Is the U.S. winning the war on terror? Well, to be clich?, it all depends on what your definition of "terror" is. To establish whether or not we are winning, we must have a definition of who the enemy is. And it's not "terror." It is impossible to win a war against a concept, and "terror" is just that. Yet our leaders claim that this is possible. And like their neo-conservative forefathers (Robert McNamara, Barry Goldwater, the entire Nixon administration), they justify their shady military interventions with the most abstract of terms such as "freedom," "democracy," and "civilization." Vietnam taught us that you can't bomb away a concept (communism), no matter how many villages are destroyed.
So who is the enemy? The fact is that we are at war with Islamic militants, since that's who attacked us on 9-11, and that's who continues to attack our allies. We are not engaged in a war on "terror" because "terror" is a relative term. After all, three-fourths of the world sees the U.S. and Israel as the biggest state sponsors of "terror." We are engaged in a battle against Islamic extremists. Despite the "victories" in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are losing the war against the Islamic militants for a few reasons-the principle being that our commander-in-chief isn't capable or willing to win this war. His family's fortune comes from oil, and whether we as Americans want to admit it or not, every time we pump gas into our cars we send money to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Qaeda. This happens because our good friends-I mean the Bush family's good friends-the Saudis, are the single biggest financier of violent Islamic organizations in the world. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, and the Bush administration has demonstrated its desire to cover up for Saudi Arabia in many ways.
I can give three examples where the Bush administration compromised national security to cover for the Saudis: 1) Within days of 9-11, the White House personally gave the OK for several high-profile Saudis who were living in the U.S., including members of the bin Laden family, to leave the country in a private jet with no questions asked. 2) In May of 2002, Israel was occupying much of the West Bank in response to a series of suicide attacks committed against them by Islamic militants. The Saudi prince came at this time to America for a stay at Bush's Texas ranch. He stated that the goal of his trip was to convince the President to tell Israel to pull out of the territories. After a private chat, the President emerged with his arm around the prince, proclaiming Saudi Arabia to be a "close friend." Directly following this, he called on Israel to pull out of the occupied territories-exactly what the crown prince had demanded. Never mind that there is evidence known to our government that the Saudi government had ties to some of the 9-11 hijackers. Never mind that it's illegal in Saudi Arabia for a non-Muslim to step foot on their soil. Never mind they don't allow American products to be sold in Saudi shops. But this is a "friend." And to prove our loyalty to them, we invaded their mortal enemy: Saddam Hussein's secular Iraq. 3) The INS began a program a year ago of registering all immigrants from a list of nations including Iran, Yemen and other terrorist hot spots. Strangely missing from the list was Saudi Arabia, the nation that supplied 15 of the 19 hijackers.
Bush has made us less safe by protecting the Saudis. But how can we blame him? His family, as well as most of his biggest campaign contributors', fortune exists in Saudi investments. Yet Saudi Arabia is the biggest source of Islamic terrorism. They fund radical Muslim religious schools called "Madrassa" all over the Muslim world where children are taught the basics of Wahabbism (the extreme form of Islam that is practiced in Saudi Arabia and is preached by bin Laden) like hating Jews and women. We were attacked by Wahabbi Muslim militants on 9-11. Calling Saudi Arabia a friend is flat out treason. With a president who favors his family and friend's investments over the safety of his own citizens, how can we expect anything other than failure in this war? Having an oil man fighting a war in the Middle East is like having a cocaine addict for drug czar.
Winning the war against Islamic extremists will take much sacrifice because the strength of our enemies comes from their ability to give up everything, including their lives, for their cause. The only place Bush has asked us to sacrifice is in having to wait in line at the airports. He asks nothing of the richest citizens, who are, oddly enough, those who profit the most from such treasonous arrangements with countries like Saudi Arabia. It should worry us that the President had to lie and scrape for evidence to come up with a reason to bomb a country in the Middle East after 9-11 (Iraq-imminent threat?). Of all countries, he picked the one that was least likely to be supporting bin Laden. Bush could have just told the truth and bombed Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Syria. If he had, I would say today that we are winning. Unfortunately, the President's refusal to admit that certain friends of ours had a direct part in attacking us strengthens our enemies and weakens us immensely. We show the world that the U.S. is a nation of fools who bows its head and blindly prays at the church of greed and self-indulgence, even to its own detriment. We would rather let 3,000 of our own citizens be murdered than pay a higher price for gasoline. And that's why we're losing.
