Friday, March 2, 2007

The War on Terror Is the Leading Cause of Terrorism



An interesting article on AlterNet. Studies prove that Bush's so called "War on Terror", is actually galvanizing resistance in the muslim world, and causing more terrorist attacks. An excerpt from the article:

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 celebre' 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."

Here's the study that Mother Jones Magazine Commissioned. Not only has the "War on Terror" increased terrorism, it has also lost us support from the more moderate muslims. Mother Jones reports:

One measure of the impact of the Iraq War is the precipitous drop in public support for the United States in Muslim countries. Jordan, a key U.S. ally, saw popular approval for the United States drop from 25 percent in 2002 to 1 percent in 2003. In Lebanon during the same period, favorable views of the United States dropped from 30 percent to 15 percent, and in the world’s largest Muslim country, Indonesia, favorable views plummeted from 61 percent to 15 percent. Disliking the United States does not make you a terrorist, but clearly the pool of Muslims who dislike the United States has grown by hundreds of millions since the Iraq War began. The United States’ plummeting popularity does not suggest active popular support for jihadist terrorists but it does imply some sympathy with their anti-American posture, which means a significant swath of the Muslim population cannot be relied on as an effective party in counter-terrorism/insurgency measures. And so, popular contempt for U.S. policy has become a force multiplier for Islamist militants.

It's not enough for George W. Bush to just screw things up in America. He has expanded his vision, and now he is screwing things up for us in the rest of the world. He has to be the worst president ever. His motto should be, to paraphrase Caesar:

"I came, I saw, I f***ed it all up."

Isn't great to have one of the greatest idiots in history as president?