Thursday, February 23, 2006 2:00:14 AM
Is Osama bin Laden winning the "war on terror"?
Osama bin Laden
AKI (Italy)
By: Edward M. Gomez | February 21 2006 at 11:59 AM
Even without the Bush administration's incomprehensible gift to a state-owned company in the United Arab Emirates of the go-ahead to take over six major U.S. ports, including New York's, some foreign observers have been wondering: So far, who is really winning the so-called war on terror? (The U.A.E.'s involvement in U.S. ports is controversial because Arab men from the Emirates took part in the September 11, 2001 attacks; could would-be terrorists find jobs with the state-owned company in the Persian Gulf that is poised to take control of major American shipping centers?) (Independent [ http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article346673.ece ] and Kronos International [ http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Security&loid=8.0.267357106&par= ])
One of the most blistering assessments of Bush's "war" has just appeared in Britain's generally conservative Times [ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-2047134,00.html (F6 note -- the post to which this post is a reply)]. Penned by commentator Simon Jenkins, it bluntly asks: "Is Osama Bin Laden winning after all?...How could a tinpot fanatic who is either dead or shut in some mountain hideout hold the world to ransom for five years?" Jenkins points out that "[n]ot a day passes without some new sign of bin Laden's mesmeric grip on the governments of Britain and America....The West is equivocating, writhing, slithering in precisely the direction most desired by its enemy. He must be roaring with delight."
If the al-Qaeda leader's goal with the 9/11 attacks was "to portray the West as scared, emotionally vulnerable, over-reactive, decadent and careless of liberal values," the British news analyst notes, then the West "has done its damnedest to prove him right."
The proof? How about last week's "new revelations of torture by American troops in Iraq" and of British soldiers beating up teenage protesters in Basra in 2003? Jenkins also mentions "British ministers [who have] sought new powers of detention without trial, a national identity database and impediments on free speech," and the fact that a "sectarian leader [has become] prime minister of Iraq...." Meanwhile, the United Nations has condemned the U.S. detention-and-torture center at its military base at Guantánamo, Cuba, and in recent weeks, the world has watched, Jenkins notes, as European news media have "indulged in an orgy of finger-pointing at Muslim religious sensitivity." As a result, he observes, "Muslim extremists [have] reacted on cue." (Note: U.N. report on Guantánamo camp available here [ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/16_02_06_un_guantanamo.pdf ], in PDF format.)
Jenkins imagines bin Laden looking at the events that have unfolded since the 2001 attacks and gleefully telling himself: "I have Western leaders still parroting my motto[es] that '9/11 alters everything' and 'the rules of the game are changed.' I have the Taliban [in Afghanistan] resurgent, financed by Europe's voracious demand for oil and opium. I have the Pentagon and Scotland Yard paying me the compliment of a 'long war' of indefinite duration. My potency is said to require more defense spending than was needed to contain the might of the Soviet Union."
Writing just before the news of the Bush administration's unbelievable ports deal with the U.A.E. became the political hot potato that is now embarrassing many Republican leaders in Washington, Jenkins wrote, presciently: "What is frightening is not the evil of much American foreign policy at present but its stupidity; the damage it does to its own objectives. What was terrifying about Soviet power in the cold war was not its mega-tonnage but the incompetence of those controlling it."
Edward M. Gomez, a former U.S. diplomat and staff reporter at TIME, has lived and worked in the U.S. and overseas, and speaks several languages. He has written for The New York Times, the Japan Times and the International Herald Tribune.
©2006 San Francisco Chronicle (emphasis in original)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=15archive/&entry_id=3096
Osama bin Laden
AKI (Italy)
By: Edward M. Gomez | February 21 2006 at 11:59 AM
Even without the Bush administration's incomprehensible gift to a state-owned company in the United Arab Emirates of the go-ahead to take over six major U.S. ports, including New York's, some foreign observers have been wondering: So far, who is really winning the so-called war on terror? (The U.A.E.'s involvement in U.S. ports is controversial because Arab men from the Emirates took part in the September 11, 2001 attacks; could would-be terrorists find jobs with the state-owned company in the Persian Gulf that is poised to take control of major American shipping centers?) (Independent [ http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article346673.ece ] and Kronos International [ http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Security&loid=8.0.267357106&par= ])
One of the most blistering assessments of Bush's "war" has just appeared in Britain's generally conservative Times [ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-2047134,00.html (F6 note -- the post to which this post is a reply)]. Penned by commentator Simon Jenkins, it bluntly asks: "Is Osama Bin Laden winning after all?...How could a tinpot fanatic who is either dead or shut in some mountain hideout hold the world to ransom for five years?" Jenkins points out that "[n]ot a day passes without some new sign of bin Laden's mesmeric grip on the governments of Britain and America....The West is equivocating, writhing, slithering in precisely the direction most desired by its enemy. He must be roaring with delight."
If the al-Qaeda leader's goal with the 9/11 attacks was "to portray the West as scared, emotionally vulnerable, over-reactive, decadent and careless of liberal values," the British news analyst notes, then the West "has done its damnedest to prove him right."
The proof? How about last week's "new revelations of torture by American troops in Iraq" and of British soldiers beating up teenage protesters in Basra in 2003? Jenkins also mentions "British ministers [who have] sought new powers of detention without trial, a national identity database and impediments on free speech," and the fact that a "sectarian leader [has become] prime minister of Iraq...." Meanwhile, the United Nations has condemned the U.S. detention-and-torture center at its military base at Guantánamo, Cuba, and in recent weeks, the world has watched, Jenkins notes, as European news media have "indulged in an orgy of finger-pointing at Muslim religious sensitivity." As a result, he observes, "Muslim extremists [have] reacted on cue." (Note: U.N. report on Guantánamo camp available here [ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/16_02_06_un_guantanamo.pdf ], in PDF format.)
Jenkins imagines bin Laden looking at the events that have unfolded since the 2001 attacks and gleefully telling himself: "I have Western leaders still parroting my motto[es] that '9/11 alters everything' and 'the rules of the game are changed.' I have the Taliban [in Afghanistan] resurgent, financed by Europe's voracious demand for oil and opium. I have the Pentagon and Scotland Yard paying me the compliment of a 'long war' of indefinite duration. My potency is said to require more defense spending than was needed to contain the might of the Soviet Union."
Writing just before the news of the Bush administration's unbelievable ports deal with the U.A.E. became the political hot potato that is now embarrassing many Republican leaders in Washington, Jenkins wrote, presciently: "What is frightening is not the evil of much American foreign policy at present but its stupidity; the damage it does to its own objectives. What was terrifying about Soviet power in the cold war was not its mega-tonnage but the incompetence of those controlling it."
Edward M. Gomez, a former U.S. diplomat and staff reporter at TIME, has lived and worked in the U.S. and overseas, and speaks several languages. He has written for The New York Times, the Japan Times and the International Herald Tribune.
©2006 San Francisco Chronicle (emphasis in original)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=15archive/&entry_id=3096
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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