[Mb-civic] Tariq Ali & Robert Fisk on London bombings
ean at sbcglobal.net
ean at sbcglobal.net
Fri Jul 8 21:33:23 PDT 2005
Published on Friday, July 8, 2005 by the Guardian (UK)
The Price of Occupation
by Tariq Ali
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0708-31.htm
During the last phase of the Troubles, the IRA targeted mainland
Britain: it came close to blowing up Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet
in Brighton. Some years later a missile was fired at No 10. London's
financial quarter was also targeted. There was no secret as to the
identity of the organisation that carried out the hits or its demands. And
all this happened despite the various Prevention of Terrorism Acts
passed by the Commons.
The bombers who targeted London yesterday are anonymous. It is
assumed that those who carried out these attacks are linked to al-
Qaida. We simply do not know. Al-Qaida is not the only terrorist group
in existence. It has rivals within the Muslim diaspora. But it is safe to
assume that the cause of these bombs is the unstinting support given
by New Labour and its prime minister to the US wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq.
One of the arguments deployed by Ken Livingstone, the mayor of
London, when he appealed to Tony Blair not to support the war in Iraq
was prescient: "An assault on Iraq will inflame world opinion and
jeopardise security and peace everywhere. London, as one of the
major world cities, has a great deal to lose from war and a lot to gain
from peace, international cooperation and global stability."
Most Londoners (as the rest of the country) were opposed to the Iraq
war. Tragically, they have suffered the blow and paid the price for the
re-election of Blair and a continuation of the war.
Ever since 9/11, I have been arguing that the "war against terror" is
immoral and counterproductive. It sanctions the use of state terror -
bombing raids, torture, countless civilian deaths in Afghanistan and
Iraq - against Islamo-anarchists whose numbers are small, but whose
reach is deadly. The solution then, as now, is political, not military. The
British ruling elite understood this perfectly well in the case of Ireland.
Security measures, anti-terror laws rushed through parliament, identity
cards, a curtailment of civil liberties, will not solve the problem. If
anything, they will push young Muslims in the direction of mindless
violence.
The real solution lies in immediately ending the occupation of Iraq,
Afghanistan and Palestine. Just because these three wars are
reported sporadically and mean little to the everyday lives of most
Europeans does not mean the anger and bitterness they arouse in the
Muslim world and its diaspora is insignificant. As long as western
politicians wage their wars and their colleagues in the Muslim world
watch in silence, young people will be attracted to the groups who
carry out random acts of revenge.
At the beginning of the G8, Blair suggested that "poverty was the
cause of terrorism". It is not so. The principal cause of this violence is
the violence being inflicted on the people of the Muslim world. And
unless this is recognised, the horrors will continue.
Tariq Ali's latest book is Speaking of Empire and Resistance.
© 2005 Guardian Newspapers, Ltd.
----------
Published on Friday, July 8, 2005 by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Blair's Alliance with Bush Bombed
by Robert Fisk
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0708-25.htm
"If you bomb our cities," Osama bin Laden said in a recent videotape,
"we will bomb yours."' It was clear Britain would be a target ever since
British Prime Minister Tony Blair decided to join President Bush's "war
on terror" and his invasion of Iraq. We had, as they say, been warned.
The G-8 summit was obviously chosen, well in advance, as Attack
Day.
It's no use Blair telling us, "They will never succeed in destroying what
we hold dear." They are not trying to destroy "what we hold dear." They
are trying to get public opinion to force Blair to withdraw from Iraq, out
of his alliance with the United States, out of his adherence to Bush's
policies in the Middle East. The Spanish paid the price for their support
for Bush -- and Spain's subsequent retreat from Iraq proved that the
Madrid bombings achieved their objectives -- while the Australians
were made to suffer in Bali.
It is easy for Blair to call yesterday's bombings "barbaric"' -- they were -
- but what were the civilian deaths of the Anglo American invasion of
Iraq in 2003, the children torn apart by cluster bombs, the innocent
Iraqis gunned down at American military checkpoints. When they die, it
is "collateral damage"; when "we" die it is "barbaric terrorism."
If we are fighting insurgency in Iraq what makes us believe insurgency
won't come to us? One thing is certain: If Blair really believes that by
"fighting terrorism"' in Iraq we could more efficiently protect Britain, this
argument is no longer valid.
To time these bombs with the G-8 summit, when the world was
concentrating on Britain, was not a stroke of genius. You don't need a
Ph.D. to choose another Bush-Blair handshake to close down a capital
city with explosives and massacre its citizens. The G-8 summit was
announced so far in advance that he gave the bombers all the time
they needed to prepare. A coordinated system of attacks of the kind
we saw yesterday takes weeks to plan; we can forget the idiotic
fantasy these were timed to coincide with the Olympic decision. Bin
Laden and his supporters don't set up an operation like this on the off
chance that France will lose its bid to host the Games. Al-Qaida does
not play football.
No, this would have taken months -- to choose safe houses, prepare
explosives, identify targets, ensure security, choose the bombers, to
plan the communications.
Coordination and sophisticated planning -- and the usual utter
indifference toward the lives of the innocent -- are characteristic of al-
Qaida.
Let us reflect on the fact that yesterday -- the opening of the G-8 --
represented a total failure of our security services. These are the same
intelligence "experts" who claim there were weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq when there were none but who utterly failed to
uncover a months-long plot to kill Londoners.
Trains, planes, buses, cars, metros. Transportation appears to be the
science of al-Qaida's dark arts. No one can search 3 million London
commuters every day. No one can stop every tourist.
Then come the Muslims of Britain, who have long been awaiting this
nightmare. Now every one of our Muslims becomes the usual suspect,
the man or woman with brown eyes, the man with the beard, the
woman in the scarf, the boy with the worry beads, the girl who says
she's been racially abused.
I remember, crossing the Atlantic on 9/11 -- my plane turned around
off Ireland when the United States closed its airspace -- how the
aircraft purser and I toured the cabins to see if we could identify any
suspicious passengers. I found about a dozen, of course, totally
innocent men who had brown eyes or long beards or who looked at me
with "hostility." And sure enough, in just a few seconds, bin Laden
turned nice, liberal, friendly Robert into an anti-Arab racist.
And this is part of the point of yesterday's bombings: to divide British
Muslims from British non-Muslims (let us not mention the name
Christians), to encourage the very kind of racism that Blair claims to
resent.
But here's the problem. To go on pretending that Britain's enemies
want to destroy "what we hold dear" encourages racism; what we are
confronting here is a specific, direct, centralized attack on London as a
result of a "war on terror" that Blair has locked us into. Just before the
U.S. presidential elections, bin Laden asked: "Why do we not attack
Sweden?" Lucky Sweden. No Osama bin Laden there. And no Tony
Blair.
Robert Fisk writes for The Independent in London.
© 2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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