RIYADH, 30 June 2004 — Since the infamous May 2003 photo-op, it took almost a year and 400 US military casualties to reveal the grim reality that the mission is far from accomplished. But the “Mission Accomplished” banner holds true when viewed from another perspective, which is that of the terrorists themselves.
George W. Bush may have conquered Saddam Hussein’s army, but he left the real frontier of the “war on terror” unattended.
This should come as a surprise because back in the days following Sept. 11 Bush seemed to realize quite clearly what the War on Terrorism is all about.
“They hate our freedoms,” Bush announced to Americans on Sept. 20, 2001. He then clarified, “We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them.” He also specifically asked the Americans to “uphold the values of America” since “this is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom.”
One can imagine a very limited need for weapons of war in this struggle for principles and values.
Conquering terrorists’ strongholds and capturing dangerous villains is indeed a fundamental task in this war, but that should not come before the necessity to defend against the terrorists who aim “to disrupt and end a way of life.”
Nevertheless, not only was vital attention diverted from the real front-line but the president’s escapade in Iraq also allowed the enemy to make significant advances toward achieving his ultimate goal.
The first lost battle is the indefinite imprisonment of people by the US without charge or trial at Guantanamo Bay, which is clearly illegal under international law.
In the absence of any court through which the prisoners can judicially assert their rights, test the lawfulness of their detention, and, if charged, be tried by due process of law, the prisoners are completely subject to the whims of the US administration. Such a situation is completely unsatisfactory and indefensible on any accepted legal grounds.
Another retreat was the enactment of the USA Patriot Act into law, which infringes the very freedom Bush identified as the target of terrorism. Under this law the government has greater rights to wiretap phones, monitor e-mail, survey medical, financial and student records, and break into homes and offices without prior notification.
It creates a new crime of domestic terrorism that is so broadly defined that it can be applied to citizens acting legally to express their dissent. Under this act and other legislation, non-citizens are being deported or detained indefinitely without judicial appeal.
The dangers of the act are augmented by a Bureau of Prisons order allowing federal agents to abridge the attorney-client privilege by eavesdropping on conversations between lawyers and their clients held in federal custody.
But Bush’s biggest, and most scandalous, setback is the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib. Although the US administration insists that rogue soldiers acting independently carried out those crimes, evidence hitherto points to a culture of disregard of human rights so rife at the top that it trickled all the way down to the foot soldiers in Iraq.
The direct impact of these failures can hardly be exaggerated, yet even that appears secondary when compared to the real victim of all these shortcomings, which is the ideology of freedom and democracy. US behavior throughout this war could corroborate the notion that the values upheld and promoted by the US are luxuries that do not stand the test of conflicts.
Many totalitarian regimes and terrorist groups embrace the idea that protection of human rights, transparency, democracy, and freedom are impractical during the testing times they all perpetually claim to be going through.
I cannot think of any better support available to this claim than the behavior of the leader of the free world after Sept. 11.
In this light we begin to comprehend why the number of “significant terrorist attacks” is on the rise, according to a US State Department report, and has reached a 21-year high at 175 significant attacks in 2003. The terrorists are winning the war against freedom while the US is busy securing Fallujah.
Drawing parallels between the war on terror and the Cold War could prove difficult, but it is noteworthy that the latter did not end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Cold War ended when Communism lost credibility in its own homeland, which stripped that ideology of any traces of legitimacy.
Freedom and democracy on the other hand may have many resilient champions other than the US, but the inability of the US to uphold that ideology could cause a great setback in the region that is in most dire need of it.
— Abdullah Zeini Jefri is a Saudi banker and writer based in Riyadh.
