[Mb-civic] Tariq Ali & Robert Fisk on London bombings

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

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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