Moreover, the actions of
our leaders have made this more likely, not less. It's time for a
rethink.
The very idea of a war on terror was profoundly misconceived from the
start. Rooted in traditional strategic thought, with its need for
fixed targets and an identifiable enemy, the post-9/11 response
focused myopically on the problem of how and where to apply military
power. Once the obvious and necessary task of tackling Bin Laden's
presence in Afghanistan had been completed, those charged with
prosecuting the war needed a new target to aim at.
In his book Against All Enemies, the former White House
counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke chronicles the inability of
senior administration officials to grasp the nature of the threat
directed against them. Even before 9/11 they were fixated with the
notion that behind a successful terrorist network like al-Qaida must
be state sponsorship; destroy the state, destroy the threat, ran the
theory. In this environment it was easy for the neoconservatives to
win approval for their prefabricated plan to attack Iraq.
But al-Qaida has never depended on state sponsorship, except in the
wholly unintended sense that the US-funded campaign against the
Soviet occupation of Afghanistan brought its members together and
gave them their first taste of jihad. Indeed it is a mistake even to
regard al-Qaida as an organisation in the traditional sense of the
term. At most it is now little more than an idea, fusing ideology
with operational method, both of which can be accessed freely via the
internet. It is quite meaningless to talk about destroying the
"terrorist infrastructure", unless we propose to carpet bomb
Microsoft. We have entered the era of do-it-yourself terrorism.
....
From this point of view, it must be said that everything that has
followed the fall of Kabul has been ruinous to the task of winning
over moderate Muslim opinion and isolating the terrorists within
their own communities. In Iraq we allowed America to rip up the rule
book of counter-insurgency with a military adventure that was
dishonestly conceived and incompetently executed. Tens of thousands
of innocent Iraqis have been killed by US troops uninterested in
distinguishing between combatant and noncombatant, or even counting
the dead. The hostility engendered has been so extreme that the CIA
has been forced to conclude that Iraq may become a worse breeding
ground for international terrorism that Afghanistan was. Bin Laden
can hardly believe his luck.
The political dimensions of this problem mean that there can be no
hope of defeating terrorism until we are ready to take legitimate
Arab grievances seriously. We must start by acknowledging that their
long history of engagement with the west is one that has left many
Arabs feeling humiliated and used. There is more to this than finding
a way of bringing the occupation of Iraq to an end. We cannot
seriously claim to care for the rights of Arabs living in Iraq when
it is obvious that we care so little for Arabs living in Palestine.
The Palestinians need a viable state, but all the indications suggest
that the Bush administration is preparing to bounce the Palestinians
into accepting a truncated entity that will lack the basic
characteristics of either viability or statehood. That must not be
allowed to succeed.
...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/comment/story/0,16141,152483
3,00.html
Wieviele Terroranschläge muss es noch geben, bis es auch die letzten
Dummen kapiert haben, was David Clark in diesem Artikel sagt?
Gruß
Hermes
Our focus must now be on the conditions that allow Bin Ladenists to
recruit and operate
David Clark
Saturday July 9, 2005
The Guardian
It must now be obvious, even to those who would like us to think
otherwise, that the war on terror is failing. This is not to say that
the terrorists are winning. Their prospects of constructing the
medieval pan-Islamic caliphate of their fantasies are as negligible
today as they were four years ago when they attacked America. It is
simply to point out that their ability to bring violence and
destruction to our streets is as strong as ever and shows no sign of
diminishing. We may capture the perpetrators of Thursday's bombings,
but others will follow to take their place. Moreover, the actions of
our leaders have made this more likely, not less. It's time for a
rethink.
The very idea of a war on terror was profoundly misconceived from the
start. Rooted in traditional strategic thought, with its need for
fixed targets and an identifiable enemy, the post-9/11 response
focused myopically on the problem of how and where to apply military
power. Once the obvious and necessary task of tackling Bin Laden's
presence in Afghanistan had been completed, those charged with
prosecuting the war needed a new target to aim at.
In his book Against All Enemies, the former White House
counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke chronicles the inability of
senior administration officials to grasp the nature of the threat
directed against them. Even before 9/11 they were fixated with the
notion that behind a successful terrorist network like al-Qaida must
be state sponsorship; destroy the state, destroy the threat, ran the
theory. In this environment it was easy for the neoconservatives to
win approval for their prefabricated plan to attack Iraq.
But al-Qaida has never depended on state sponsorship, except in the
wholly unintended sense that the US-funded campaign against the
Soviet occupation of Afghanistan brought its members together and
gave them their first taste of jihad. Indeed it is a mistake even to
regard al-Qaida as an organisation in the traditional sense of the
term. At most it is now little more than an idea, fusing ideology
with operational method, both of which can be accessed freely via the
internet. It is quite meaningless to talk about destroying the
"terrorist infrastructure", unless we propose to carpet bomb
Microsoft. We have entered the era of do-it-yourself terrorism.
....
From this point of view, it must be said that everything that has
followed the fall of Kabul has been ruinous to the task of winning
over moderate Muslim opinion and isolating the terrorists within
their own communities. In Iraq we allowed America to rip up the rule
book of counter-insurgency with a military adventure that was
dishonestly conceived and incompetently executed. Tens of thousands
of innocent Iraqis have been killed by US troops uninterested in
distinguishing between combatant and noncombatant, or even counting
the dead. The hostility engendered has been so extreme that the CIA
has been forced to conclude that Iraq may become a worse breeding
ground for international terrorism that Afghanistan was. Bin Laden
can hardly believe his luck.
The political dimensions of this problem mean that there can be no
hope of defeating terrorism until we are ready to take legitimate
Arab grievances seriously. We must start by acknowledging that their
long history of engagement with the west is one that has left many
Arabs feeling humiliated and used. There is more to this than finding
a way of bringing the occupation of Iraq to an end. We cannot
seriously claim to care for the rights of Arabs living in Iraq when
it is obvious that we care so little for Arabs living in Palestine.
The Palestinians need a viable state, but all the indications suggest
that the Bush administration is preparing to bounce the Palestinians
into accepting a truncated entity that will lack the basic
characteristics of either viability or statehood. That must not be
allowed to succeed.
...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/comment/story/0,16141,152483
3,00.html
Wieviele Terroranschläge muss es noch geben, bis es auch die letzten
Dummen kapiert haben, was David Clark in diesem Artikel sagt?
Gruß
Hermes