A report in the NYT reveals that after, despite the fact that the Bush administration has made war on the Taliban and Al Qaeda for last 5 years, they are rapidly regaining power and are setting up new training camps along the border with Afghanistan.
This just shows what a monumental fuck up the Iraq War has been. While it is predictable that religious extremists will always boil with hatred towards people who hold other beliefs–kind of the way the Taliban hates Christians and some Christians hate Muslims–our actions have made the idea of committing acts of terrorism appealing to a much broader swath of people. With every bullet we fire, we are creating new insurgents in Iraq–a percentage of whom will move on to become terrorists ingroups like Al Queda.
Terrorist groups–and extremist religious movements–tend to most strongly attract those who have been disenfranchised in some way–like many of people in that region who have lost jobs, homes, businesses, and family members due to the war we are waging.
The majority of the people in the middle east could care less who the president of the United States happens to be. They could care less about the tensions between different religious groups, as long as they are not personally affected. They care about raising their families and going to their jobs every day, just like the majority of us. They only start caring once what other people (meaning us) do to them starts to impede their ability to live their lives–likewhen we drop bombs that kill their children and destroy their homes. Then, they don’t care about “collateral damage.” They don’t care about the fact that most of our troops are good, decent people–they only remember the ones who engage in torture, rape, and murdering the innocent in cold blood. And they don’t give a big shit if the majority of Americans are behind the war or not. Once they have been fucked with personally, moderation is out the window–they want revenge.
Enter Al Qaeda–a group which promises them the opportunity to exact revenge. Which crouches their doctrine of hatred in religious tones–making it okay to go and kill the infidels–even if those infidels happen to be innocent men, women, children. Even if a few fellow Muslims have to get killed in the process. Kind of like the hate filled doctrine of the religious right over here–it’s okay to kill the blasphemers (both the domestic and the foreign kind) who don’t follow the ONE TRUE VERSION of God’s word, as long as it helps to bring on the Rapture. So what if a few gays, feminists, or Muslims have to die? So what if the country is bankrupted, and children are starving in the streets?
Bush has shown that he doesn’t have a whole lot of common sense when it comes to understanding how the lower 90% lives, what they care about, or how the actions of a few cause misery and suffering for the many. He is the sort who thinks it is possible to pummel people who don’t bow to his will into submission–whether it is at home or abroad. This is why, at least under Bush, the danger of terrorism towards Americans will continue to grow.
If we are going to win the war on terror, we have to prove that we are better than the terrorists. We have to stop engaging in torture. We have to stop killing the innocent. We have to stop strong-arming countries that are weaker than we are in order to pillage their natural resources. And most of all, we have to stop engaging in wars of aggression based on lies. Only then will we stop fanning the flames of terrorism.
