From tragedy to disaster

Five years after the Al Qaeda's spectacular attack on the United States, the ensuing "war on terror" has gone badly wrong. The Taliban-run government in Afghanistan has been ousted, but Osama bin Laden remains free to roam around in Pakistan, and Afghanistan's affairs are spinning out of control. Saddam Hussein has been overthrown in Iraq, but he never had any link with the terrorists and the neo-conservative dream of establishing a functioning democracy in Arab West Asia has given way to the nightmare of near-civil war in Iraq. There have been no further strikes like those on New York's World Trade Centre, but the Islamist terror-creating network is alive and well and has struck in London and Madrid, Bali and Mumbai. President Bush claimed last week that the US was safer now than in the past, but his country's record on the treatment of prisoners at Abu Gharaib and Guantanamo Bay as well as in the CIA's secret prisons is shameful and illegal, and elements of its Patriot Act (enacted post-9/11) raise questions about civil liberties.

The world was united behind the US after 9/11. Much of the same world is now hostile to or wary of US foreign policy initiatives. Indeed, the US ability to intervene militarily in any other part of the world has been hobbled by the Iraq misadventure. Countries like North Korea and Iran have concluded that the only way to avoid Saddam Hussein's fate is to go nuclear, and there seems to be little that Washington can do to stop them. Even the first step of sanctions against Iran cannot get taken because Russia and China will have none of it.

The mood in Arab Street is more anti-US than ever before, if that were possible, and President Bush's support of Israel's action in Lebanon has only made matters worse. It is not just the Arabs; Japanese citizens who grew up dreaming of visiting the US now say they do not want to visit that country. And Pew's research into attitudes around the world suggests that India and the Philippines are the only two countries whose people are well disposed to the US. What this means is that a unique diplomatic opportunity has been thoughtlessly squandered.

A lot of this disaster scenario is inevitably being blamed on President Bush""most of all for getting into a needless and now endless war on false pretexts; and then for trampling on human rights, only to retrace his steps in the wake of judicial reproof. History is unlikely to be kind to Mr Bush, but the important question is what should now be done. There are no easy answers, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the US has to change its international stance. It simply has to get more even-handed on Israel and Palestine, it has to show greater realism when looking at what it can hope to achieve in Iraq, it has to focus on the real targets (like Osama bin Laden) and give up neo-conservative fantasies, and it has to bring much greater competence to executing its policies""all of it designed to dry up the breeding grounds of Islamist terrorism. None of this seems likely under President Bush, and it is not certain that any of it can happen under his successor. In short, the "war on terror" is not about to go away.