American read this and weep
The problem with American govt approach is that they have tried to fight terrorism by trying to catch the perpetrators and not winning hearts and minds. In fact they have done the reverse. They have done little in the way of getting the high moral ground and showing us their way of life is better etc. Instead by their collateral damage for every one terrorist they eliminate they have produced dozens of terrorists. Not only that by their disproportionate actions after the twin towers they have converted people like me from being pro American in the Clinton years to never trust Americans again and to be anti American.
An interesting article that I came across its not new its before Osama was killed but I think it shows the frustrations America faces. Even Americans other than may be first generation Americans who are trying to be more American than America themselves recognise the irony.
How Osama bin Laden Won the War on Terrorism
As the Bush presidency comes to the waning days of power, it is time to evaluate how well or poorly the administration has done in the one defining issue of his time in office: the international war against terrorism.
Sadly, it must be said … we lost. Osama bin Laden has extracted from the United States, more than anyone could have imagined, and he did so at a surprisingly low cost. In fact, we were complicit in our own failures.
Why attribute victory to bin Laden? After all, post Sept. 11, his safe harbor in Afghanistan was destroyed, he is holed up hiding somewhere (we presume) in a cave in the rugged hills of Pakistan, his al-Qaida network is without a home and without state protections … that sounds like defeat to most.
But bin Laden wasn’t trying to gain territory or treasure, the conventional measures of victory in war. His goal was to tarnish the U.S. image as a force for good to reveal the “real America” as an evil influence or make our country something it was not, taking us a far cry from the ideals on which the nation stood for centuries. In that he has won an overwhelming victory. We abandoned our commitment to the rule of law, to humane treatment of prisoners, to the international agreements we had such a big role in developing. In short, we started down a road to becoming the thing we opposed.
In the wake of that tragic and shocking day in September when hijackers destroyed nearly 3,000 innocent lives, Vice President Dick Cheney said we might now have to go over to “the dark side;” and indeed we did with tragic results. By going to the dark side, we have ceded the moral high ground and played right into the hands of bin Laden. “You see” he can now say to the world, “this is what the United States is really like.”
The dark side? The Bush administration has all but shredded the Constitution in its quest for victory over terrorism. It was a very high price to pay. Think of what has been done in the name of the people of the United States - the United States condoned and administered torture to prisoners. We were embarrassed and shocked by the gross revelations of what went on in the Abu Grahab prison. Several people who were tortured ultimately died. We engaged in “extraordinary rendition” or the kidnapping of suspects around the globe who were then taken to secret prison facilities and some were tortured. We opened the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay and warehoused hundreds of suspected terrorists. We denied them the right to an attorney. We failed to charge them with a crime or to give them a chance to prove their innocence before a judge. We engaged in illegal domestic spying on American citizens. We were misled into a costly and tragic war in Iraq. Bush instilled a culture of fear at home; our moral claim to leadership evaporated and our standing in the world plummeted. We ushered in the era of the “unitary presidency” or an imperial executive. We abandoned the rule of law and suspended the constitutional right of habeas corpus. And the list goes on and on.
Why did we let Osama bin Laden have such control over our Constitution? Why did we allow him to turn us into the thing we opposed? Our ideals are what animated us for two centuries. Were they so fragile that they had to be abandoned when the going got tough? Or were those the very ideals on which we should have relied to see us through yet another test of will and power? The Bush administration has given him a victory he neither deserves nor earned. He brought out the worst in us. And we let him.
In war, as in all things, choices are made. The Bush administration chose to abandon what was best about America, what gives us strength, what was the key to our international leadership. We played the terrorists’ game and we lost. We lost the war and we lost an important part of ourselves. In a world hungry for constructive leadership, the American “brand” has become tainted.
The in-box of the next president is overflowing. Economic meltdown, partisan sniping, the environment threatened, oil markets ruling our behavior, our international reputation in tatters, new threats emerging and new powers rising. The first step in meeting these grave challenges is to return to that which gave us strength: a country that stood for grand ideals and powerful ideas; a country committed to doing the right thing in a dangerous world; that led by example and demonstrated that right makes might.
Michael A. Genovese holds the Loyola Chair of Leadership at Loyola Marymount University. He is the author of eighteen books, including Memo to a New President from the Oxford University Press.
What price a brand?? There were great hopes when Obama came to power that things would be reversed. Obama's dealings with Pakistan prove that America is no longer a country that stands for grand ideals or what is right. Why expect America to follow law and international norms any more