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It is four years since President Bush declared a global war on terror so it is fair to ask: how is it going? Well, the first point to make is that it is not a war on terror anymore. One of Washington’s sneakier tactics is that if a crucial policy begins to lose public support, you don’t change the policy, you just change its name and carry on. So it is no longer the war on terror. It is the "global struggle against violent extremists".
But whatever it is now called, the answer to how it is going is: very badly. Not only is there no end in sight, but the al-Qaeda, leader Osama bin Laden, the man Bush vowed to get "dead or alive" is, despite a $25 million bounty on his head, as elusive as ever. Bush’s reaction to this inconvenient fact is to stop mentioning the man’s name, perhaps in the hope that we will eventually forget about him.
Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and John Howard agree that terrorism has been growing into an international force that threatens all those who stand with the US. But wait a minute. This growth in terrorism has occurred during the Coalition’s colossal war against it, using all the military, political and intelligence powers at its disposal.
So as Saad al-Fagih, director of the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, points out: "The logical conclusion must be that the so-called war on terror in its present form, including the invasion of Iraq, is yielding precisely the opposite results to those intended." Further, as Howard Zinn, professor emeritus of political science at Boston University, charges: "War is itself terrorism... that taking away people and subjecting them to torture is terrorism, that invading and bombing other countries does not give us more security but less."
The main front in the war, Iraq, remains a disaster. More than 1,800 US soldiers have been killed and nearly 14,000 wounded. The insurgents have shown extraordinary regenerative powers - the more of them the US forces kill, the greater supply of recruits. It is an uncomfortable fact that under Saddam Hussein suicide bombing in Iraq was almost unheard of, but since the US attack in 2003 there have been at least 400 suicide attacks.
The hawks urge an attack on Iran, the state responsible for sponsoring the insurgents in Iraq. But the Pentagon’s old boast that it could fight two wars simultaneously seems a little thin these days and Bush’s rhetoric about the axis of evil nations has, like Osama bin Laden, disappeared from his speeches. Some argue for more troops, forgetting that General Westmoreland had a million soldiers in Vietnam but said he needed a million more in order to win.
At home there has been a shift in the public mood. Support for the Washington’s handllng of Iraq has collapsed--only 34 per cent now approve of Bush’s policy and 61 per cent disapprove. Insiders are said to be telling Bush he should follow the advice given to President Johnson in the middle of the Vietnam quagmire--"Declare victory and leave."
And abroad the United States slides steadily downwards in global public opinion, ranking eleventh in the Anholt-GMI Nations Brand Index, the equivalent of a world popularity contest (Australia is No. 1). "America is a cause for concern," Anholt said. "Unless [the slide] it is stopped very soon, it could be irreversible. It is not just Iraq; America has produced unpopular foreign policy on and off for many years. People are coming to the conclusion that America is not a very nice place."
Some knowledgeable Americans recognise the danger. Robert Baer, a former top CIA officer, believes that the Coalition intervention in Iraq was a disaster which has stimulated terrorism. "Every time you kill a Muslim, whether it is an Israeli killing them or an American or a Brit, there is humiliation, anger, reaction and bombs go off somewhere." He sees no cause for optimism in an increasingly hostile world. "I’ve moved to Colorado and have a wood-burning stove."
But at least America’s Homeland Security and the British police and security services are having some success in catching terrorists before they can mount attacks? Not really. According to a recent investigation by the Washington Post, fewer than ten per cent of the people prosecuted for terrorism in the United States were convicted of crimes relating to terrorism or national security. Of those, few had any connection to al-Qaeda, while the remaining ninety per cent were acquitted, orconvicted of lesser crimes like immigration violations or making false statements.
In Britain more than 700 people have been arrested under the Terrorism Act since 9/11. But half have been released without charge and only 17 have been convicted. Only three of the convictions were connected to extremist Islamic groups. Either the terrorist groups on the scale the government claimed were not there to begin with, or the security services were unbelievably incompetent. The suicide bomb attacks in London on 7 July suggest the latter. The services had told the government just before the attacks that the risk of terrorism in the immediate future was low.
So after the failed bombings of 21 July, there were a spate of arrests and charges which gave the illusion that the authorities were on top of the problem. But the official investigation seems to have undergone some less publicised changes that have left important questions unanswered.
Theories and leads that were at first vigorously followed up quietly fizzled out and have been dropped. Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitcan Police Commissioner, initilally told the media that the 21 July attacks had "some resonance" with the earlier bombings. Both were aimed at public transport in London, both involved young Muslim men with bags or packpacks laden with homemade explosives capable of causing "carnage".
Investigators now admit that the two groups had important differences. The 7 July suicide bombers were of Pakistani descent and were efficient and deadly. The 21 July group were mainly of African origin and failed so miserably in their mission that there may even be some truth in their claim that their aim was to frighten rather than kill.
