The ongoing conflict has illustrated that the use of asymmetrical warfare tactics, guerilla techniques, and suicide (or martyrdom) operations by dedicated groups with a high tolerance of risk has narrowed the gap between both sides and created an elusive “balance of terror.” The US military boasts of its ability to strike anywhere, anytime, with lethal force. However, the presence of 140,000 US troops in Iraq, 34,000 in Kuwait, 10,000 in Afghanistan, and many thousands more involved in “anti-terror” operations worldwide has made the US military susceptible to equally lethal attacks. In this context, the past two years have illustrated that the globe has become the battlefield for a war with no end in sight. Moreover, victory has become a salient concept, and the preponderance of aggregate power has lost much significance as the ultimate guarantor of victory. 

Since Bush announced the end of the war on Iraq on May 1 2003, official US estimates indicate that more than 140 US soldiers have died, and 1100 others have been injured.⁶ Perhaps more ominous, is the fact that US troops killed after May 1 are equal to the number of troops killed during the actual combat phase of the war. In fact, the recent destruction of the UN headquarters in Baghdad raised a grim prospect for the US military and decision-makers alike: The possibility of the death of dozens of US troops in a single suicide attack eroding whatever is left of Bush’s domestic support.

As we approach the second anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the US has succeeded in occupying two Muslim states in a few weeks – one, a failed state, and the other already devastated by decade-long sanctions. Moreover, during the past two years the US has turned a blind eye towards Israeli actions aimed at liquidating the Palestinian issue, as well as justified Israeli crimes – assassinations, invasions, appropriation of territory and the building of the “Security Fence” – under the pretext of Israel’s right to fight “terror”. Nevertheless, US troops continue to find themselves targeted by escalating attacks from resistance movements in both Iraq and Afghanistan, as fighters regrouped rather successfully in both theatres of operation. In fact, some point out that the increasing resilience and sophistication of anti-US attacks in Iraq suggest that Iraq has become a new “field of jihad” for Islamists worldwide.⁷

Setting aside military aspects, US strategy failed miserably when it came to post-war issues of reconstruction, development and establishing a functioning democracy and representative government in the newly occupied lands.

Mapping Change - US Foreign Policy and the World

Since September 11, the Bush administration’s foreign policy has gone through various stages, each of which saw the aggrandizement of America’s goals. As a result, those goals gradually became less focused and more elusive, complicated, and much more messianic. In the beginning, President Bush emphasized the importance of establishing a “coalition against terror” to punish the perpetrators of the 9/11 “atrocities.” However, in his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush focused not on Al-Qaeda and Afghanistan, but rather on the so-called “axis of evil” states. In public remarks later that year, he emphasized not the need to build an anti-terror coalition, but rather his intention to ensure that the US maintains “military strength beyond challenge, thereby making the destabilizing arms races of other eras pointless.”⁸ Then came the publication of the National Security Strategy September 2002, in which Bush insisted that the American model represented the “single sustainable model for national success,” and that “[the US] will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self defense by acting preemptively.”⁹

In 2003, Washington began to rally support against Iraq, arguing that both Iraq and al-Qaeda were “complementary halves of the same existential threat.” US officials declared time and again that they would act against any country they deemed a threat, regardless of international law, irrespective of the legitimate concerns of doubting allies, and without concern for the outrage of those who might misunderstand US actions.¹⁰

America’s new international stance manifested itself in the doctrine of “shock and awe” in Iraq, and in the modified strategic posture review, signed by Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld and issued in final form in early 2002, which stated that nuclear weapons could be employed “in the event of surprising military developments.” In addition, the White House significantly lowered the nuclear threshold by removing nuclear weapons from their long established special category and lumping them with all other military options – such as Special Forces, covert operations, cyber warfare, “strategic deception,” psychological warfare and air power.¹¹ Hence, rather than seeking multilateralism, collective security and alliance-building – the cornerstone of US policy since the end of the Cold War – the Bush administration sought to establish a world of unchallenged US hegemony.

American Justice or More Death & Deception?

Two major consequences followed from America’s quest for unrivalled hegemony: the increasing marginalization of the United Nations and the total disregard for international law as a guiding framework for action. In the post-September 11 world, the US has become prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner in its own cause, establishing itself as the global law-maker and sheriff, setting the rules and acting alone or at the head of a posse of compliant allies.¹² This is evidenced by the fact that the US went to war against Iraq, despite that its diplomacy could not persuade more than 3 of the 14 other members of the UN Security Council to back a resolution that would legitimize military action in Iraq. Only when the US faced increasing problems in Iraq did it seek to involve the United Nations in a more active role.

