U.S. continues humming contradictory tune

U.S. continues humming contradictory tune

Harry Bhaskara, Staff Writer, The Jakarta Post, New York

Public attention here has mostly shifted to the U.S.-led
military attack on Afghanistan, two months after the Sept. 11
attacks; and both the government and the people are slowly
gaining their composure amid uncertainties and confusion in the
immediate future.

An Iranian student who studied in San Francisco said: "I don't
support terrorism but neither the bombing. On the social level,
people are people. They couldn't do anything about this, people
in Afghanistan are suffering so much."

The fall of Kabul Tuesday into the hands of Northern Alliance
fighters marks a new era of war in the troubled country rocked by
years of war with Russia and the civil war that followed.

Afghanistan is not alien ground for the United States.

In the words of Dr. DeVere Pentony, former dean of
international studies at San Francisco State University, the U.S.
had no strategic plan when it left Afghanistan in the mid 1990s
and let it descend into anarchy.

Unless United Nations peacekeeping forces are immediately
deployed, the world is risking an historical repeat of past
Afghan tragedies.

Osama bin Laden is but the stepchild of American intelligence,
groomed in Afghanistan about a decade ago to fight the Russians.
From this perspective, the Sept. 11 attacks were, partly,
homegrown.

The recent BBC television reports that President George W.
Bush might have past business relations with bin Laden's family
members has further complicated matters.

Such is the irony of a country in which foreign visitors would
feel totally accepted right from the first day they arrive
because of the congeniality and empathy of the average American.

Yet, this sincerity of an open society somehow does not
translate into the country's foreign policies. The Central
Intelligence Agency, whose moves are often felt as double
standards by many countries, mocking its famed democracy at home,
has earned no less than a notorious image.

Bringing terrorists to their knees can be accomplished by
other means such as through diplomatic, humanitarian, legal and
financial means, exactly the way the U.S. described its approach
in the campaign's early stages.

Continuous bombing, especially during the holy month of
Ramadhan and the upcoming winter, would not be perceived well in
many Muslim countries and would risk many more innocent lives.
In the week following the Sept. 11 attacks Newsweek magazine
reportedly received a total of 12,000 letters from the U.S. and
abroad, including those from European non-Muslims, expressing
resentment toward the United States.

The question of why Saudi-born terrorist bin Laden, accused of
directing the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon, seems to be more successful in conveying his messages
from a cave in Afghanistan compared to President George W. Bush
from the White House, is a disturbing one.

Bush has reasserted that the war against global terrorism,
under his leadership, is not one between the West and Islam. In
the recent past the U.S. has fought in defense of Muslims in
Kuwait, Kosovo and Bosnia Herzegovina.

And yet protests against the U.S. in Pakistan, Nigeria, Egypt,
Palestine and Indonesia has somehow reflected that bin Laden's
calls to fight the "infidels" has wide acceptance.

As leader of the global fight against global terrorism, the
U.S. must find the answer; the more so when Bush claims that
Islam is not the enemy in the war on terrorism.

But the newly issued U.S. visa restrictions on Muslim males
from 25 countries, according to reports on Monday, has undermined
the Bush claim. This could be a political set back to Bush's
administration in the Muslim world.

Despite all these uncertainties, voices of reason do prevail
in the U.S.

"We will be studying this case (the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks) even 12 months from now," said Matthew P. Daley, deputy
assistant secretary at the State Department in Washington.

Daley holds that being a free society, the U.S. will always be
vulnerable.

"We will never be able to protect ourselves from terrorism.
Even a totalitarian state can't protect itself from terrorism."
Answering a question asked by many -- sound evidence of bin
Laden's involvement in the crime -- Daley said that a good
portion of it comes from intelligence sources.

Hence, once the evidence is made public the sources might end
up being killed. The second reason was the American legal system.
"At some point we will have to put all this information before a
court," Daley said, adding that in case of information changes,
what could be admitted in U.S. courts could sometimes be
complicated.

However, Daley says, much of this information has been shared
with the U.S.'s allies.

The writer was a participant of the recent Fall 2001 Thomas
Jefferson program of the Honolulu-based East West Center.