Walking past the services, held at the main campus of a university founded by one of America’s founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, I could not help but think how much the United States has diverged from its founding principles and lost the international prestige that it had gathered during and after the Cold War. I could not help but think how this country, which is populated by such kind and friendly folks, is now perceived as the greatest threat to world peace.

The American military is still in a country to which it intervened on weak pretexts and unfounded intelligence and is being bled white for a project that would have gotten an “F” from any respectable political scientist.

The United States is losing the support of key international and regional actors. The European Union, which laid its foundations on the seeds sown by the Marshall Plan, is retracting its support from the United States. Italy is following the example of Spain and withdrawing troops from Iraq. Much of “New” Europe can turn to “Old” Europe in the very near future.

Meanwhile, Turkey, which was one of the staunchest U.S. allies during the Cold War and until March 2003, is viewing the United States as a threat and looking for alternative avenues in its foreign affairs. The publicist is losing its model for the Moslem world; a democratic and secular state.

Regardless of what some fundamentalists in America say about Israel, its position has also been weakened. Toppling Saddam has not created a safer Middle East for Israel, but one where anti-Israel terrorist networks connect more easily. Terrorism now gives the impression that it is the most salient option in fighting “foreign occupiers.” The Palestinians, ever deeper in their dilemma, are struggling to rid themselves out of their deadlock of violence and occupation, without any support from anybody.

Afghanistan is getting out of control because the United States never finished the job there. U.S. deployment levels are incompatible with U.S. objectives; the consolidation of a viable, democratic, and prosperous Afghan state. To overcome this, latest urges to reluctant allies have produced no results in bringing more NATO troops into the Central Asian nation. The situation is hapless.

Zooming out a little bit, we see other tragic trends. Just as 19^th and 20^th century colonialism destroyed the chances of political and economic liberalism in the Middle East, the peoples of the region are drawing connections between freedom, democracy, and their plight. When allowed to freely choose their governments, they are increasingly resorting to more radical political groups that do not adhere to the fundamentals of freedom and democracy. According to these groups these ideas emanate from the West and just like the violence coming from there, they must be resisted. That absolutely saddens me for I believe that there is substance to the Western ideals of enlightenment (despite what Westerns have done for centuries): freedom, reason, democracy, liberalism, individualism, and secularism.

Another tragedy in all of this is that the Moslem world is becoming more radical and more violent. A religion which literally means “peaceful submission to God” is coming to be perceived by both its adherents and non-adherents as a belief of terror and not peace. That is also radicalizing people on the other side of the fence. That also saddens me for I am a Moslem and I am gradually losing my hope in humanity.

…Then it immediately occurred to me that tens of thousands of innocent civilians also died since then, with the alleged reason to fight and destroy al-Qaeda, the perpetrator of September 11. The war on terror has shifted to other locations, such as Iraq and Lebanon, which had nothing to do with September 11. The true danger in all of this is that we are all losing our interest in this tragedy and boiling it down to numbers; one, two, ten, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. Perhaps the time will come that we will actually transform that paradox and be too scared to utter the names of all those who die in these tragedies.

Barin Kayaoglu is a Ph.D. student in history at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia and a regular contributor to JTW.