How safe a world?

THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY of the Sept. 11 attacks is a day of remembrance and special sadness for the nation, and all those who knew any of the 2,973 victims. Yet in the long run, the reaction of the Bush administration may prove more harmful to the national interest than even these horrific attacks. In speeches over the last two weeks, Bush has painted the attack as a battle in ``the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century." And he said of Al Qaeda, the jihadist group that organized the attack: ``They're successors to fascists, to Nazis, to communists."

The attacks were fiendishly clever, taking advantage of the overconfidence of Americans in the security of their borders and the failure of the FBI and CIA to share intelligence. Yet Al Qaeda lacks the military and economic power of a nation-state to mount a sustained series of attacks. And its ideology is a throwback to medieval times when the Muslim caliphate ruled the Middle East. Its belief system does not offer the illusions of modernity that drew people to Nazism or communism.

Al Qaeda's appeal to many Muslims has more to do with the perception that the United States has become an oppressor than with the particulars of the group's intolerant worldview. This ideological battle is like a judo match in which Al Qaeda turns abuses of power by the United States against its stronger adversary. US leaders should be wise enough not to play this game.

After the attack, to be sure, the administration deftly handled the campaign to topple the Taliban government in Afghanistan and expel Al Qaeda from its base there. But then Bush and his lieutenants allowed Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders to escape into Pakistan. The administration has been overreacting ever since.

The Bush administration decided to put the bulk of the people captured in Afghanistan -- Al Qaeda agents and those caught up in the fighting -- into prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they were denied the rights of prisoners of war. The few high-ranking captives were consigned to secret prisons outside the United States where they were subjected to abusive interrogations. Bush announced last week that these prisons had been closed and the inmates moved to Guantanamo Bay. But the damage has been done. Many Muslims look at the United States as a jailer and torturer.

Once the Taliban had been routed, Bush turned to Iraq. A few days ago he defended his decision to invade the country and oust Saddam Hussein, who, the president asserted, ``harbored terrorists, fired at military planes, paid the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, invaded neighbors, and pursued and used weapons of mass destruction." Saddam was a tyrant, but the president was conflating the dictator's 25-year record of crimes into a single snapshot. By 2003, the year of the invasion, Saddam was confined to oppressing his own people and was doing nothing to promote terrorist attacks on the United States. The long war against the insurgency in Iraq has further inflamed Mideast opinion against the United States without enhancing US security.

The war did, however, result in the liberation of the Shi'ite Muslim majority in Iraq from the control of Saddam and his Sunni-dominated regime. A subtle American leadership would have taken the opportunity to seek support among Shi'ites throughout the Middle East. Instead, relations with the region's major Shi'ite power are more problematic than ever. ``. . . The world now faces a grave threat from the radical regime in Iran," Bush said last month, referring to Iraq's predominately Shi'ite neighbor.

Iran is a repressive theocracy, yet Bush ought to know that it will not easily succumb to military or diplomatic pressure, and if he wants Iran to abandon what could be a quest for nuclear weapons, he needs to bargain seriously with its leaders, not harangue them.

While Bush was quick to act against Iraq, he has stepped back from the traditional American involvement in attempts to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The United States is right to align itself with Israel, the only stable democracy in the Mideast. But Bush needs to leaven this support with intense efforts to mediate a peaceful solution that will provide security to the Israelis and a state for the Palestinians.

The Sept. 11 attacks had domestic consequences as well, as Bush used them as an excuse to enhance the powers of federal law enforcement and to ignore a law that regulates federal intercepts of communications between Americans and foreigners. But the courts and Congress still offer a check to presidential abuses. The president has far more latitude in foreign affairs, and that is where the impact of Sept. 11 is felt the most.

In speeches over the last few days, Bush has tried to make the mid-term elections a referendum on national security in the hopes that voters will ignore the Republicans' dismal performance in Congress and his own inept response to Hurricane Katrina. He can point to a few successes: a new organization to improve intelligence gathering, the quick takeover of Afghanistan, and the decision of Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy to end his support for terrorists.

But with the Taliban making trouble again in Afghanistan, with Iraq on the brink of civil war, with Muslim opinion inflamed against the United States, and with Iran showing no signs of cooperation with US policies, the world seems a far less secure place for Americans than it was on Sept. 10, 2001.