Bush vs the world
Arnaud De Borchgrave
July 01, 2005
The non-American world -- and almost 60 percent of Americans -- does not share president Bush's freshly minted conviction there was a link between Sept. 11, 2001, and the invasion of Iraq. In last Tuesday's State of the War speech, Bush referred to the connection several times. "We fight today," he said, "because terrorists want to attack our country and kill our citizens, and Iraq is where they are making their stand." This is now being referred to in "allied" countries as "disinformation" or "propaganda." The most charitable explanation is "strategic deception." But who is being deceived? Them or us?
Small wonder China now has a better image than the U.S. in European countries that are still bastions of freedom and democracy. Poland, according to the latest Pew Foundation Survey on Global Attitudes, was the exception that stuck to its pro-American guns.
If you don't care what the rest of the world thinks of us, none of this matters. But if you do care, it's profoundly disturbing. The Europeans still support the war against terrorists, but not the new strategy that holds Iraq is now its main battlefield.
President Bush has redefined the entire rationale for Operation Iraqi Freedom. It's now the world's principal theater for a crusade against transnational terrorism, a little like the Spanish Civil War circa 1936-39 when Hitler and Stalin used their surrogates to duke it out in a different kind of clash of civilizations.
When the White House, the Pentagon and the intelligence community planned for war on Saddam Hussein's bloody tyranny, al-Qaida was not part of the equation. WMD was the leitmotif writ large. The fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found didn't really hurt the administration's case, as every other major intelligence service in Europe and the Middle East also got it wrong. But Bush's Iraq-al Qaida link was introduced post-facto as a rationale for what now appears to many recent visitors as a stalemate, costly in blood and treasure, that could go on for several more years.
Iraq did not become a breeding ground for terrorists until after U.S. military intervention. From left to right in Europe, including the U.K., it is a firmly held view that al-Qaida received a new lease on life in Iraq, courtesy of the intervention by U.S. and coalition forces. In Canada, whence this reporter just returned, Iraq was never seen as part of al-Qaida's global network. And Karen Hughes, the undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, a close and trusted adviser of the president, will have a hard time convincing anyone otherwise. Her assignment, which is to improve America's image abroad, becomes more challenging by the day.
The Afghan war dislodged al-Qaida's bases and scattered its fighters to a dozen other countries. Operation Iraqi Freedom then liberated Iraq, which gave al-Qaida a fresh opportunity to regroup and attack the U.S. and its allies. Since then, Iraq has been a boon to al-Qaida. It has acted as a force multiplier to recruit fresh jihadis from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the rest of the Muslim world. The daily visuals on Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabyia, CNN and FOX News drove up the number of wannabe jihadis in the Muslim suburban slums of major European cities.
The link between Iraq and al-Qaida did not exist prior to U.S. intervention. It does now. Because pro-al-Qaida terrorists believe -- or have been proselytized to believe -- they can do to the U.S. in Iraq what Osama Bin Laden and thousands of mujahideen (freedom fighters) did to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
Bin Laden last message made clear al-Qaida's strategy is to force the U.S. to spend itself into bankruptcy. Bin Laden firmly believes the "muj" resistance in Afghanistan led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. As evidence, America's detractors in the West cite the time lapse between the exit of the last Soviet soldier from Afghanistan Feb. 15, 1989, and the fall of the Berlin Wall Nov. 9, 1989 -- nine months.
Al-Qaida spent an estimated $500,000 on the attacks against Manhattan's Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Since then, the U.S. has spent about $200 billion on myriad defensive measures against the next attack, widely believed to be a mass casualty WMD nightmare, and the meter is still running. Clearly such a ratio is unsustainable.
Throughout the 1980s, the recruitment of guerrillas -- which the Soviets called terrorists -- all over the Muslim world led to some 40,000 Afghan Arabs being trained by the Pakistani intelligence service, all funded and equipped by the CIA and Saudi intelligence.
Today, al-Qaida's recruiters and supporters are encouraging a new generation of unhappy Muslim campers to move from the dole in Europe to the role of martyrs in Iraq. The Time Magazine (7/4) interview with a volunteer suicide bomber in Iraq should help the public understand the religious zealotry of those who pray for our destruction. We demonize them as animals. They demonize us as the fount of all evil.
For the thousands of pro-al-Qaida web sites, chat rooms and blogs, Iraq is now a cause celebre that has allowed the movement to garner worldwide support from a global network that is political, religious, ideological and spiritual -- undetectable to spies-in-the-sky or on the ground, but easily discernible from open sources, from the Internet to the kiosks of any major European city, to the madrassas (Koranic schools) of Mindanao in the Philippines to the mosques of Madrid to the conversations of Muslim cab drivers gathered on Fridays outside the Saudi-funded mosque on the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Belmont in Washington, D.C.
