NYTimes Syndication Has anyone else following the aftermath of September 11 been struck by the similarity to Orwell’s 1984 – in which a never-ending far-away war against ever changing enemies serves as a rationale for political and social repression? In the past five months numerous Americans, and not a few Europeans, do not dare speak their minds and many more do not dare to think things through to a point where the urge to speak one’s mind becomes unbearable. There was no genuine war after September 11. There could not have been. And no country, not even one as powerful as the United States after it lost the Soviet Union as its only rival, can hijack such an important concept without in the long run bringing disaster upon itself. That great beacon of political common sense in the twentieth century, George Orwell, educated at least two generations of reasonable observers of political reality in the danger of using words wrongly in this way. A huge crime was committed; the biggest mass murder ever seen directly by hundreds of millions all over the globe when Manhattan’s tallest towers collapsed into a grave of molten steel. A vast police action, backed by...

for President Magazine (Japanese) The awful events of September 11 may have jolted the United States into becoming serious again. Its earlier seriousness, with which it rescued political civilization at least twice in the twentieth century, rather quickly dissipated after the end of the Cold War. Because of that savior role, and because of the basic decency of its people, I have always liked the United States. But just before the terrorist attacks I had been planning a series of columns about the necessity for “soft anti-Americanism” (if only to prevent the virulent type that serves no one), prompted by appalling situations in the world the US political elite was helping to create often without the knowledge of most of its citizens. The Cold War enforced a world order of considerable stability. For one thing, it kept the United States on its toes. Washington had to be concerned about the world in a broad sense. Before the Cold War ended, one could trust an adviser or two to tap the president’s shoulder and warn him to be serious in view of the life threatening situation that came with that rivalrous situation. But whenever I visited the United States a few...

Originally from George W. Bush and the Destruction of World Order (2002-03) pdf version When considering George W. Bush, the most important fact to keep in mind is that he is not well-suited for his job. He is in the running to be the most destructive president in American history. Any rivals for that epithet (possibly James Buchanan, whose ineffectiveness during the slavery crisis in the late 1850s broke the country in two, and caused the carnage of the Civil War) were not most powerful men in the world. Also important to remember is that this momentous fact is not emotionally tolerable for the vast majority of Americans. Opinion polls frequently do not quite reflect what they claim, but if a New York Times/CBS News poll says that 67 percent of the pollees approved of George W. Bush’s job performance, while 70 percent said he had strong qualities of leadership, this means something. In May 2003, many, perhaps most, Americans still believed that the simple good-vs-evil approach to world affairs fits American circumstances. To outsiders who have followed events since September 11, such trust in the president is only explicable by the fact that the American public suffers from a...

Europe ought to be grateful to Robert M Gates. In his farewell speech in Brussels he read the allies a lesson they could not have misunderstood. If, from hereon, Europeans are not prepared to deliver more to the alliance, American voters – and with them Congress – will dump NATO. Why be grateful for that statement? Because a better demonstration of the bankruptcy of the alliance is difficult to imagine. The Europeans can only gain from a confrontation with that reality, and Gates has just made such a confrontation more likely. If the European states comply with the demands made by the departing American defense secretary this would boil down to them accepting a permanent status as vassals of the United States. Washington determines how many, where and when. The why of it all remains unclear and can change by the day. Take the case of Libya where as the main purpose of military action regime change has been substituted for protection of the population. What did Gates say about Afghanistan? A recent visit to that country had convinced him of the reality of progress. But “It is no secret that for too long, the international military effort suffered from...

Respected media wish to be responsible, and journalists want to be credible. Both adjectives, as understood by a broad audience, have undergone an Orwellian metamorphosis. Media can only be responsible if they hire credible reporters. But something monstrous has happened to the notion of credibility in recent years. It is no longer measured by the degree to which statements correspond to observable reality. In fact, assessments arrived at logically from available information and one’s understanding of the world could be ruinous for one’s credibility until some time in late 2007 if they concerned themes related to the “war on terrorism” and other policies following the September 11 attacks. Which is why journalists – mostly eager to preserve their credibility, and extremely sensitive to the slightest questioning of it – often held back on what they actually know. Credibility is always determined by the degree to which a report, an opinion, and expectations stick to a set of basic beliefs about our political surroundings; and these basic beliefs could among a mass audience and much of the political elite from the autumn of 2001 onward hardly have been farther from the truth. While in the closing year of the George W....

We are “determined to end the tragic conflict in Afghanistan and promote national reconciliation, lasting peace, stability and respect for human rights in the country”. This could have been a quote from remarks made this week in The Hague at a special conference on Afghanistan in which 72 countries participated, along with the United Nations. But the line is from a preamble to the Petersberg Accord signed on December 5th 2001 at the Petersberg conference site along the Rhine river. It did not take long to become clear that the route chosen in Petersberg, paved with good intentions, led the Afghan people straight to hell. On the ground everything changed into its opposite. No conciliation, no peace, no stability, no human rights. Although the Taleban was pushed to the background for a while, the culprits behind the attacks in New York and Washington, which some months earlier had made several thousand victims, disappeared in the caves and tunnels of the Tora Bora mountain range that straddles the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They have remained untraceable since then. The original aim of the American invasion, apprehending Osama bin Laden and his henchmen “dead or alive”, melted into the haze of...