Osama bin Laden and the U.S. economy: Bernd Debusmann

MAIN post: Reuters, Wed Jun 11, 2008


Osama bin Laden and the U.S. economy: Bernd Debusmann

(Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)

By Bernd Debusmann

WASHINGTON, June 11 (Reuters) - Past performance is no guarantee of future behaviour but it can't be long before Osama bin Laden issues a message crowing about the parlous state of the U.S. economy and hailing it as a success for al Qaeda.

Last September, on the sixth anniversary of the attacks on the New York Twin Towers and the Pentagon, a bin Laden video included a line on "the reeling of many of you under the burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes and real estate mortgages." A few days before the 2004 presidential election, his message said al Qaeda was on track with its oft-declared policy of "bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy."

At the time, a gallon of gasoline hovered around $2, the housing bubble was still inflating, and the word recession was rarely uttered. Now, the price of gasoline has soared past $4, a record, hundreds of thousands of Americans have lost their homes, the Labor Department has just announced the U.S. economy lost jobs for the fifth straight month. Plenty of material for an al Qaeda speechwriter.

How much of the trouble is due to the chain of events bin Laden unleashed with the Sept. 11 attacks? They prompted the war in Afghanistan, meant to wipe out al Qaeda, capture bin Laden and bring him to justice. That was followed by the war on Iraq and a host of security programmes under the umbrella of what the Bush administration calls the Global War on Terror.

Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for next November's presidential elections, has accused the Bush administration of having neglected the hunt for bin Laden. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, says in campaign speeches that he knows how to capture bin Laden and will follow him "to the gates of hell."

Better late than never. Bin Laden and his top commanders slipped away from their U.S. special forces pursuers in Afghanistan at the end of 2001. Washington then began focusing not on the mastermind of September 11 but on Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with it. The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq convinced millions of Muslims that al Qaeda was right in portraying the U.S. as anti-Islam and intent on seizing the Middle East's oil riches.

Bin Laden's assertion that the Iraq war is bleeding the American economy is now in synch with most Americans. A recent New York Times/CBS showed that 67 percent believe the war in Iraq has contributed "a lot" to America's economic problems.

In the words of Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize-winning economist: "The Iraq adventure has seriously weakened the U.S. economy...You can't spend $3 trillion on a failed war and not feel the pain at home."

Harvard University budget expert Linda Bilmes says the war is diverting government expenditures from schools, roads, research and other areas that would have stimulated the economy in the short run and accelerated growth in the long run.

(There are other factors for the downturn, including weak regulation of complex financial instruments combined with loose lending standards for mortgages. But perception is reality.)



IS OSAMA'S AL QAEDA STILL IMPORTANT

As the 20th anniversary of al Qaeda's founding approaches, next August, America's leading terrorism experts are engaged in a public dispute over how best to fight terrorists, and who is most dangerous - "Qaeda Central" or a new generation of potential terrorists.

On one side of the argument is Bruce Hoffman, a Georgetown University professor who says al Qaeda has recovered from a series of blows and is back plotting large-scale international operations from safe havens along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

On the other side is Marc Sageman, a forensic psychiatrist and former CIA officer who ran operations in Pakistan. He says al Qaeda is a fading force, still dangerous but yesterday's men. In a book entitled Leaderless Jihad, he says the biggest threat now comes from "self-recruited wannabees" who find each other on the Internet.

"They are young people seeking thrills and a sense of belonging and significance in their lives. And their lack of structure and organizing principles makes them even more terrifying and volatile than their terrorist forebears."

Examples of leaderless jihadists, inspired but not directed by al Qaeda: The Dutch Hofstad Network (one of whose members murdered the film maker Theo van Gogh) and the people who carried out the 2004 Madrid train bombings.

One of the biggest problems in countering the leaderless jihad is the vast pool of Muslims who detest the United States. How big is that pool? Earlier this year, the Gallup organisation published the results of what it described as the largest-ever survey of Muslims. It found that the vast majority of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims condemn violence against civilians.

But seven percent hate the United States so deeply that they consider the September 11 attacks "completely justified." Seven percent translates into 91 million people.According to Sageman, "withdrawal from Iraq is a necessary condition for diminishing the sense of moral outrage that Muslims feel."

It would also be good for the economy. (You can contact the author at Debusmann@Reuters.com) (Editing by Sean Maguire and Jon Boyle)