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Five Years Later
September 11, 2006
As a nation, we remember where we were when terrorists struck the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. People around the country are gathering to remember the thousands of people killed. But today, we are also reminded that President Bush has failed to fulfill his promise to make the world safer. On Dec. 11, 2001, Bush stated, "In time, this war will end. But our remembrance never will." Five years later, Bush's war on terror, the war in Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq, have not ended. Global terrorist attacks have increased, Osama bin Laden is still on the loose, and 86 percent of national security and terrorism experts believe the "global war on terror" has made the world more dangerous for the American people. As the New York Times notes, when the nation's leaders stop and reflect on 9/11 today, it "would be miraculous if the best of our leaders did something larger—expressed grief and responsibility for the bad path down which we've gone, and promised to work together to turn us in a better direction."
- National security and terrorism experts dispute Bush’s claim that we are safer today than pre-9/11. In his weekend radio address, Bush again stated that we are "safer today" than we were before 9/11. But a recent survey by the Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy magazine found not only that 86 percent of national security experts believe the world is becoming more dangerous, but that 84 percent believe the United States is losing the war on terror. Seventy-nine percent of the experts anticipate a terror attack on the scale of 9/11 will occur in the United States by the end of 2011. "Even the most sanguine optimist cannot yet conclude we are winning," John F. Lehman Jr., a former Navy secretary under President Reagan, warned in a recent article for the U.S. Naval Institute. Just 14 percent of Americans feel more safe now than they did five years ago, the same amount who believe the threat of terrorism has decreased since 9/11.
- Those who aided Al Qaeda in attacking America are once again gaining ground in Afghanistan. Nearly five years after the Taliban was overthrown, "the fighting in Afghanistan is the bloodiest since" the beginning of the war. A violent Taliban resurgence has killed more than 1,600 people over the past four months, including many American and NATO soldiers. In July, a senior British military commander in Afghanistan described the country's situation as "close to anarchy." Opium production is also up 60 percent from last year. Osama bin Laden remains at large and the trail on him has gone "stone cold," nearly five years after Bush said he wanted him "dead or alive" and more than a year after Vice President Cheney said he had a "pretty good idea" where bin Laden was hiding.
- The Bush administration squandered an opportunity to show true global leadership. Strength. Resolve. Unity. Leadership. After the 9/11 attacks, Bush promised that the United States would lead the world in the war on terror. Leadership takes more than unilateral shows of power, but Bush's strategy hasn't gone much beyond that tactic. Seventy-seven percent of Europeans in a recent German Marshall Fund survey disapproved of Bush's handling of international affairs, compared with 65 percent in 2002. After the 9/11 attacks, there was an opportunity to unite the world in combating terrorism, but the administration’s policies have served to alienate much of the world. Perhaps one good to come out of this day of reflection will be a redirection of the administration’s policies.
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