Academic: America squandered the world's sympathy by invading Afghanistan and Iraq... What will it learn from the defeat?

He sees an

article

published by

the Washington Post ( of

Washington Post

) that the

United States squandered international sympathy with widespread after the

September 11 attacks, Bandfalla in retaliatory acts instead of exploiting that opportunity to create a

better world.

The article - written by Fawaz Gerges, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics - explains that America could have used the events of September 11, the largest strategic disaster in the history of the United States, according to him, as a catalyst for the establishment of a more tolerant, peaceful and prosperous world, claiming that this contradicts the global vision of the organization Al-Qaeda.

He pointed out that America enjoyed, immediately after the events of September 11, an outpouring of sympathy and solidarity from all over the world, including from the Arab and Islamic world.

all-out war

Rather than building on this solidarity, the United States embarked on a two-decade all-out war against real and imagined enemies, missing a historic opportunity to work with other nations to undo the damage caused by the Cold War policies that contributed to the emergence of Al Qaeda.

He wondered: What if America targeted al-Qaeda only, by building a real international coalition that includes Arabs and Muslims, instead of invading Afghanistan and Iraq?

If the United States had done so, he said, it would have deprived the Islamist militants of the social oxygen or popular support that gave them a new lease on life after 9/11.

Al-Zawahiri's note

In a memo to his aides in Yemen in 1999, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who currently leads al-Qaeda, persuaded that an attack on America was the only way to revive a "moribund" Islamist movement.

Al-Zawahiri made it clear at the time that if America was attacked on its soil, it would not only attack the "Islamic militants" with anger, but Islamic countries as well, and this would allow the Islamists to portray themselves as defenders of the Islamic nation or community, and to gain more followers.

He said that al-Zawahiri's strategy succeeded, so the number of al-Qaeda members, which was barely a thousand fighters in 2001, jumped to between 100,000 and 230,000 activists in dozens of countries around the world, during the West's war on "terrorism."

Gerges added that the war on terrorism was optional, not a necessity, and cost a lot of blood and money.

crusade lunge

He stressed that the leaders of the United States were required to rid themselves of the Crusader impulse and the complex of moral superiority in international affairs that had caused great harm to the world and international relations, and they had to recognize the hard limits of power and show humility, prudence and respect for other cultures.

Gerges concludes that America should not have sought to make other countries in its image, but rather sought, along with the international community, to rebuild failed institutions abroad, eradicate extreme poverty and combat "extremism", bridging the gap between its rosy rhetoric about human rights and democracy and her actions.