Britain in
the firing line
When, on 11 September
2001, I heard Tony Blair state on our behalf that Britain would stand
shoulder-to-shoulder with the US, my first thought was that Canary Wharf would
be next. And in the past two years, as
it became more difficult for al-Qaeda to attack the US mainland, I expected a
strike on the more accessible British mainland, particularly after the US/UK
invasion and occupation of Iraq.
But it wasn’t until last month
that there was a specific strike against a British target, and then it was not
on the British mainland but against the British consulate and an HSBC building
in Istanbul. As was to be expected, the
Government did its best to pretend that the attack had nothing to do with its
chosen policy of always being at America’s side. We are supposed to believe that it was sheer coincidence that the
perpetrators chose to attack a British target on a day that Blair was literally
standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Bush in Downing Street.
Speculation now abounds that London
will be hit: Oxford Street during the Christmas rush has been mentioned as an
ideal al-Qaeda target. Whether al-Qaeda
or its associates has that capability is unknowable, but what is not in doubt
is that being shoulder-to-shoulder with the US increases the risk that British
targets will be hit, at home and abroad.
And invading Iraq alongside the US has further increased the risk.
Blair made those choices for
Britain, and unfortunately they were endorsed by Parliament. Those choices will get British targets hit
and British people killed.
Inevitable?
It is frequently said by the
police and the security services that it is inevitable that Britain will be
hit. That is nonsense. There is no inevitability about it. The threat is a product of choosing to be
America’s closest ally. A change of
policy away from being an uncritical follower of the US, coupled with specific
action to demonstrate that we are serious about it, for example, by withdrawing
our forces from Iraq, would eliminate the threat at a stroke, permanently.
Of course, that’s not going to
happen. But let us be clear that the
Prime Minister has made a policy choice that has put British lives in
danger. And no amount of concrete bollards,
or security guards, or draconian laws so beloved by David Blunkett, will
eliminate that danger. As the IRA said
in its message to the Government after the Brighton bombing: “We have only to
be lucky once; you have to be lucky all the time”.
At a press conference in Downing
Street, a few hours after the Istanbul bombing on 20 November 2003 (transcript here),
Nick Robinson of ITV News did the unthinkable and put it to Blair that his
policy choice has put British lives in peril.
Robinson asked:
“What do you say to people who today conclude that
British people have died and been maimed as a result of you appearing here
today, shoulder-to-shoulder with a controversial American President?”
Blair went white with anger and, remarkably for him, was
speechless for about 30 seconds. He
then came up with the following acute analysis:
“What has caused the
terrorist attack today in Turkey is not the President of the United States, is
not the alliance between America and Britain. What is responsible for that
terrorist attack is terrorism, are the terrorists. And our response has got to be to unify in that
situation, to put the responsibility squarely on those who are killing and
murdering innocent people, and to say, we are going to defeat you, and we're
not going to back down or flinch at all from this struggle.”
What is missing from this “analysis” is an inkling of what
drives people to kill themselves and others in carrying out these awful acts,
and therefore what action might be taken to make these awful acts less likely.
To those of us who live in Northern Ireland, this is very
reminiscent of the British Government’s public response to the IRA campaign
during its first 20 years or so. Then,
the IRA was denounced as bunch of evil fanatics, who carried out mindless acts
of violence because they were evil fanatics.
They had to be defeated, full stop.
There was to be no backing down.
It was anathema to suggest publicly that, like it or like it
not, the IRA was politically motivated, that its violence was geared to achieve
a political end. Of course, the British
Government gave the game away from time to time by negotiating secretly with
the IRA, and later openly with its political wing, Sinn Fein – which is why
there is relative peace in Northern Ireland now.
The four Kurdish suicide bombers from the Great Eastern
Raiders’ Front responsible for the bombs in Istanbul on 15 and 20 November may
not have a definite political objective like the IRA. But as Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s National Security
Advisor, wrote in an article
in the New York Times on 1 September 2002, “lurking behind every terroristic
act is a specific political antecedent”.
He went on:
“In the
case of September 11, it does not require deep analysis to note - given the
identity of the perpetrators - that the Middle East's political history has
something to do with the hatred of Middle Eastern terrorists for America. …
“American
involvement in the Middle East is clearly the main impulse of the hatred that
has been directed at America. There is no escaping the fact that Arab political
emotions have been shaped by the region's encounter with French and British
colonialism, by the defeat of the Arab effort to prevent the existence of
Israel and by the subsequent American support for Israel and its treatment of
the Palestinians, as well as by the direct injection of American power into the
region. …
“Yet there
has been a remarkable reluctance in America to confront the more complex
historical dimensions of this hatred. The inclination instead has been to rely
on abstract assertions like terrorists ‘hate freedom’ or that their religious
background makes them despise Western culture.
“To win
the war on terrorism, one must therefore set two goals: first to destroy the
terrorists and, second, to begin a political effort that focuses on the
conditions that brought about their emergence.”
There might be a case for Blair
sticking close to Bush if he was telling Bush to focus on the conditions that
gave rise to the emergence of al-Qaeda, and, in particular, to cease backing
Israel in its continuing theft of Arab land.
But he is not. On the contrary, he has taken up every silly
Bush refrain, and amplified it with his own particular brand of messianic
fervour.
