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A man holds an American flag before the start of the Freedom Walk in memory of those killed in the 9/11 attacks. (Reuters) |
CAIRO — As Americans remember on Monday, September 11, the nearly 3,000 fellow countrymen killed in the 9/11 attacks five years ago, editorials worldwide were united in condemning the Bush administration's reaction to the atrocity, notably the invasion of Iraq and trampling of civil liberties.
"The Bush administration has succeeded in destroying the huge pool of compassion and solidarity which gripped the world after September 11," said the French newspaper Liberation.
"Bush's 'leadership' in the 'war-on-terror' has been disastrous."
Britain's The Financial Times blasted the way the Bush administration has "trampled on the international rule of law and Geneva Conventions, while abrogating civil liberties and expanding executive power at home."
It stressed that this has done "huge damage not only to America's reputation but, more broadly, to the attractive power of Western values."
The Independent remembered that five years ago "images of a world briefly united in sympathy for an America reeling and grieving from the attack on the Twin Towers and the deaths of almost 3,000 New Yorkers."
"How moving but dated they seem today," the paper said, lamenting the daily slaughter in Iraq, the nuclear crisis in Iran, the growing instability in Afghanistan and the failure to address the Israeli-Palestine issue.
According to a survey by the British daily to mark the fifth anniversary of the 9/11, the war on terror has directly claimed the lives of no less than 62,006 people, mostly Iraqis, turned 4.5 millions into refugees, mostly Afghans, and cost American taxpayers more than the debts of the world's poorest nations put together.
The US Congress had recently had approved 437 billion dollars for costs related to the war on terror while the Blair government has spent 4.5 billion sterling pounds on Iraq and Afghanistan.
More Dangerous World
The Spanish daily El Pais said the Bush administration had used the attacks to impose a neo-conservative foreign policy.
"The result, five years after, is a more dangerous world," it said. "But the worst is that the methods of the terrorists contaminated the spirit of the democracies which fight them."
Bush's popularity has plunged mainly because of the Iraq war and public concern over whether the country is safer.
Five years after spending billions of dollars on security and invading two Muslim countries as part of the so-called war on terror, many Americans still feel vulnerable and caught between the rock of terrorism and the hard place of losing long-cherished personal freedoms.
In Germany, the economic daily Handelsblatt said the Iraq war had been unleashed in the name of September 11.
"Today, it is known: the skeptics were right. The war in Iraq was based on false assumptions, which were used knowingly or not. The war in Iraq had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda terrorism," it stressed.
A Senate Intelligence Select Committee report concluded on Friday, September 9, that ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had no ties with Al-Qaeda, one of the two main reasons for invading the Arab country.
In Thailand, The Nation said the impact of 9/11 on Asia was much bigger than we would like to admit.
In Pakistan, a key US ally in the battle against Al-Qaeda, The News daily wrote a hard-hitting editorial entitled "Five Years of Nothing".
"Looking back it would be hard to say whether the years have been spent in something meaningful or constructive," it said.
"Many would agree the world is a more dangerous place and the United States is nowhere close to winning the war on terror."
Tragedy Compounded
Much criticism, especially in the Middle East and Europe, was reserved for Bush's decision to invade Iraq under the banner of the "war on terror."
The New York Times acknowledged the US had lost the feeling of unity and purpose which gripped the nation in the aftermath of the attacks, and lamented a lost opportunity.
"When we measure the possibilities created by 9/11 against what we have actually accomplished, it is clear that we have found one way after another to compound the tragedy," said the paper's editorial.
Many Arab newspapers said the US campaign and the invasion of Iraq had pushed the world closer to a clash of civilizations between the West and the Muslim world.
"The administration of George W. Bush used a vengeful mentality in dealing with the 9/11 crime and has turned the entire world into a battleground," wrote the editor-in-chief of the independent Al-Ghad daily in Jordan, Ayman Safadi.
The United Arab Emirates daily Al-Khaleej added: "Bush's policies have not brought security to Americans and have instead brought chaos to the entire world."
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