The ever-changing faces of terror

[bemildred]

NEW YORK - The recently expressed view of Nigel Inkster, the former deputy chief of Britain's secret service (MI6), that Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud is now the world's "deadliest Islamist threat and public enemy number one" reveals the puerility of the so-called "war on terror". As it enters its seventh year, the massive American effort to root out al-Qaeda and its allied organizations around the world faces a credibility problem with few successes and several mishaps.

On commencing his costly misadventures in 2001, US President George W Bush confidentially delivered bad news to his military generals that "this will be a long campaign". As the vague and drifting campaign reached the limits of temporal stretching with no end in sight, a psychological strategy that found favor with the US and its allies was to personalize and simplify the problem for the imagination of skeptical publics.

If victory is redefined as eliminating individual personalities rather than defeating a complex network or ideology, the bitter pill of failure can not only be sweetened but also showcased as a sweetmeat for citizens' consumption. This carefully crafted ruse of selling defeat as success begins with lionization of an al-Qaeda-affiliated leader through relentless coverage of his dreaded activities in the state-browbeaten media. The next step is to keep releasing stories that a hunt is on for the high-value target and that US/North Atlantic Treaty Organization intelligence is closing in on the star figure.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JB08Df02.html