Norway beats US in war on terror

IF ONLY. If only President George W. Bush had responded to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001 in the same way that the Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and his Foreign Minister Gahr Stre has responded to the terrorist attack a week ago in their country.

Sure, there are differences: more deaths in the US; an attack from without in the US; the US a larger more powerful nation than Norway.

Nonetheless, the similarity of the horrendous terrorist attacks remains as does the marked difference in response.

Bush and his administration did all they could to heighten fear, exaggerate the risk and enact laws that restricted freedom in order to create an environment where the Republicans would be seen to be the party to protect Americans against the imagined risk.

Remember him saying, “We’re gonna hunt ’em down. We’re gonna smoke ’em out of their caves. We’re going to get them dead or alive.”

He wanted to create a state of perpetual war, as in George Orwell’s 1984. It creates a climate of fear that can be played upon to get the masses to vote for you.

What happened in Norway? Even before it was known that the culprit was not a Muslim terrorist, Stoltenberg said the response would not to let terrorism defeat Norway’s “core values of openness, democracy and participation”.

Stre said, “Norway has consistently advocated the values of democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech and human rights in our endeavours to overcome extremism and intolerance.”

Bush, on the other hand, while expressing similar sentiments about democracy, immediately began to lay the groundwork to create a climate of war and an excuse to invade other countries.

He said in his first address to the nation after 9/11, “Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government’s emergency response plans. Our military is powerful, and it’s prepared. . . . We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them. We stand together to win the war against terrorism.”

He then quoted the 23rd Psalm to make sure his audience understood there was a religious element to this “war”.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard invoked the ANZUS treaty – again ramping up the fear by ramping up a single (albeit appalling and horrific) terrorist act into the equivalent of an invasion by a nation state, for which the treaty was designed.

He then urged Australians to be “alert not alarmed” – like the captain of an aircraft coming over the loud speaker saying, “Ladies and Gentlemen, there is no cause for alarm.” Instant panic on board is bound to follow.

Contrast this with Norway’s Foreign Minister Stre saying, “Every government will have to look after the security of its people, and we have to take this very seriously, but I believe you find across-the-board rallying in Norway now about the values of an open society. We do not want to give in to those who act with terror.”

In contrast, the Bush Administration enacted the Patriot Act, phone tapped its own citizens and as in Australia allowed for longer detention before a suspect had to be put before a court.

Norway is to have an inquiry before acting. Whereas the Bush Administration resisted an inquiry. It decided to ramp up the war by invading two countries having made its own erroneous conclusions about the source of terrorism and the level of the threat it actually posed.

In effect, Bush’s actions caused the US to lose the war on terror. Osama bin Laden’s aim was to terrorise the American people using as little firepower as possible. He succeeded because the Bush Administration over-reacted by creating the war on terror so it could invade Iraq and win re-election in 2004.

Bush simply did not have the leadership which is now being displayed in Norway to reassure his people and take a measured response proportional to the real risk.

Who needs a bin Laden to terrorise Americans when, in July 2007, the US’s own Homeland Security Chief, Michael Chertoff, could say he had “a gut feeling” that America will be attacked “this summer”.

The endless talk by Administration officials of terrorists getting weapons of mass destruction and of “fighting over there so we don’t have a mushroom cloud over here” added needlessly to the terror.

There was then, and is now, absolutely no prospect of terrorists getting a nuclear weapon. Nations states with huge resources like Iran are finding it near impossible. But the Bush Administration continued to terrorise its own people. Poll after poll revealed Americans grossly overstating the likelihood that they would be the victim of a terrorist attack.

And what better way to aid the recruitment drive of terrorist groups than to invade Afghanistan and Iraq?

Of course, the US and Norway should respond to the attacks and institute cost-effective, sensible security measures, but not ones that through their cost and undermining of democratic values cause the terrorists to win. Governments have to balance their response. The measures should not be made draconian and costly in pursuit of the impossible: the prevention of all terrorism.

Stoltenberg got it right when he said: “No society — and we’ve seen that in many societies — is able to 100 percent protect itself against acts of terror, acts of violence. . . . We will learn . . . , but I will do whatever I can to make sure that we do not change in a way which undermines our core values of openness, democracy and participation.”

That is extraordinary leadership in the face of such horror – compared to the drumming up fear for some short-term political gain.

If only the US had reacted that way. There would have been no quagmire in Afghanistan and Iraq, and their people would have eventually sorted out those brutal regimes as they have done in Tunisia, Egypt and soon Libya. Eight thousand US and allied soldiers would not have died. Thousands of civilians would not have died. Millions would not have been made refugees. And the US would not have spent $1200 billion directly on the wars and an incalculable amount indirectly.

There would have been no debt crisis. There would have been no debt. Or the money could have been better spent on other things making Americans (and Australians) safer and more prosperous.

And the risk of a terrorist attack would have been about the same, or probably less.

Indeed, there is a fair argument that if Bush had not unleashed the dogs of war and stirred up a decade of anti-western hostility in the Islamic world and anti-Muslim hostility in the west, Anders Behring Breivik might never have been moved to perpetrate his evil act in Norway a week ago.
CRISPIN HULL
This article was first published in The Canberra Times on 30 July 2011.