Can Bush's Three Wars Come To An End?

by Franz Schurmann

Furthermore, when we invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003, our president did not explain why he suddenly switched away from pursuing Osama bin-Laden, the alleged master culprit of 9/11, to another master criminal, Saddam Hussein, who had, as President Bush just admitted, nothing to do with 9/11.

As the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq continue alongside the global war on terror, American soldiers and citizens are getting tired -- not because their patriotism has waned, but because our leaders have not been candid about how we got embroiled in these three wars in the first place.

Overseas media express astonishment that the White House still has not given full explanations about the three wars.

On Sept. 11, 2003, the Arabic-language London-based As-Sharq al-Awsat (ASAA) wrote, "the FBI employed 7,000 agents who carried out 8,000 interviews, the biggest such operation in American history. But the FBI still remains 'confused' about the main question." The main question, according to the ASAA, is: "Who helped the 9/11 hijackers within the USA?"

On the same day, the Russian-language Pravda wrote, "Whoever was responsible for 9/11 will remain a subject of controversy for a long time to come." Both papers agreed that the White House's and the Pentagon's favorite version is that "Al Qaeda" is the culprit. But the ASAA wrote, "Al Qaeda carries out actions, but doesn't talk about them."

In its Sept. 12 issue, the Washington Post noted that weeks after they occurred, experts still do not know who bombed the Jordan embassy, the UN headquarters and the An-Najaf mosque, all three in Iraq. Was or was not the silent Al Qaeda responsible for one, two or all three of these terrorist actions?

The Qatari TV station Al Jazeera recently broadcast a video done in part last April or May, which showed Osama bin Laden and his second in command Ayman al-Zuwahiri. Both accepted responsibility for 9/11. Yet why didn't one or both of them boast about this feat earlier?

Mary Anne Weaver in the Atlantic Monthly provides some indication why. She writes: "The volume of 'chatter' intercepted between various Islamist militant groups had convinced U.S. intelligence officials that Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda was very much alive."

Earlier, the two terrorist leaders were still fleeing from American forces. The fact that they are speaking out now about 9/11 might indicate that they feel they are in more of a position of strength.

The Al Qaeda revolutionaries see chances for "regime change" in western Asia and northeastern Africa. In Afghanistan and Iraq, they see that American bombs can decimate many fighters without any political gain for themselves. They also learned from the Taliban, who ruled for six years without a state and army, how to keep peace and unity with tens of thousands of Islamic students roaming through the countryside preaching to a tough rural people.

Although the Pentagon still talks about Saddam's ties to Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda sheds no tears for Saddam and his secular Baath party. President Bush's recent switching from bin Laden to Saddam as Enemy No. 1 in fact gives both sides a common enemy.

But that does not mean Al Qaeda has given up on its original mission. During the War on Afghanistan, many Americans found it hard to distinguish between Al Qaeda and the Taliban, but in fact their ideological gap is large.

The followers of Osama have as their final goal the creation of a universal Muslim community. The Taliban are concentrating on driving American forces out of Afghanistan and then restoring a new version of their rule from 1996 to late 2001.

The Taliban got their ideology from a Muslim school in Deoband, India. There they learned they must first liberate their own people. While the Taliban recruit mainly from Afghanistan's many ethnic groups, Al Qaeda recruits from all over the world.

During the aftershocks of 9/11 America thought only of vengeance. And since the Taliban were bin Laden's hosts, the huge air attacks seemed justifiable to Americans and many non-Americans as well.

If bin Laden and Mullah Omar had been killed or captured, America and the world may have closed on the book on the War on Terror and the War in Afghanistan. And there never would have been a War on Iraq. So why did our president make a turnaround and launch a third war, when the other two had hardly been resolved?

Two weeks before the second 9/11 anniversary the Paris Le Monde headlined, "The War on Terror is an American failure." The body of the piece enumerated one failure after another, ending with, "American public opinion is beginning to wonder why they elected George W. Bush."

But when President Bush admitted that Saddam Hussein did not have proven links to Al Qaeda, he started to unlink all three wars. And, hopefully, he may yet turn around and move backwards, the way other presidents have done when they realized they too had raced into unexplained wars.