Mark,
You're way off the mark there. What is true is that immediately after the 9/11 attacks the Americans used what is known as, 'the power of nightmares,' to start what became known as 'the global war on terrorism.' The nightmare being the supposed threat Al Qaeda posed to the west. And what do you do when faced with a nightmare? You wish someone would take it away. Knowing the American government had declared all out war on Al Qaeda lessened the nightmare for the American public and legitimised the second agenda of the American government, to oust Saddam Hussein from controlling the second largest oil fields on the planet and thereby removing his ability to place a stranglehold on global oil supplies and threaten western energy security and through it the economies of the west, which are totally dependant on foreign oil supplies for their very survival.
The problem that arose from that debacle was that far from reducing the threat of terrorism, perpetrated by combatants outraged at the invasion of Arab lands for western gain, the threat of terrorism has actually increased and Afghanistan, the Taliban regime and an Al Qaeda stronghold became the next target, believing that we the mighty west could bomb out of existence an opposing culture and ideology through force of arms without confronting the ideological differences and in most cases quite legitimate concerns of people who are now our sworn enemies.
It is simplistic in the extreme to suppose for one moment that killing so called terrorists, regardless of how many you kill, will wipe them out, for it is the countless dead that through their relatives and countrymen generate yet more hatred and that is why this war on terrorism will never be won and if we think for one moment that we are safer because of it then we are the fools.
Simon
