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.