How the war on terror made the world a more terrifying place
An authoritative new US study has been looking into the effect the Iraq invasion has had on terrorism worldwide and has exposed the lie that Bush and Blair continuously parrot, claiming that there is no link between their invasion and any surge in worldwide terrorism.
This opinion is simply not supported by the facts.
The research is said to be the first to attempt to measure the "Iraq effect" on global terrorism. It found that the number killed in jihadist attacks around the world has risen dramatically since the Iraq war began in March 2003. The study compared the period between 11 September 2001 and the invasion of Iraq with the period since the invasion. The count - excluding the Arab-Israel conflict - shows the number of deaths due to terrorism rose from 729 to 5,420.
Iraq was the catalyst for a ferocious fundamentalist backlash, according to the study, which says that the number of those killed by Islamists within Iraq rose from seven to 3,122. Afghanistan, invaded by US and British forces in direct response to the September 11 attacks, saw a rise from very few before 2003 to 802 since then. In the Chechen conflict, the toll rose from 234 to 497. In the Kashmir region, as well as India and Pakistan, the total rose from 182 to 489, and in Europe from none to 297.
Two years after declaring "mission accomplished" in Iraq President Bush insisted: "If we were not fighting and destroying the enemy in Iraq, they would not be idle. They would be plotting and killing Americans across the world and within our borders. By fighting these terrorists in Iraq, Americans in uniform are defeating a direct threat to the American people."
I have always thought that Blair's claims that the Iraq war bore no relation to the terrorist attacks in London to be simply surreal, especially as one of the bombers left a tape making a direct connection between the two events.
Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the worldHe may not mention Iraq specifically by name but all but those with myopic vision get the gist of what he is saying.
And your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters.
Against even events like this, Blair has steadfastly maintained that there is no link between his actions and the revenge attacks that have taken place. And only last Month John Negroponte said he was "unsure" of whether the Iraq war was acting as a recruiting factor for al Qaeda.
Yet the report points out that the US administration's own National Intelligence Estimate on "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States" - partially declassified last October - stated that " the Iraq war has become the 'cause célèbre' for jihadists ... and is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives."
The new study, by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, argues that, on the contrary, "the Iraq conflict has greatly increased the spread of al-Qa'ida ideological virus, as shown by a rising number of terrorist attacks in the past three years from London to Kabul, and from Madrid to the Red Sea.
"Our study shows that the Iraq war has generated a stunning increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of additional terrorist attacks and civilian lives lost. Even when terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of the world have increased by more than one third."
This is actually one of those times where Bush and Blair, rather than staunchly denying the obvious, should admit the link and then ask what other course of action we would propose.
I personally would propose sorting out the situation in Israel and Palestine which I honestly believe is the rocket fuel underneath the vast majority of Muslim anger towards us. Instead, we have a US government that actively assist Israel in avoiding any meaningful negotiations and the US, EU and Israel carrying out painful sanctions against an occupied people for daring to elect a party that we disagree with as their democratic representatives.
I'm sure others would have more suggestions. What is abundantly clear however, is that the present course - if it's aim is the defeat of terrorism as opposed to the elimination of neo-con enemies - is simply not working.
Indeed, it is having the precise opposite effect of it's proposed aim. Carrying on with such a policy when it is plainly counter productive to your stated goals is simply mind staggeringly dumb.
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