Editorial by the writer, published in The News, Sept 13, 2006

Bush’s 9/11 speech

Much of what US President George W Bush said in his address to the nation marking the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks was expected and disappointing. To paint the war against terror as some kind of epochal battle in which either America or the terrorists will emerge victorious is to talk as though one were in a Star Wars movie -- but one isn’t; however, George Bush does not seem to have noticed this. At a time when his approval ratings are at an all-time low, Mr Bush’s strategy seems to be to paint a bleak picture of the future of Americans, but at the same time assuring them that he will be there to protect them from danger. Those who would have thought that the past five years may have taught the US administration -- with its blunders in Iraq and Afghanistan and with much of world public opinion still in disagreement with many aspects of US policy, particularly the war against terror -- a thing or two will feel let down.

It seems that the US president is still seeing the world through an ’us versus them’ prism which has an inherent flaw in that it does not allow Mr Bush to see the complexities of the real world vis-à-vis terrorism. Much of what he said goes to show that there is still no realisation in the US government of the fact that some of America’s own policies may well have fuelled terrorism worldwide and that unless biases in such policies are eliminated the situation is not going to get any better. Drawing on the good versus evil theme -- something that has served many an American politician well with its clear Biblical allusion -- President Bush said that on Sept. 11, Americans "saw the face of evil". But it seems that to fight this evil, many ’evil’ actions had to be taken by America. What should one say to the thousands of Iraqis and Afghans whose loved ones died when their respective countries were invaded by American military forces? Did they also not see a ’face of evil’ as did those who were tortured so ruthlessly at Abu Ghraib? By using such language Mr Bush is clearly implying that America has the moral high ground in its fight against the terrorists. That, however, is difficult to reconcile with the duplicity of many of its policies, especially those that deal with Israel, the Muslim world and the Middle East.

How could Mr Bush and his advisors not see the hatred and resentment generated in ordinary people in this part of the world by America’s blind and fawning support for Israel or by its unwavering support of authoritarian dictators in the region? Instead he seems bent on rallying faltering domestic support by telling Americans that the war is "more than a military conflict" and is the twenty-first century’s "decisive ideological struggle and the calling of our generation". One would have thought that the main aim of the war against terror was just that: to catch the terrorists, particularly Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman Al Zawahiri. But now, America’s president is pushing it well beyond that to include ideological conflicts as well.

This is dangerous and is proof of Mr Bush’s immaturity because he obviously chooses to ignore the fact that America itself allows considerable leeway and space for dissent and debate on grounds of opinion and ideology. If America is now going to spend the rest of this and the next generation’s time hunting down foreigners who follow an ideology different to it then it will have to fight much of the rest of the world which vehemently opposes its policies. Also, who’s to say that this fight is not used as a pretext by administrations to suppress any internal dissent by extending it to US citizens on home soil? In fact, this has happened but the victims have been the usual suspects: those who appear Middle Eastern/South Asian or those who happen to be Muslim. There needed to be some realisation that terrorism against the US and its allies is in part fuelled by double standards and one-sided policies that these countries employ and that removing these biases would be in everyone’s (America included) interests.