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Tomgram: Crusading in the Arc of Instability

George Bush's Crusading Scorecard (2001-2007)

The Look of a War against Islam
By Tom Engelhardt

Just five days after the September 11th attacks in 2001, in a Q and A with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, a President with a new mission, a new cause, and a new purpose in life told the American people that, though they had to "go back to work tomorrow," they should now know that they were facing a "new kind of evil." He added, "And we understand. And the American people are beginning to understand. This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while."

This crusade, this war on terrorism. It had such a ring to it; in the Arab world, of course, it was a ring many centuries old and deeply disturbing. And it came so naturally, so easily off the President's tongue (though it took days of backtracking by his spokesmen and prominent presidential references to "the peaceful teachings of Islam" perverted by "a fringe form of Islamic extremism" to begin to make up for it). But that little "slip" of the tongue spoke volumes. It signaled that George W. Bush was already in his own heroic dream world and, only those few days after the 9/11 attacks, had both a "crusade" on the brain and "victory" in that crusade firmly in mind. As a result, he made this promise to the American people: "It is time for us to win the first war of the 21st century decisively, so that our children and our grandchildren can live peacefully into the 21st century."

Now, here we are, just over five years further into the 21st century, and the President, who only nine months ago was still proudly (if a little desperately) trumpeting his "strategy for victory" in Iraq, now speaks vaguely about "success," or about a "victory," no longer decisive, that "will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved… [with a] surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship." And when it comes to our "children and grandchildren living peacefully into the 21st century," tell that to the 21,500 Americans about to be "surged" into the murderous streets and alleys of Baghdad.

As for that "Global War on Terror," with the fifth anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo as the Devil's Island of the twenty-first century just past; after all the extraordinary renditions, the waterboardings, the perverse tortures and perverse photos that went with them; after the "ghost prisoners" and the network of secret CIA prisons set up around the world; after that Delta Force intelligence agent stepped off a plane from Afghanistan (as journalist Ron Suskind tells the story in his book The One Percent Doctrine) with the suspected head of al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri in a "US Government" metal box (it was somebody else's); after the CIA was denounced throughout Europe for its illegal rendition flights and with its agents just now heading toward trial in Italy for a kidnapping operation on the streets of Milan; after neither Osama bin Laden, nor Zawahiri were ever apprehended; after woebegone wannabes, the innocent, and small fry of every sort were turned into Public Enemies numbers 1-1,000; after, in the name of national safety from terror, illegal spying and warrantless surveillance, as well as military intelligence activities of many kinds, made their way into "the Homeland"; after the Taliban rose from the grave and the original al-Qaeda (as opposed to the name-stealing al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia or other al-Qaeda wannabes elsewhere on our planet) found a relatively comfortable homeland, a "safe haven" along the Pakistani tribal borderlands near Afghanistan; after all of that, the GWOT (as it so inelegantly came to be known) could easily be renamed something like the "misfire on terror" (MOT) or even, with an eye to what's developed in Iraq and elsewhere, the "engine for ter! ror" (EF T).

But if we skip the promise of victory as well as of safety for our children and grandchildren, if we look the other way when it comes to our losing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, if we ignore the militarization of our country and the eroding of constitutionally guaranteed rights, if we only focus on that other part of the Presidential vision from those post-9/11 days, the one that wasn't scripted for George Bush, that just slipped out easy as pie -- that promise of an American "crusade"… well, call that a "success" of sorts. It may, in fact, be his only success. After all, in a bare few years, he and his collaborators have managed to create the look of a genuine "clash of civilizations," of, in fact, a war against Islam. In the eyes of many, the United States is now, indeed, a crusader nation.

Creating Instability in the Arc of Instability

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