frostbite wrote:Immediately after 9/11, it seemed that the USA had all the world's sympathies, or certainly a large proportion of it. Countries that were traditionally friendly with the USA offered shoulders to cry on and promised concrete assistance. Countries that traditionally held a neutral approach to the States offered support and advice. Even countries with historical distrust or even open enmity with the US (e.g. Cuba) offered sympathy, most of it sincerely.
It was hoped by virtually everyone worldwide that the US leadership would see this support, realise that it had an opportunity to truly develop international relationships, to heal some old wounds, to stop other potential wounds before they occurred, and to cauterise the open sore that was Al Qaeda.
And for a few days, it looked like that was happening. Bush seemed to recover from the initial faux-pas in the junior school and took on some air of Presidential authority, something sorely lacking. The US were talking to people; co-ordinating intelligence reports with India, Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and other countries who wished either to actively assist in hunting down Al Qaeda or distancing themselves from them. Military strikes on the Taliban in Afghanistan, who had for years revolted the western world with their ultra-hard-line extremism and their open support of Al Qaeda, were seen as an unfortunate thing but a necessary thing. And when the Taliban were "defeated" and Afghanistan liberated, most of the world rejoiced.
But then cracks started to show. Prisoners taken from Afghanistan were branded "illegal combatants" rather than POWs and subjected to degrading behaviour. Our country should be ashamed of that still. The photos from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo disgusted many, and enraged huge swathes of the Middle East. Documents came to light that showed the role the CIA played in training up Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders in terrorist and insurgency techniques in the 1980s to counter the Russians in Afghanistan, specifically that showed Donald Rumsfeld's role in this. Bush used his perceived world support to launch Gulf War 2, to finish the job the Liberals didn't allow Daddy to do first time round. His administration, to be blunt, lied about the threat Saddam Hussein posed to the world, and although they stopped short of staging an Iraqi attack on Saudi Arabia or Kuwait this was no different from the web of lies and deceit that surrounded the German claims about Poland in July/August 1939 (yes, this is a direct comparison with the Nazis, 1:1 has been reached). Not only was this war waged for a lie, it was, like the German invasion of Russia in 1941, a war too far. The US was not capable of waging a war in Iraq and simultaneously finishing the job in Afghanistan. Hence, Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders managed to escape while Iraq was pounded.
The consequences of all this has been all to clear in recent weeks and months; in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda is still at large and the Taliban are, if not resurgent then at the very least still holding on; Iraq is a horrendous fudge, possibly even worse than the most cynical watchers could have feared back in 2003. Israel has taken a leaf from the US hard-line approach, with similarly productive results. Thanks to all this, Iran is now probably the most influential country in the entire Middle East, possibly even in the entire Muslim world; and, while the jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan remain undone, the US is talking about the possibilities of a war on Iran in the near future.
Bush has not only lost the support he had in the days and weeks following 9/11, he has managed to push most of the neutral countries away, and even the "friendly" countries have been at least starting to distance themselves from the hard-line war-mongering Bush & co have been parading for the past 5 years. Bush has actively entrenched US international policy into a "Them & Us" mode which will take years, possibly decades, to heal.
That's the facts. You want to take issue with me do so, but to come back with vacuous comments like "You're an idiot" shows nothing more than ignorance.
Great post Frostbite...
It's important to remember those who died on 9/11 - but also to reflect on the consequences of that day.
This is from the Independent newspaper in London:
The bitter legacy of 9/11
2,973 Total number of people killed (excluding the 19 hijackers) in the September 11, 2001 attacks
72,000 Estimated number of civilians killed worldwide since September 11, 2001 as a result of the war on terror
2 Number of years since US intelligence had any credible lead to Osama bin Laden's whereabouts
2,932 Total number of US servicemen and women killed in Afghanistan and Iraq since September 2001
1,248 Number of published books relating to the September 11 attacks
$119m Ticket sales for anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11
$40bn Airline industry losses since September 2001
2009 Date when the official memorial will open at the World Trade Centre site
0 Hours of intelligence training provided to new FBI agents before 9/11. Now they get 24.
91 per cent Terror cases from FBI and others that US Justice Dept declined to prosecute in first eight months of 2006
11 Weeks the 9/11 commission's final report was top of New York Times' non-fiction best-seller list
117 Number of UK service personnel killed in Iraq since invasion
40 Number of UK personnel killed in Afghanistan since invasion
7 per cent People in UK who think US-led war on terror is being won, according to YouGov
1 Those charged in US with a crime in connection with 9/11
455 Number of detainees at Guantanamo Bay
77 per cent Percentage of people in the UK who believe Tony Blair's Middle East policy has made Britain a terrorist target (YouGov)
4,000 Number of UK troops left in Iraq after British-controlled provinceshanded back to Baghdad
18 The number of times that undercover investigators with fake IDs have breezed through US border checkpoints in a test by the Government Accountability Office
$8bn The amount the US will spend this year on hunting Bin Laden and other terrorists
