Nicholas Barrett

Nine years after the attacks on the World Trace Centre you will find few people who retrospectively support the response of the Bush Administration.   Yes it was the worse attack ever to take place of American soil but the USA has never been occupied like Europe or bombed like London.  Instead of seeing 9/11 for what it was, an attack by a small group of radicals.  Bush and Blair declared a war on terror, how do win a war against a noun?  How do you win a war against a tactic?  They allowed the terrorists to throw the USA and the UK into a war where victory was undefinable? 

On September the 12th 2001 George Bush told Bin Laden that “he can run but he could not hide”, then he ran and hid.  Nine years later I’m left to ask myself, what did Bin Laden want to achieve from the attack?  An America living in fear of Islamic terrorism?  An America all too willing to retaliate thus granting extremists greater recruiting power?  An America increasingly reviled by Muslims around the world?  Did they defy Al-Qaeda or give them everything they wanted on a plate?  In 2010 the arab world despises the west, the western world is to intolerant to see the difference between moderate and fundamentalist muslims and ground zero is still a gaping hole in the ground.  The Americans have played in Bin Laden’s hand so much that next time he hears a 9/11 conspiracy, he just going to be annoyed that someone else is getting the credit.

18 months ago the Obama administration, in a white house memo quietly ended the war on terror by urging staff to drop the phase.   I wonder who won.