That is why, even after the US has taken over Afghanistan and Iraq, terrorism hasn't stopped. We don't know if George Bush is planning to take Turkey now. But if he follows the trail of terror, he must also take a few other countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. If George Bush likes, he may rule every country which has unruly folks.

But meanwhile he must realize that his attack on terrorism has united its splintered cause. The end of terrorism, he promised, isn't in sight. Instead the gyre of vengeance has widened, while the center of terrorism keeps shifting from one country to another. It's not Afghanistan, Iraq or the Middle East. The wave of terror now stretches from Indonesia to India, Sudan to Saudi Arabia, making every country on earth fear if the next hit would come there. And the target of terror is spreading as well. It is not just the Israelis, Americans or British. The Italians, Spaniards, Japanese and South Koreans have also come under attack.

Recently, the US President has given splendid speeches, first at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in Washington DC and then at the receptions in London, to defend his invasion of Iraq. He called it a part of the US commitment to democracy. He reminded us that the advance of freedom depended on the success of democracy. He also gave us a bit of a history lesson. The story of democracy is 2500-year old, and until the 1970s, there were about 40 democracies in the world.

Bingo! What does it tell us? Democracy hasn't been exactly a cakewalk for mankind. Thousand years of struggle has brought only a few hundred years of success, that also for a few countries of the world. Most countries still lag behind, and some have democracy no deeper than a label. Why is this sudden rush for democracy in the Middle East now?

Well, there is nothing wrong if democracy should come to the Middle East sooner than later. But how is terrorism linked to democracy? Terrorists are not despots or tyrants, who oppress their people. Rather they rise amongst the people to turn their hatred for oppressors into reprisals. The struggle for democracy has many exam- ples when soldiers of freedom died at the end of hangman's rope for disturbing the peace of an empire.

The American freedom is also the outcome of one such disturbance, the American Revolution, when freedom-loving Americans had taken up arms against the British Empire. Osama bin Laden is no George Washington, and he may not be fighting for the right reason. But one can bet that George Washington was as much a wanted man to the imperial rulers of Britain as Osama bin Laden is today to the US and its allies.

This is where George Bush has never looked. Ideas become ideology when people adopt it like a faith and prepare to die for it. The air force commander says in the movie Pearl Harbor that there is nothing stronger than the heart of a volunteer. Bush has never cared to look in the heart of a suicide bomber, where love of freedom ignites the deadly bombs. If democracy is all about freedom, where does it ring louder than the cry of freedom proclaimed in those self-immolating explosions?

Democracy also started as an ideology, if George Bush will remember, an ideology that transformed into a political system. And every oppressor's hand only drove it deeper into the hearts of people, whose aspiration for freedom was sustained by the courage and sacrifice of those who died for it. There is something magical about the way it happens. It turns into a mystical force that draws the believers into a state of frenzy.

It's not true that democracy doesn't condescend to culture. In England where democracy struck its roots for the very first time, monarchy is still upheld as the supreme institution. In some countries, the viewers are asked to stand up to honor the national flag before feature presentation in the movie theaters. In Thailand, the viewers are asked to stand up to honor the king. In other countries, including USA, neither is required.

Freedom, when dictated by others, turns into chains of subjugation. If military dictatorship and theocratic rules "are a straight, smooth highway to nowhere" as George Bush said in his NED speech, it's because they never recognized freedom in its own glory. Perhaps pushing a particular brand of democracy is no different either. It constricts freedom no less than its adversaries.

George Bush needs to take a hard look at it, if he truly wants to put an end to terrorism. It is not enough to claim that America has "put power at the service of principle," if that power makes it a principle to deny a group of people their right to express freedom. He is right to say, "sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe." This is where the darkness descends and truth gets lost. This is where George Bush chooses to be under the street lamp.

Whether the Western nations have excused and accommodated in the Middle East can be debated. Osama bin Laden and his band of brothers tell us the opposite thing. They claim to have excused and accommodated the United States in the Middle East for too long. Now they are fighting. The bad news is that others are also picking up their fight in faraway places.

History will judge one day which side is fighting for the right cause. George Bush and Tony Blair have often said that history wouldn't forgive them if they didn't deal with terrorism. How their vaunted confidence in history has an uncanny resonance of the past! When the Nazi leaders sat around the table to plan the extinction of the Jews, one of the things they often said to each other was how history was going to honor them for advancing the purity of the human race.

The irony of history turned it upside down! People are held in Guantanamo Bay without trial. The Homeland Security can arrest people in the United States without their Miranda rights. The Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq has shut down Al-Arabia TV station. The US Army has arrested the wife and daughter of a Saddam loyalist to find out about their fugitive. They are breaking into Iraqi homes to make arrests.

Saddam Hussain used to do all of those to stay in power. His was a reign of terror. Hell, George Bush does the same to stay in Iraq, and he calls it democracy. The irony is worse than we thought. We have to believe that it's not a joke.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.