Another victim of the post-September-11 world has been freedom of information.  The events of “Black Tuesday” during the war on Iraq in which 3 journalists were wounded and 3 others killed (two cameramen from Reuters and the Spanish Telecinco, and the famous Al-Jazeera reporter, Tarek Ayoub, whose office was destroyed by an American bomb) are clear evidence that there are no limits on what the US will target. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Sergio Vieira de Mello, deplored the attacks on journalists, recalling Article 79 of the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions, which states “journalists engaged in dangerous professional missions in areas of armed conflict shall be considered as civilians.”¹³

Al-Jazeera has had its share of US violations, with many of its reporters being harassed on several occasions, and its office bombed in Kabul in November 2001. In addition, Sami El-Hajj, an Al-Jazeera photographer, was sent to Guantanamo’s Camp X-Ray in December 2001.¹⁴

Both al-Jazeera and al-Arabiyya satellite channels found themselves under increasing US pressure to censor tapes of Osama Bin Laden and ban statements made by Iraqi resistance forces, the message being that only America’s worldview should be heard. Even in terms of coverage, the war on Iraq vividly illustrated the death of the “professional war correspondent,” independently and objectively trying to gather information, to be replaced by the more convenient “embedded correspondent,” spoon-fed information that fits the Pentagon’s views. Ironically, the United States - once the champion of freedom of information - has now become a major obstacle to the realization of that goal, a fact that made a mockery of its free speech rhetoric in Arab eyes.¹⁵ 

America’s unilateralism and its “go it alone” attitude has led to an increase in anti-Americanism worldwide In fact, hatred of US policies has never been higher in the Arab World, and in almost every European country opinion polls showed that George Bush was seen as a greater threat to world peace than Saddam Hussein.¹⁶

While the US has not frozen the assets of churches mixing humanitarian assistance with the financing of weapons going to the Irish Republican Army, or Jewish charities supporting extremist Israeli settlers, $137 million dollars in assets belonging to Islamic banks and charities have been frozen worldwide since September 11.¹⁷ Money from most of those banks and charities went to relief efforts in Kosovo, Chechnya and Palestine. Despite the fact that Palestinians have been under siege since the beginning of the Intifadah, President Bush called for an all-out war on Palestinian resistance movements, and froze the accounts of  several Palestinian Banks, including Beit Al-Mal Holdings and al-Aqsa Islamic Bank, on alleged links to Hamas – an organization which he called “one of the deadliest terrorist organizations in the world today.”¹⁸ Even within the United States and for the first time in history, the US government seized religiously mandated zakat funds and prevented their distribution as required by Islamic principles.¹⁹

Even Islamic education was declared an enemy. CIA Director, George Tenet, declared: “The greatest long-term impact on any society is its educational system. Primary and secondary education in parts of the Muslim world is often dominated by an interpretation of Islam that teaches intolerance and hatred. The graduates of these schools – “madrasas” - provide the foot soldiers for many of the Islamic militant groups that operate throughout the Muslim world.”²⁰ Such a biased approach by the US government has caused outrage amongst many in the Islamic world, and leads many to believe that this is, in fact, a war against Islam.

US occupations forces wrestle an Iraqi to the ground

Interestingly, Arabs and Muslims increasingly found themselves victims of acts of bigotry within the United States itself. Human Rights reports indicate that since September 11 there has been a 1700% increase in acts of discrimination reported against Arabs and Muslims. Some of those acts were culturally based, such as those relating to hate crimes, employment discrimination, and perpetrated by those influenced by the wave of misinformation permeating the airwaves, schools and street corners of the United States. Other acts of bigotry were related to new policies enacted by the US government, linked to ethnic profiling and immigration control procedures, that destroyed the lives of many innocent Arab and Muslim families. ²¹

Conclusions

The attacks of September 11 and the US response thereto have illustrated that US decision-makers have failed to understand the true reasons the attacks happened in the first place. In essence, they have failed to appreciate the complexity of West-Islam relations, historical patterns of animosity, and the brutal impact of their own policies on Muslims worldwide. The ongoing destruction of Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq, the death of over one million children in Iraq as a result of sanctions spearheaded by the Western alliance, and the support of dictatorial regimes in the Muslim world created hostile backgrounds of poverty, deprivation and indignity against a Western presence in Muslim lands and against the political regimes in these nations that protect Western interests while keeping their people in servile bondage to maintain power. No one seems to realize that imposing draconian measures to arrest, detain and torture suspects internationally with the help of allies with dubious human rights records will perpetuate the same conditions that led to September 11^th.

