Citizen G'kar: Musings on Earth

September 29, 2008

U.S. War on Al Qaeda Widely Viewed as a Bust

U.S.

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IPS News
The U.S. is failing to rein in its primary target in the "global war on terror" -- Al Qaeda -- according to a new poll of 23 countries across the globe.
Conducted for the BBC World Service by the University of Maryland's Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and Globescan, the poll reveals that in every country surveyed but one, respondents think that the U.S.'s actions have failed to weaken the international terror group.
It was Al Qaeda's attacks on New York and Washington on Sep. 11, 2001 which sparked the U.S.'s international war. Al Qaeda's then-refuge, Afghanistan, has been engulfed in a war of varying intensity since then. The U.S. opened a second front in its war on terror in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq, which apparently had no ties to the Al Qaeda terror network.
"Despite its overwhelming military power, America's war against Al Qaeda is widely seen as having achieved nothing better than a stalemate and many believe that it has even strengthened Al Qaeda," PIPA director Steve Kull said in a statement that accompanied the release of the report.
Averaged across all the nations surveyed, only one in five respondents think that Al Qaeda has been weakened, 29 percent think the war on terror has had no effect, and fully three in 10 think that the effort has made Al Qaeda stronger.

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