Most important of all, investigators now believe that the two groups were not linked. Nor is there any evidence of a connection with al-Qaeda, although the attackers might have taken their inspiration from it. In short, what was originally thought to be an attack planned by a mastermind in al-Qaeda, perhaps by Osama bin Laden himself, now looks more like being a spot of home-grown terrorism by a group of young Muslim men so angry with Britain and its policies they were prepared to sacrifice themselves and murder innocent civilians as a protest.
The security services, having learnt a lesson from the 21 July attacks--namely that you cannot be criticised for exaggerating the risk of terrorist attack--have been doing just that, aided by a fear-mongering media. A recent headline in a British newspaper read: BOMBERS PLAN LONDON SUICIDE TANKER ATTACKS: Alert as US warns of fuel blast tactic to cause mass casualties".
The thrust of the story was that American intelligence chiefs had warned that al-Qaeda suicide bombers were plotting to hijack petrol tankers and drive them into petrol stations to cause a "mass casualty atrocity". They warned that London could be hit to mark the fourth anniversary of 9/11.
But after four columns of lurid detail, the final paragraph of the story read: "However a spokeswoman for the Department for Homeland Security said that the warning was uncorroborated, from a single, unreliable source, and did not single out London specifically."
The unpalatable fact is that the Coalition is fighting an unwinnable war against an unidentifiable enemy. How can the USA, Britain and Australia fight terrorism when they cannot even agree what terrorism is? A definition is hopeless, says Professor Richard Rubenstein, of the Centre for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. "Terrorism is just violence you don’t like."
This failure to to define terrorism and terrorist can be used to legitimise military action because it portrays the challenge as such a loosely-defined threat that it will never disappear. British author Phil Rees, in his controversial book, "Dining With Terrorists", writes, "By being unable to explain exactly who is a terrorist, the ‘war on terror’ can mutate into a war against any ideology that challenges America and her allies. Terror can become a code for opponents who question the status quo and a catch-all for ideologies as diverse as Islamic militancy, emerging nationalism, or anti-globalization." In short, we are in danger of accepting the confused idea of an endless conflict against an undefined enemy.
Perhaps one reason why the Coalition countries are wary of defining "terrorism" and "terrorist" is that any workable definition would sweep them into the net, too. Most definitions would include the statement that one factor that is common to terrorists is that they attack civilians. But Rees points out that the USA and Israel are bigger killers of civilians than their terrorist foes. So why don’t journalists describe them as terrorists, too? "If we don’t want to describe Britain and America as terrorist nations, then the only principled alternative is to purge the word from the lexicon of journalism."
That seems unlikely but either way what journalists should certainly be doing is reporting the views of terrorists so as to try to understand their motives. Yes, this will bring charges that to do so legitimises violence and suggests a moral equivalence between terrorism and those who combat it. As the Mayor of New York, Rudolf Guiliani, said after 9/11, "Those who practise terrorism lose the right to have their cause understood. We’re right. They’re wrong. It’s as simple as that." Is it? Isn’t it better that the public should be informed about the causes of violence and be allowed to decide for themselves who is right and who is wrong? Would it not be more productive to try to understand what the terrorists want and what they would be prepared to accept to end their operations.
Instead acres of newsprint and hours of TV time have been devoted to condemning them as "evil", a word which absolves us from thinking about the problem: if they are evil (born evil; grew up to be evil; taught to be evil? Which is it?) then it is useless to try to understand them.
But as David Clark, the former British Labour Party adviser points out, those who condemn terrorists as evil cannot answer the question: why is there more evil around today than there used to be? And they have nothing to contribute to the debate about what needs to happen next.
Yet there is ample evidence that terrorism is a political phenomenon and that the solution should be a political one. Advocates of the "keep killing them until they give up" approach argue that any attempt to understand or negotiate with terrorists encourages further violence. But in the Malayan insurgency, the IRA insurgency and the Basque group ETA’s demand for an independent state in Spain, the terrorism was ended by compromise--the authorities granted reforms that were justified and the terrorists abandoned their more extreme demands.
We already know some of today’s terrorists’ demands. Osama bin Laden has said he wanted American troops out of Muslim holy places and a just settlement of the Palestine question. Pakistan’s counter-terrorist officers say that when they question terrorists about their motives, "They always refer to Palestine and the exploitation of Muslims in different parts of the world. Pakistan’s President Musharraf says that if these problems were addressed it would make a visible and immediate difference.
If he is right, this means that freedom from terrorist attack in America, Britain and Australia is specifically dependent on what happens next in Iraq and Palestine--a chilling thought which, as the war on terrorism drags on, our leaders show no signs of addressing.
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