Losing the war on terror.

A new survey of 100 top foreign policy experts, conducted by FOREIGN POLICY and the Center for American Progress, has found that 84% of them think that the US is losing the war on terror.

The survey included people who have served as secretary of state, national security advisor, retired top commanders from the U.S. military, seasoned members of the intelligence community, and distinguished academics and journalists. Nearly 80 percent of the index participants have worked in the U.S. government—of these more than half were in the executive branch, one third in the military, and 17 percent in the intelligence community.

Eighty-six percent of the index’s experts see a world today that is growing more dangerous for Americans. Overall, they agree that the U.S. government is falling short in its homeland security efforts. More than 8 in 10 expect an attack on the scale of 9/11 within a decade. These dark conclusions appear to stem from the experts’ belief that the U.S. national security apparatus is in serious disrepair. “Foreign-policy experts have never been in so much agreement about an administration’s performance abroad,” says Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and an index participant. “The reason is that it’s clear to nearly all that Bush and his team have had a totally unrealistic view of what they can accomplish with military force and threats of force.”

“We are losing the war on terror because we are treating the symptoms and not the cause,” says index participant Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. “[O]ur insistence that Islamic fundamentalist ideology has replaced communist ideology as the chief enemy of our time ... feeds al Qaeda’s vision of the world.

Terrorism is a tactic. It is not possible, or sensible, to wage a war on a tactic.

The reality is that the US was attacked because of it's policies in the Middle East, a fact that Bush has gone to great lengths to disguise from his citizens.

However, despite his public utterances that bin Laden and his cohorts, "hate our freedom and resent our way of life", it is possible to discern from Bush's actions since 9-11 proof that he is well aware of what this is actually about.

Bin Laden made two key demands. That the US remove their troops from the country of the Two Holy Places, and that the US use it's influence to stop Israeli persecution of the Palestinians.

In April 2003, with very little fanfare, the US removed it's troops from Saudi Arabia, marking the first time since 1991 that the US had not had a military presence in that country.

Bush is also, famously, the first American President ever to call for the formation of a viable state of Palestine.

So, it would be fair to read from this that Bush knows what this is actually all about.

Terrorism, as the British found in Northern Ireland, is essentially a tool of propaganda. The terrorist wants to unite people around a perceived injustice. In the case of Ireland, it was the treatment meted out to Ireland's Catholic population, in the case of bin Laden it is the plight of the Palestinians, the number one concern of the Arab street.

In both cases though, the terrorist has similar aims. He wants to force the government to react and, hopefully, to overreact. This, he hopes, will convince moderates of the justness of his cause and the unreasonableness of his enemy.

The British played into the IRA's hands for years by meting out internment and shoot to kill policies, all of which only succeeded in swelling the IRA's ranks.

Bush is going down a similar path with the invasion of Iraq and the creation of Gulags like Guantanamo Bay, all of which merely serve as recruiting stations for al Qaeda.

This is because, although he appears to understand the motives behind al Qaeda's attacks - even as he tries to hide this fact from the US public- Bush appears to have misunderstood what they hope to achieve by attacking in this way.

The aim is not the killing of people, nor is it to strike terror into their hearts. Those are side effects.

The aim is to provoke a reaction. To force the government to react.

The principle can be applied even to supporters of non violence such as Ghandi. When Ghandi marched across India for 24 days in order to make salt, he did so to force the British to react. When asked what he would do if they did not react, Ghandi replied that he would continue provoking until they did, saying "They are not in charge, we are."

Bush, by reacting in the way he has, is playing into bin Laden's hands.

The alarming rise of anti-Americanism across the globe would suggest that, in the war of propaganda, Bush is losing.

The US must change their disastrous tactics.

Bush must fight bin Laden in the war of ideas. This means he must correct the injustice being meted out to the Palestinians. To do so would deprive bin Laden of his greatest recruiting tool and leave him with only his more extreme religious arguments, around which the majority of Muslims would not rally.

The more Bush sees this as a war that can be won by force alone, the more he plays to his opponents strengths.

That's why he's losing the War on Terror.

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Tags: War on Terror, US, losing, Bush, bin Laden, British, Ireland, Ghandi,