The Internet alone has recreated in Iraq a virtual Afghanistan under Soviet and then Taliban rule. Iraq is now both a training ground for "holy warriors" and the battle space where they can ascend to heaven after blowing themselves up.
During the intifada, Israel was the target of one or two suicide bombers a month. Iraq sustained almost 150 in one recent month.
Copyright 2005 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
Small wonder China now has a better image than the U.S. in European countries that are still bastions of freedom and democracy. Poland, according to the latest Pew Foundation Survey on Global Attitudes, was the exception that stuck to its pro-American guns.
If you don't care what the rest of the world thinks of us, none of this matters. But if you do care, it's profoundly disturbing. The Europeans still support the war against terrorists, but not the new strategy that holds Iraq is now its main battlefield.
President Bush has redefined the entire rationale for Operation Iraqi Freedom. It's now the world's principal theater for a crusade against transnational terrorism, a little like the Spanish Civil War circa 1936-39 when Hitler and Stalin used their surrogates to duke it out in a different kind of clash of civilizations.
When the White House, the Pentagon and the intelligence community planned for war on Saddam Hussein's bloody tyranny, al-Qaida was not part of the equation. WMD was the leitmotif writ large. The fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found didn't really hurt the administration's case, as every other major intelligence service in Europe and the Middle East also got it wrong. But Bush's Iraq-al Qaida link was introduced post-facto as a rationale for what now appears to many recent visitors as a stalemate, costly in blood and treasure, that could go on for several more years.
Iraq did not become a breeding ground for terrorists until after U.S. military intervention. From left to right in Europe, including the U.K., it is a firmly held view that al-Qaida received a new lease on life in Iraq, courtesy of the intervention by U.S. and coalition forces. In Canada, whence this reporter just returned, Iraq was never seen as part of al-Qaida's global network. And Karen Hughes, the undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, a close and trusted adviser of the president, will have a hard time convincing anyone otherwise. Her assignment, which is to improve America's image abroad, becomes more challenging by the day.
The Afghan war dislodged al-Qaida's bases and scattered its fighters to a dozen other countries. Operation Iraqi Freedom then liberated Iraq, which gave al-Qaida a fresh opportunity to regroup and attack the U.S. and its allies. Since then, Iraq has been a boon to al-Qaida. It has acted as a force multiplier to recruit fresh jihadis from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the rest of the Muslim world. The daily visuals on Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabyia, CNN and FOX News drove up the number of wannabe jihadis in the Muslim suburban slums of major European cities.
The link between Iraq and al-Qaida did not exist prior to U.S. intervention. It does now. Because pro-al-Qaida terrorists believe -- or have been proselytized to believe -- they can do to the U.S. in Iraq what Osama Bin Laden and thousands of mujahideen (freedom fighters) did to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
Bin Laden last message made clear al-Qaida's strategy is to force the U.S. to spend itself into bankruptcy. Bin Laden firmly believes the "muj" resistance in Afghanistan led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. As evidence, America's detractors in the West cite the time lapse between the exit of the last Soviet soldier from Afghanistan Feb. 15, 1989, and the fall of the Berlin Wall Nov. 9, 1989 -- nine months.
Al-Qaida spent an estimated $500,000 on the attacks against Manhattan's Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Since then, the U.S. has spent about $200 billion on myriad defensive measures against the next attack, widely believed to be a mass casualty WMD nightmare, and the meter is still running. Clearly such a ratio is unsustainable.
Throughout the 1980s, the recruitment of guerrillas -- which the Soviets called terrorists -- all over the Muslim world led to some 40,000 Afghan Arabs being trained by the Pakistani intelligence service, all funded and equipped by the CIA and Saudi intelligence.
Today, al-Qaida's recruiters and supporters are encouraging a new generation of unhappy Muslim campers to move from the dole in Europe to the role of martyrs in Iraq. The Time Magazine (7/4) interview with a volunteer suicide bomber in Iraq should help the public understand the religious zealotry of those who pray for our destruction. We demonize them as animals. They demonize us as the fount of all evil.
For the thousands of pro-al-Qaida web sites, chat rooms and blogs, Iraq is now a cause celebre that has allowed the movement to garner worldwide support from a global network that is political, religious, ideological and spiritual -- undetectable to spies-in-the-sky or on the ground, but easily discernible from open sources, from the Internet to the kiosks of any major European city, to the madrassas (Koranic schools) of Mindanao in the Philippines to the mosques of Madrid to the conversations of Muslim cab drivers gathered on Fridays outside the Saudi-funded mosque on the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Belmont in Washington, D.C.
The Internet alone has recreated in Iraq a virtual Afghanistan under Soviet and then Taliban rule. Iraq is now both a training ground for "holy warriors" and the battle space where they can ascend to heaven after blowing themselves up.
During the intifada, Israel was the target of one or two suicide bombers a month. Iraq sustained almost 150 in one recent month.
Copyright 2005 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.