September 11 - five years on

According to Stefan Kornelius, the US has lost the most important battle of all since September 11 – the battle of ideas. "It isn't the attack itself that causes the destruction but the reaction to the attack. It changes things, triggers revolutions and leads to coups… Osama bin Laden's plan was based on the assumption that others would do the work for him; that focussing on a common goal would create unity in Islam, that a supranational organisation – a caliphate – could be created. The idea may seem absurd but the concentration on the US as a target and the negative dissociation from the West and America has helped the idea to take hold. The Bush administration has let itself be fooled in the way a sumo wrestler is fooled by a judoka who uses lever holds to exploit his opponent's mass for his own purposes. Terrorists create fear and paranoia in people's minds, so the battle against terrorism is mainly a battle of ideas, a battle for minds and moral superiority. The 'war on terror' which Bush started and which is still being waged has therefore been America's greatest strategic mistake and, to top it all, a rhetorical blunder."

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