Two years later
A Le Monde editorial
Translation by Douglas
French original: "Deux ans après"
(Le Monde, 2003/09/10)
The attacks of 11 September 2001 on the World Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon in Washington provoked a wave of sympathy with Americans, unprecedented in history. The number of dead, the means used and the symbols destroyed aroused feelings the world over. They were rare who then dared to rejoice in the bloody "punishment" inflicted on the West's most emblematic representatives.
Two years later, the United State's stock has hit bottom. Compassion has given way to the fear that ill-considered actions will exacerbate problems and that the fight against terrorism is only a pretext for the expansion of American hegemony.
President George W. bush is convinced that the civilized world is engaged in a new world war against a new totalitarianism. This crusader mind-set has won few adepts, including among those traditional allies of the United States. The world, so say the allies, is more complex than the double feeling of vulnerability and omnipotence might lead one to believe.
The union of fundamentalism, weapons of mass destruction and failed states surely constitutes a threat heretofore unknown to democracies. Still, must the United States pose as the world's judge and policeman, a recurrent temptation that has returned in force since 11 September?
The results of the policies adopted in the last two years are not beyond debate. It is true that the United States and Europe have not witnessed the waves of attacks that bin Laden and his acolytes had promised, doubtless thanks to the cooperation of their police and intelligence services, sometimes at the cost of encroachments on civil liberties. It has been elsewhere, in the Maghreb or South-East Asia, that the terrorists, rightly or wrongly associated with bin Laden, have struck.
As for the head of Al Qaeda, he is still kicking, despite the destruction of the Taliban state that sheltered him in Afghanistan. In this country, the progress toward stability, no to mention democracy, is extremely scant. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein's ghost still lurks and the country remains "the central front for the war on terror" (George W. Bush), while the fall of the dictator was intended precisely to put an end to this threat. The democratic reconstruction of the Middle East, depicted as the Bush presidency's grand idea, has seen more reversals than progress and the bloody impasse of the Arab-Israeli conflict doesn't lend itself to optimism.
Alone, the United States cannot "make the world safer for democracy," in the words of their president Woodrow Wilson in 1917. They must hear their allies, take into account the contrasting situations in which they intervene and respect the international regulations that they themselves helped to establish. The stock taken of the last two years rings out as a call to return to these principles.
* ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN THE 11.09.03 EDITION
[Posted 2003/09/10]
Copyright © Watch 2001-2006.
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