Naeem — Three Articles on London
Topic(s): "War on Terror" | Comments Off on Naeem — Three Articles on London1. The Price of Occupation by Tariq Ali
2. The Reality of This Barbaric Bombing by Robert Fisk
3. Over There by William Rivers Pitt
The Price of Occupation
By Tariq Ali
The Guardian UK
Friday 08 July 2005
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 organization 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
jeopardize 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 recognized, the horrors will continue.
Tariq Ali’s latest book is Speaking of Empire and Resistance.
==========
The Reality of This Barbaric Bombing
By Robert Fisk
The Independent UK
Friday 08 July 2005
“If you bomb our cities,” Osama bin Laden said in one of his
recent video tapes, “we will bomb yours.” There you go, as they say.
It was crystal clear Britain would be a target ever since Tony Blair
decided to join George Bush’s “war on terror” and his invasion of
Iraq. We had, as they say, been warned. The G8 summit was obviously
chosen, well in advance, as Attack Day.
And it’s no use Mr Blair telling us yesterday that “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, from his alliance with the
United States, and from 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 Tony Blair to call yesterdays bombings “barbaric” –
of course 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 countless 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 Tony Blair
really believes that by “fighting terrorism” in Iraq we could more
efficiently protect Britain – fight them there rather than let them
come here, as Bush constantly says – this argument is no longer valid.
To time these bombs with the G8 summit, when the world was
concentrating on Britain, was not a stroke of genius. You don’t need a
PhD to choose another Bush-Blair handshake to close down a capital
city with explosives and massacre more than 30 of its citizens. The G8
summit was announced so far in advance as to give the bombers all the
time they needed to prepare.
A co-ordinated system of attacks of the kind we saw yesterday
would have taken months to plan – to choose safe houses, prepare
explosives, identify targets, ensure security, choose the bombers, the
hour, the minute, to plan the communications (mobile phones are
giveaways). Co-ordination and sophisticated planning – and the usual
utter ruthlessness with regard to the lives of the innocent – are
characteristic of al-Qa’ida. And let us not use – as our television
colleagues did yesterday – “hallmarks”, a word identified with quality
silver rather than base metal.
And now let us reflect on the fact that yesterday, the opening of
the G8, so critical a day, so bloody a day, represented a total
failure of our security services – 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-Qa’ida’s dark arts. No one can search three million
London commuters every day. No one can stop every tourist. Some
thought the Eurostar might have been an al-Qa’ida target – be sure
they have studied it – but why go for prestige when your common or
garden bus and Tube train are there for the taking.
And 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 11 September 2001 – my plane
turned round off Ireland when the US 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, Osama 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 Tony 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, centralised attack on London
as a result of a “war on terror” which Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara has
locked us into. Just before the US presidential elections, Bin Laden
asked: “Why do we not attack Sweden?”
Lucky Sweden. No Osama bin Laden there. And no Tony Blair.
=====
Over There
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 07 July 2005
A British associate penned a quick response to the bombing attacks
that took place in London this morning. “The message from those
claiming responsibility says, in part, ‘Britain is now burning with
fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western
quarters,'” he wrote. “Well it isn’t, so fuck them.”
Indeed.
My first response was a wrenching horror, a kick to the gut when I
checked my email and saw two hundred messages with the words ‘London
attack’ in the subject line. Suddenly, the television was on and I was
reading every news report I could get my eyes on. At least
thirty-three people were killed and hundreds more wounded in four
coordinated bombing attacks aimed at the mass transit system.
