U.S. Terrorism Report: Depressing News

Since 2001, horrible regimes have been toppled in the name of the “War on Terror,” but the rule of terror goes on.

The latest terrorism report issued to the U.S. Congress by the State Department contains little consoling news. What Iraq was three years ago — Iraq then accounted for one-fourth of all attacks worldwide — has now been replaced by Afghanistan and Pakistan. Together, they account for 60 percent of the world’s terrorism victims. Since 2001, horrible regimes have been toppled in the name of the “War on Terror,” but the rule of terror goes on. The people of the liberated countries are so much at the terrorists’ mercy that many of them long for the old days, or at least for a “powerful leader.” That’s the most depressing news.

The report addresses the 2009 timeframe, and everyone knows how the 2010 report is likely to look: The number of attacks has been escalating for 6 months now. Destabilization in Yemen continues, with consequences for the entire Arabian Peninsula. In Somalia, there’s not much left to destabilize, so the world focuses its attention on the “danger of infection”: The Somali Shabaab movement is an established offshoot of al-Qaida.

Nine years after 9/11, al-Qaida today — whether people want to acknowledge it or not — is the undefeated synonym for terrorism. This horizontal, amorphous organization can scarcely be mortally wounded. It has to be starved to death. Instead, it’s being feverishly fed, mainly by the wars being waged against it.