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	This is no way to wage the War on Terror by Amin Saikal The Age Australia   July 2005   Actions such as the war on Iraq have alienated many ordinary Muslims.   The terrorist carnage in London has once again put the spotlight on al-Qaeda as the most likely perpetrator. Prime Minister Tony Blair, President George Bush and their allies around the world have reaffirmed their determination to continue the war on terrorism until a final victory. Yet the London tragedy also reminds us that the war on terror has so far done little to seriously impair the operational capacity of al-Qaeda and its associated groups. How resilient is al-Qaeda and how inadequate has the war on terror been?   Al-Qaeda has certainly proved to be more self-generating and robust than could have been anticipated at the start of the war on terror more than three-and-a-half years ago. The organisation has become highly franchised and dispersed, capable of adapting to changing conditions and circumventing enemy tactics.   The fact that its top leaders, Osama bin Laden and his strategist deputy Aiman al-Zawahiri, have become fugitives seems to have made little difference. They continue to serve as significant symbols of inspiration to galvanise some Muslims to respond to their call.   Although Muslims are very diverse, two clusters appear to have become increasingly receptive to al-Qaeda''''s causes, with a willingness to serve as the network''''s operatives and foot soldiers.   One cluster is made up of radical Islamists, who believe in Islam as an ideology of political and social transformation and the use of violence under special circumstances to achieve their objectives. They are not all narrowly educated and unworldly as has often been claimed. A good number of them have evidently come from well-educated and privileged backgrounds.   The other cluster is made up of neo-fundamentalists, who are very narrowly educated within a particular social and cultural setting as defined by certain conservative Islamic leaders. While a great deal of ideological overlap exists between the radical Islamists and neo-fundamentalists, the latter are far more inward-looking, discriminatory and xenophobic than the former. A prime example of this group was the Taliban, whose remnants are still active in Afghanistan. Elements of this group are recruited as al-Qaeda''''s foot soldiers, often at the behest of radical Islamists.   Both sides have resorted to extremism, each reinforcing the position of the other."   These two clusters constitute a small minority compared with moderate Islamists, who share part of the radicals'''' political platform but reject violence and are open to inter-faith dialogue, peaceful co-existence and good relations with the West. However, they can always draw on the political and social deprivation of Muslims, whether in Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Pakistan, and their disempowerment and humiliation at the hands of foreigners, whether in Palestine, Iraq or Afghanistan, to widen their circles of popular support and recruitment among ordinary Muslims everywhere.   Meanwhile, the way the US and its allies have sought to combat the radical Islamists and neo-fundamentalists has boosted Muslim support and sympathy for them.   The war on terror has so far focused primarily on the symptoms rather than the deep causes underpinning al-Qaeda''''s resilience. It has given primacy to the use of military force over identifying and addressing the root causes of al-Qaeda''''s terrorism in order to delegitimise its actions and dry up its sources of moral, human and economic nourishment.   It was a fatal mistake by the Bush Administration and its British and Australian allies to invade Iraq. Instead of concentrating on rapidly securing and rebuilding Afghanistan, resolving the Palestinian problem as a major source of Muslim discontent towards the US and working with democratic forces in the Muslim world to build democracy from within, they diverted their resources to creating a new theatre of conflict for none other than geopolitical ambitions.   The US mismanagement of post-Saddam Iraq, together with many instances of American prisoner abuses and human rights violations against the backdrop of mounting carnage and destruction in Iraq, has created an unprecedented backlash in the Arab/Muslim world. This has enabled al-Qaeda and many groups in its name to fight the Americans and their allies from a wider base of popular sympathy.   It has become clear to most Muslims that Iraq was invaded not to liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam''''s dictatorship or to destroy his weapons of mass destruction capability. If those were the reasons the US could have acted much earlier, instead of courting the dictator as a potential ally as it did in the 1980s.   The war on terror has certainly lost its focus, and many Muslims are left wondering whether the war is against them and their religion or against a few misguided malcontents.   When Blair declared last year that the future of relations between the West and the Muslim world would be decided in Iraq, he in effect echoed Osama Bin Laden''''s wishes. It appears that both sides have resorted to extremism, each reinforcing the position of the other.   Unless Washington and its allies rethink their war on terror strategy to address the root causes of international terrorism, the future looks very grim. A sound political strategy is badly needed to deal with those causes of terrorism that defy military solutions and to rebuild bridges of understanding and trust with Muslims as the best way to delegitimise the position of al-Qaeda and its associated groups.   (Professor Amin Saikal is director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University and author of Islam and the West: Conflict or Co-operation?)
	Put Away the Flags by Howard Zinn Progressive Media Project USA   On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.   Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?   These ways of thinking -- cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on -- have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.   National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours -- huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction -- what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.   Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.   That self-deception started early. When the first English settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts Bay and were resisted, the violence escalated into war with the Pequot Indians. The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible. The Puritans cited one of the Psalms, which says: "Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the Earth for thy possession."   When the English set fire to a Pequot village and massacred men, women and children, the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather said: "It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day."   On the eve of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared it our "Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence." After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York Herald announced: "We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country."   It was always supposedly for benign purposes that our country went to war.   We invaded Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines shortly after, as President McKinley put it, "to civilize and Christianize" the Filipino people.   As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying: "The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness."   We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.   Yet they are victims, too, of our government''s lies.   How many times have we heard President Bush tell the troops that if they die, if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it is for "liberty," for "democracy"?   One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.   And nationalism is given a special virulence when it is said to be blessed by Providence. Today we have a president, invading two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign trail in 2004 that God speaks through him.   We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history. We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.
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