A British journalist said that the words uttered by US President Joe Biden while his forces left Afghanistan recall the echoes of the speech made by former President George W. Bush, following the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

In his article for The Guardian, journalist Jason Burke asks whether the 9/11 crisis is destined to repeat itself.

Those who listened to Biden vow to avenge the killing of 13 US Marines in the suicide bombing carried out by the Islamic State last week in the Afghan capital, Kabul, must have been surprised by how closely his words matched Bush's words he made exactly 20 years ago, according to the British journalist. .

In his address to the American people, Bush said "I want justice" in response to the 3,000 deaths in the attacks on Washington and New York.

Burke points out in his article that Bush is no longer the president of the United States, just as the leader of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, the "mastermind" of those attacks, was killed in a raid launched by a special military force 10 years ago, but the American discourse remained the same. Last Thursday, he said, "We will hunt you down and make you pay the price."


Divergent wars

On the other hand, the British journalist Jason Burke does not see such language as a disadvantage, "The speech emphasized, in particular, that the wars of September 11 and dozens of complex, chaotic and intertwined conflicts that erupted 20 years ago, are not over yet."

Although the primary campaign by the United States and its allies targets "Islamic extremism," there are many other conflicts.

The 9/11 wars, like any major conflict—the Napoleonic Wars, World War II, and the Cold War, for example—contain within them dozens of smaller conflicts, the binaries of good and evil, right and wrong, and us and them.

All of them "blur this chaotic reality".

More recently, the fighting between the Taliban - Afghanistan's new rulers as Jason Burke calls them - and the Islamic State branch in the country has become the focus of attention.

This small war within a big war - according to the Guardian article - has been raging for 6 years, but it did not receive attention until after the "Islamic State Organization - Khorasan Province" claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing that occurred last Thursday.

A day after the bombing, the United States said it had killed a leader of the Islamic State in Afghanistan, which was confirmed by the Taliban.

Jason Burke believes that there are precedents in the September 11 wars that prove the validity of the saying "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

In Iraq, the US military campaign against "desperate Islamist militants and Baathists" was one of six or seven conflicts that erupted after the 2003 invasion.

The United States fought an enemy there after turning its back on a former enemy, referring to Sunni tribes in Anbar province "discontented" with the marginalization of the Shiite government in Baghdad backed by Washington, which contributed to the rise of the Islamic State.


changing fronts

Much has changed since he was a reporter for the British newspaper in Afghanistan, where he watched B-52 bombers pound that country's mountains in December 2001, the author says.

He adds that the invasion of Iraq shifted the center of gravity of the September 11 wars to countries in the heart of the Middle East, but it is now moving to the edges of the Islamic world, to Africa and the AfPak region, a new expression used within American foreign policy-making circles and intended for the countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan as a theater One for US operations.

At the time, Burke says, he dictated his reports to a newspaper via a satellite phone, but today there is a real-time interactive media that broadcasts every event extensively and amplifies its impact through social networks.

The coronavirus pandemic and sluggish economic growth have dented the confidence of Western governments, depleting their cash reserves.

And instead of being the "unchallenged superpower", the United States has become a country facing difficulties in a multipolar world that has been radicalized by decades of conflict.

George Bush Jr. warned Americans 20 years ago that they face a long-term and costly conflict that may not result in visible victories as in conventional wars.

But what Bush did not say is that such a conflict may result in "humiliating, bitter and painful" defeats, as Jason Burke described, who concludes his article by noting that no one has lost or won so far any of the September 11 wars that are still raging without Its end looms.