All of a sudden I was back in my classroom, back in the middle of
a bright September morning, surrounded by wall-eyed students asking me
if this was World War III as we watched two buildings burn, and then
fall, and then unannounced I had Ani DiFranco in my head and she was
singing, “And every borough looked up when it heard the first blast,
and then every dumb action movie was summarily surpassed, and the
exodus uptown by foot and motorcar looked more like war than anything
I’ve seen so far…”
That was my first response, but I’m a little wiser nowadays. My
second thought, bluntly, was that of all the Western cities in the
world, London can handle this. From 1973 until roundabout the year
2000, bombings in that city took place with dreary regularity. In
November of 1974, two IRA bombs in Birmingham killed 19 and wounded
180. A 1989 bombing at the Royal Marines School of Music killed 10 and
wounded more than 30. There were more than a dozen different major
incidents like these, and many smaller ones besides.
London handled the Nazi blitz. ‘Handled’ is perhaps the wrong
word. Londoners watched as their city was battered to rubble day after
day, and squared their shoulders, and sent out the RAF, and prevailed.
A fire chief named Deasy summed up the British response: “The idea of
England folding up, that’s a joke. That outfit will never fold up.
They’ve got just as much guts as anybody in this man’s world has and
they’ll carry right on. Anybody thinks they’re gonna fold up, they’re
crazy.”
In other words, the British associate who wrote that note this
morning hit the nail on the head.
Now comes the so-called official response. Predictably, George W.
Bush proclaimed that the War on Terror goes on. Conservative frother
Rush Limbaugh got on the radio and made a few remarkable rhetorical
contortions. To wit: The G8 summit, which was apparently the target of
these attacks, is a liberal summit. Yes, you read that right. He
called it a “leftist summit” aimed at achieving leftist goals like
saving Africa (“Again,” he said) and stopping global warming, and so
this was an attack on leftists who will now attack Bush.
The idea that the G8 is a leftist organization is a new one to me.
I must have missed a memo somewhere. Apparently, the three billion
people who went out last weekend to ask the G8 to do the right thing
likewise missed the memo. Other conservative commentators rushed to
microphones to proclaim that if we had all been standing shoulder to
shoulder with Mr. Bush, this London attack would never have happened.
Never underestimate the ability of the right-wing to use tragedy as a
means of beating on people they don’t agree with.
I am a little wiser nowadays, and perhaps a little more callous
because of that wisdom. My first response was horror, and my second
was a sense that the British people have the strength to endure this.
My third response was to marvel at the news coverage. Four bombings,
more than thirty dead, hundreds more wounded? In London, it is a
terrifying, enraging, appalling act of despicable violence that must
be immediately avenged.
In Iraq, they call events like this “Tuesday.”
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and wounded in Iraq
by way of deadly bombings that have been taking place every single
day. These Iraqi people are no different from the Londoners who
perished today. Their skin is darker perhaps, and they pray to a
different God, but they have families and children and dreams and they
die just as horribly as their British counterparts. Yet they earn
perhaps a few sentences on the back page of the paper, and virtually
no comment from the members of the international community which
ginned up the invasion of Iraq in the first place.
The world was warned about this, warned and warned and warned
again. An invasion based on lies and disinformation, an occupation
that grinds a civilian populace, becomes the perfect machine to
manufacture terrorists who will happily die in order to see others
die. The CIA calls what happened in London today “blowback.” It is
wrong, it is heinous, it is murder plain and simple, and it was as
predictable as the sun rising in the East.
The rhetoric about Iraq has been that we are “fighting the
terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.”
Today, “over here” became the streets of London. Where will it be
tomorrow?
One thing is certain. The perpetrators of this bombing bear the
responsibility for this wretched act, and bear the responsibility for
the gross miscalculation that many have made in the past: A democratic
society is weak and decadent, and can be easily pushed. Ask Hitler if
that is true. A democratic society, once enraged, is the strongest
force on Earth, and those responsible for this are going to find that
out to their woe.
The other certainty: Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair bear the
responsibility for this wretched act, as well. They decided in April
of 2002 to start a war based on false pretenses, to fix the
intelligence and facts around the policy, and now the whirlwind has
come to be reaped. The blood that runs in the streets of London, and
in the streets of Baghdad, Fallujah, Tikrit and Mosul, is on their hands.
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally
bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t
Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.