Iraq has become a new “field of jihad” for Islamists worldwide.

More importantly, America’s occupation of two Muslim states, the freezing of charity assets, and the orchestrated anti-Islamic media campaign has offended many Muslims and alienated so-called “moderates” from America’s cause. The current US administration has demonstrated that it values coercion above everything else¸ and hence, people in the Muslim world will never be responsive to messages emanating from the American propaganda machinery. On the contrary, they will legitimately feel that they are targeted as potential terrorists, as opposed to reasonable individuals.²² In Bush’s worldview, a “good” Muslim is one who wholeheartedly accepts the occupation of his land, the killing of his people, the freezing of his financial assets and the destruction of his society’s fabric. If that “good” Muslim does not regard the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq as “liberation,” the barbaric treatment of over 600 prisoners in Guantanamo Bay as “American justice” or Israel’s crimes in Palestine as “security measures,” then that “good” Muslim risks being labeled a “terrorist”.

In terms of foreign policy, Muslim countries such as Palestine, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria, have all become directly targeted for some form of regime or societal change under the new US strategy. In addition, most of the wars going on around the world today involve some Muslim population seeking independence, on one hand, and the US and/or one of its allies on the other. This is true from Chechnya, through Israeli-occupied Palestine to Basilan Island in the Philippines, where local troops and American special forces are chasing a couple of hundred Muslim guerrillas.²³ Two years after September 11, the “war against terror” has gradually become a war against Muslims, and by extension, Islam itself. The realization of the “clash of civilizations” scenario has never been closer.

Kareem M. Kamel is an Egyptian freelance writer based in Cairo, Egypt. He has an MA in International Relations and is specialized in security studies, decision- making, nuclear politics, Middle East politics and the politics of Islam. He is currently assistant to the Political Science Department at the American University in Cairo.

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1- William Pfaff, “The Philosophers of Chaos Reap a Whirlwind,” International Herald Tribune, August 23^rd, 2003.

2- “Muslims in America: Post-September 11^th,” Global Citizens of the Human Community September 10^th, 2002.

3- Immanuel Wallerstein, “The Eagle Has Crash Landed,” Foreign Policy July/August 2002.

4- Moises Naim, “Seven Surprises on the First Anniversary of September 11^th,” Foreign Policy (September/October 2002).

5- Thomas Homer-Dixon, “The Rise of Complex Terrorism,” Foreign Policy (January/February 2002).

6- Benjamin Duncan, “Bush Public Support on Iraq Waning,”  Al-Jazeera (English Site) September 1^st, 2003.

7- Daniel Benjamin and Steve Simon, “The Real Worry,” Time.com, August 24^th, 2003.

8- Madeleine K. Albright, “Bridges, Bombs, or Bluster,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2003.

9- “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” The White House.

10- Madeleine K. Albright, “Bridges, Bombs, or Bluster,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2003

11- Ibid.

12- Michael Byers, “Terror and the Future of International Law,” in Ken Booth and Tim Dunne, eds. Worlds in Collision: Terror and the Future of Global Order (Palgrave: New York, 2002): 125.

13- “Senior UN Officials Concerned Over Journalists’ Death in Iraq,” Relief Web, April 9^th, 2003.

14- Seedi Ahmed Bin Ahmed Salem, “Al-Jazeera: A History of Harassment,” Al-Jazeera.net April 9^th, 2003 (in Arabic).   

15- Marc Lynch, “America is Losing the Battle for Arab Opinion,” New York Times August 23^rd, 2003.

16- Richard Falk and David Krieger, “Subverting the UN,” Waging Peace November 4^th, 2002.

17- “Terror Group Members’ Assets Frozen,” MSNBC.com September 5^th, 2003.

18- Jodi Edna and Ken Moritsugo, “US War on Terrorism Widened by Bush’s Freezing of Hamas Assets,” Knight Ridder/ Tribune News Service, December 5^th, 2001.

19- “Muslims in America: Post-September 11^th,” Global Citizens of the Human Community September 10^th, 2002.

20- George J. Tenet, “Converging Dangers in a Post-9/11 World,” Delivered to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Washington D.C on February 6^th, 2002. Vital Speeches of the Day, March 1^st, 2002. 

21- Benjamin Duncan, “The 9/11 Backlash of Bigotry,” Al-Jazeera (English) August 21^st, 2003.

22- Ibid.

23- Richard Gwyn, “A Dangerous Clash of Cultures,” The Star.com September 10^th, 2002.

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