Six years after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, America has so far prevented another attack on its own soil despite strident calls by extremists for more attacks and the reconstituting of al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The White House and their supporters argue that the tactics and policies on the War on Terror have disrupted the terrorist network and its operations. Whatever success against terrorism can be claimed, Osama bin Laden is still roaming the Afghanistan-Pakistan hinterland and have continued to recruit more terrorists to their cause. 

Just in case we have forgotten about him, Osama bin Laden sends us another of his videotapes right before the sixth anniversary of 9/11, showing us that the war of civilizations is very much about public relations as it is about military might. As the authorities examine the videotape for clues, inter alia, of whether the person in the video is in fact bin Laden, there is little debate that the war against terrorism is going to be long and hard and will require huge resources to win the hearts and minds of the Islamic world (who are not all radicals) and address some of their core grievances against U.S. foreign policy. As CNN’s Christiane Ammanpour shows us in her recent three-part documentary, God’s Warriors, fundamental Islamists feel particularly alienated and wronged by the West, such that retribution (i.e., by suicide bombings) is, in their minds, justified because it rights that wrong.

This alienation and sense of being wronged has spread to other parts of the world creating its own grassroots jihad against their respective governments. The conflict between the Buddhist Thais and the Muslim Malays in southern Thailand stems less from religion than from how the Thai authorities ignored or treated the Muslim Malays, who make up most of southern Thailand. Unless the terrorism by Malays is properly contained, there is a risk that southern Thailand, will quickly become a rallying call for jihadists and another battle front on the global war on terror. However, an overly aggressive tactic by the Thai military that fails to address the grievances of the local Muslim population runs the risk of hardening existing resentment and escalating more attacks.