Only Israel did not get the memo

Gary Younge reflekterar i the Guardian över hur fruktlöst "kriget mot terrorismen" är och varför det är ett krig predestinerat att förloras. Inte bara förloras förresten, utan kriget i sig skapar den "terrorism" man försöker motverka. Skapat i USA, men exporterat över hela världen, och med Israel som en av terrorkrigets starkaste försvarare:

"There is nothing particularly American about this. Like Nike or McDonald's, the war on terror may have started here but it quickly got branded and went global. In the months after the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, everybody wanted a piece of the action. President George Bush found himself in illustrious company. Among others, Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, and India's former prime minster Atal Bihari Vajpayee sought to ride his coattails to their own version of violent despotism.

However, few nations pursued it with such consistent zeal as Israel. "You in America are in a war against terror," Ariel Sharon said after he left the White House following suicide bombings in Haifa and Jerusalem in December 2001. "We in Israel are in a war against terror - it's the same war."

The trouble is that over the last seven years, the war on terror has been thoroughly discredited - not only morally, but militarily and strategically. Nobody listens to moderates, let alone to reason, when bombs are falling and people are dying. That is as true for the rockets that have killed a handful of Israelis as it is for the barrage of bombs and now tanks that have killed hundreds of Palestinians.

By erasing any prospect of negotiation, the violence did not weaken extremists but emboldened them. Israel may want to boost the moderate Fatah faction which governs the West Bank now. But Hamas's electoral rise was a direct result of the contempt the Israeli's showed them in the past.

Meanwhile, the Iraq war has left Iran - the primary sponsor of both Hezbollah and Hamas - with far more influence in the region than they would have had. On almost every front in almost every part of the world, including in the US, the war on terror is now seen as a colossal mistake. Only Israel did not get the memo. And it is now set to fail for the same reasons that America has."

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