Tommy Ates OnlineŠ: We Are Losing The War On Terror

Al Qaeda strikes again, and again." Newspapers all over the world will flash the images of a panicked Istanbul, Turkey on the day President Bush and Englands Prime Minister Blair wished to parlay the message of a free and more secure Iraq. Instead everyone wonders where the terrorists will strike next. Sadly, our secret is out: we are losing the war on terror.

Al Qaeda strikes again, and again."

Newspapers all over the world will flash the images of a panicked Istanbul, Turkey on the day President Bush and Englands Prime Minister Blair wished to parlay the message of a free and more secure Iraq. Instead everyone wonders where the terrorists will strike next.

Sadly, our secret is out: we are losing the war on terror.

This weeks bombing of the British consulate in Turkey, killing British Consul-General Roger Short and 26 others, shows the true sophistication of the threat displayed by al Qaeda and their regional network of terror affiliates spread all over the world. Just one year ago, Attorney General John Ashcroft, along with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld displayed the capture of seized terror funds (presumably from bin Laden himself, other Saudi wahhabist charities, and Hezbollah).
These 'significant captures were supposed to make a dent in the feasibility of terror operatives to act globally, instead in our distraction of the Iraq occupation.

The nation slowly is realizing that military funds that should be used on the global terror war are instead being diverted to Iraq. The new terrorist mecca where the U.S. is keeping a tenuous hold on power is Saddams once-secular homeland of the Sunni triangle. The growing Iraqi insurgency is made up of many Sunnis (and increasing numbers of Shiites) weary of American promises of jobs and safe streets." Many of the insurgents are believed to be former Iraqi army personnel, whose jobs were essentially fired once the Americans moved into Baghdad. To make matters worse, the Presidential Envoy to Iraq Paul Bremers policy of not hiring Baathist Party members of much of the civilian infrastructure upset many middle-class Iraqis, many of which had no choice but to join the Baathist Party because of Saddam Husseins total control of state politics.

Lest we forget that the Bush administrations first nation-building" endeavor, Afghanistan is just beginning to recover its refugees and rebuild.

As the conflict in Iraq simmers with daily attacks and U.S. casualties, the American public has as almost completely forgotten about the first war on terror in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and ethnic warlords are once again active outside Kabul. The joke among many diplomats is that current Afghan Prime Minister Hamid Karzai has become the de-facto mayor of Kabul," negotiating administrative powers between the fledgling military and the warlords, while us Americans work on reconstruction projects around Kabul (the safe zone).

Bush doesnt do photo ops with Karzai anymore.

With the spectre of Iraq looming as a multi-year commitment, Afghanistans prime minister has had to face the humility of visiting the U.S. congress and openly lobby for the $2 billion dollar emergency aid assistance to the country. Money used simply to pay government workers and to set up job training courses in a country where a 20-year civil war decimated the infrastructure, causing widespread poverty, in addition to repressive Islamic rule of the Taliban. All the while, the real enemy Osama bin Laden is on the loose and mobilizing new followers to carry out attacks on Western interests.

It should be as no surprise that the United Nations and U.S. intelligence have already begun cautioning the public regarding the likely of al Qaeda to use biological or chemical weapons in a possible large-scale attack (likely on American soil). The Bush administration and John Ashcroft are painfully aware of lack of intelligence gathering on Islamist extremists and even less on the full scope of their organizations. Without adequate intelligence, America is literally a 'sitting duck in the line of fire. No wonder the President Bush is using his efforts on the war on terror as the hallmark of his re-election campaign.

Its all he has to run on.

Meanwhile, all the American people can do is hope and pray that our nation-building experiments in the Arab world will produce fruitful results. If America does succeed, the power of democracy does give people the ability to think clearly with direct motive. The gift and legacy of the Founding Fathers was a constitution which protected freedom of expression, commerce, and possession of a reflexive government, responsive to the peoples needs. Unfortunately, the new Patriot Act has put a damper on those basic freedoms we are trying to invoke.

To move forward President Bush must start to make hard choices, the Bush administration must make peace with the notion of self-government without an American mandate. The military fiefdoms of both Iraq and Afghanistan must end. We must begin to focus all our efforts into reconstruction and let the disparate peoples of both countries decide for themselves whether the European construct of Iraq" or Afghanistan" should even exist at all. After all, you cant force people to live together who do not want to. People of the developing world are not cattle.

Just look at Bosnia and Slovenia, the Soviet Union after Russia, Indonesia and East Timor. Though separation they found a peace. (And they prospered.)

In defusing the war on terror, let's not make the idea of separation such a big secret.