The Wrong Strategy against Terror

Four years after 9/11 and the declaration of the "War on Terror" militant Islamism is not on the retreat, and the US have since fulfilled the cliché of the merciless superpower, fuelling further anti-Western sentiment. Peter Philipp comments

It's quite a cliché to say that nothing would ever be the same anymore after September 11. But, of course, this has a kernel of truth to it: that day four years ago brought about a myriad of changes.

Far beyond the terrible mass murder in Manhattan that people followed on their television screens around the world, September 11 - putting aside all the pathos that George W. Bush could muster - confronted the United States with realities that were already present in other parts of the world but had thus far not affected the US.

Terrorism was not invented on September 11. The cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians has long been used in other parts of the world as an instrument for asserting inapt and fanatic political goals. But never before did a nation have the idea of declaring a “war on terror” as an official political priority and thereby fueling a world war of sorts.

The image of the merciless superpower

As if terrorists could be fought using conventional weapons. Tanks, bombers and missiles are not appropriate means for fighting fanatic underground combatants - even if it has been possible to prevent Al Qaida terrorists from further establishing themselves as a institution in the public sphere. They were pushed back into the underground, they are in part on the run, but they have not been defeated.

Instead, the US has entered into a battle it can only lose. The US will lose because it, too, has made innocent people into victims. It will lose because it has thereby inadvertently played into the cliché of a merciless superpower and into the hands of the demagogues on the other side, who have no trouble finding signs of the "culture wars" they have already anticipated.

Europe mustn't be satisfied with itself

It would be wrong, however, to blame the US alone for everything. There is no reason for Europe to be satisfied with itself. Spaniards and Brits have paid dearly for this insight, and other countries might still experience the same.

Even if they haven't officially joined in every US escapade. Because the Europeans have declared it their goal to support the democratization of regions of the world that have until now been totalitarian, and they thereby risk conflicts with those who think democracy is an evil Western invention.

The first inklings of democracy - for example in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and now in Egypt-are encouraging, but still too small and fragile to constitute a state. In part because they only serve to reinforce the status quo.

Four years after the attacks on the World Trade Center, the world is a different place. But this is no reason for smugness. It is not a better world, but a more dangerous, more confused, and more contradictory world.

Peter Philipp

Qantara.de

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