It's a Lot Easier to Declare a Victory Than To Earn It

Truth is the first victim of every war, so it's not surprising when, again and again, western leaders congratulate themselves enthusiastically in front of the TV cameras on their supposed successes in the fight against terror.

But was this war really so successful?

When the planes crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, my 20-year-old daughter was in Manhattan. The whole day, we desperately tried to contact her. We didn't reach her until late the same evening. I know what was going on in the hearts of millions of U.S. families that day.

But we mustn't allow our feelings to obscure our view of the facts--and the latter are sobering.

The loathsome Taliban were bombed into retreat, but was that the main objective of the Afghanistan war? Had the U.S. government really spent billions of dollars spilling the blood of 40 U.S. soldiers and more than 6,000 Afghan civilians, only to drive one of the most wretched governments of the Third World into the Hindu Kush mountains?

Could it be possible that we won the wrong war?

Sorry, but I consider our strategy to combat international terrorism with conventional war methods futile, immoral and counterproductive.

Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle would now say that the destruction of the Al Qaeda training camps, the defeat of the Taliban and the enthronement of the sympathetic Hamid Karzai were proof to the contrary.

But this is wrong. Osama bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian terrorist, mass murderer and the main target of this war, who was supposedly "surrounded and virtually eliminated" in Tora Bora, has since disappeared without a trace.

Even third-rate Taliban boss Mullah Omar was able to break through the ring of anti-terror forces on a motorbike, as in a cheap slapstick comedy, and is now mocking his enemies via the Internet.

If that is what we call a victory against terrorism, what would we call defeat?