One needed a very strong stomach
to listen to his address to the US Congress on 17 July 2003, during which he
received 17 standing ovations. He ended
by committing Britain in perpetuity to stand by America’s side in the great
struggle ahead against “terrorism” and for freedom, democracy and the rule of
law:
“And our job, my nation that watched you grow, that you fought alongside and now fights alongside you, that takes enormous pride in our alliance and great affection in our common bond, our job is to be there with you. You are not going to be alone. We will be with you in this fight for liberty. And if our spirit is right and our courage firm, the world will be with us.”
By
comparison, Bush’s speech to an invited audience in London on 19 November 2003
was a measured discourse on the need for freedom and democracy, particularly in
the Middle East.
Democracy in Palestine
On 26 January 1996, there was a
remarkable outbreak of democracy in the Middle East. Elections took place to the 88-member Palestinian Legislative
Council on a multi-member constituency basis, in 16 electoral
districts. Turnout was high: 73% in the
West Bank and 88% in Gaza. Fatah won 68
seats (47 official and 21 unofficial, classed as independents), but other
independent candidates were elected as well, including candidates opposed to
the Oslo agreement. At the same time,
Yasser Arafat was elected president of the Palestinian Authority: he got 88% of
the votes in a contest against Samiha Khalil.
Unlike the
US Presidential election of 2000, nobody disputes the fairness of these
elections. Arafat won by a street,
unlike George W Bush who, after weeks of controversy about the voting in
Florida, including about his brother’s massaging of the electoral roll, was
declared President by his father’s appointees to the US Supreme Court.
Nevertheless,
the doubtfully elected President of the US refuses to meet and recognise the
duly, and overwhelmingly, elected President of the Palestinian Authority. He is so committed to bringing democracy to
the Middle East that he refuses to deal with the one Arab leader who has an
unambiguous electoral mandate. Like
Ariel Sharon, he insists that the Palestinians find another leader, because he
doesn’t like the one they elected in 1996.
Democracy
Bush-style
Here are
his words in what was hailed as a landmark speech
on 24 June 2002, because he committed the US to a so-called two-state solution
in Palestine:
“Peace requires a new and different Palestinian
leadership, so that a Palestinian state can be born.
“I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders,
leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practising
democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively
pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts.
“If the Palestinian people meet these goals, they will be
able to reach agreement with Israel and Egypt and Jordan on security and other
arrangements for independence. And when the Palestinian people have new
leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbours,
the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state
whose borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until
resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East.”
If the
Palestinians get a new leadership acceptable to George Bush, then they can have
a state. Otherwise, they can’t. That’s democracy Bush-style.
(A few weeks after this “landmark” speech by the President,
a senior member of his administration expressed the rather different view that
the West Bank and Gaza belonged to Israel by right of conquest. He said:
“My feeling about the so-called
occupied territories are that there was a war, Israel urged neighboring
countries not to get involved in it once it started, they all jumped in, and
they lost a lot of real estate to Israel because Israel prevailed in that
conflict. In the intervening period, they’ve made some settlements in various
parts of the so-called occupied area, which was the result of a war, which they
won.”
That was
Donald Rumsfeld, speaking at a so-called Pentagon Townhall Meeting on 6 August
2002. He is still a member of George
Bush’s administration.)
Acceptable
to Blair
Bush-style
democracy is entirely acceptable to Blair.
On 19 November 2003, Bush made a speech in the Royal Banqueting Hall in
Whitehall to an invited audience. The
next day, Blair described this speech as “a powerful, telling speech extolling the virtues of freedom,
justice, democracy, and the rule of law, not just for some people, but for all
the peoples of our world”.
In that speech,
praised to the skies by Blair, Bush once again made it plain that the
leadership elected by Palestinians is unacceptable to the US:
“As we work on the details of peace, we must look to the
heart of the matter, which is the need for a viable Palestinian democracy. Peace
will not be achieved by Palestinian rulers who intimidate opposition, who
tolerate and profit from corruption and maintain their ties to terrorist
groups. These are the methods of the old elites, who time and again had put
their own self-interest above the interest of the people they claim to serve.
The long-suffering Palestinian people deserve better. They deserve true
leaders, capable of creating and governing a Palestinian state.”
It is noticeable that Bush’s demand
for new leadership is never accompanied by calls for fresh elections on the
grounds that the 1996 mandate has expired.
Understandably so, since Arafat would be returned with a fresh mandate,
which would be difficult to ignore while at the same time extolling the virtues
of democracy. And any elections to the
Palestinian Legislative Council would produce a body less acceptable to Bush
and Sharon than the current one.
(As for corruption in the
Palestinian Authority, remember that George W Bush was a personal friend of
Kenneth Lay. He called him Kenny
Boy. As the head of Enron, Kenny Boy
presided over a multi-billion dollar scam, from which George W’s received major
contributions to his election fund. By
comparison, any corruption in the Palestinian Authority is a minor matter.)
It is reasonable to assume that the
enthusiasm of Bush and Blair for democracy in the abstract is conditional in
practice upon the democracy electing leaders who are acceptable to the
US/UK. That is the experience from Palestine. Is there any doubt that, for all their windy
rhetoric about democracy and freedom in Iraq, that experience will be
replicated there?
Guantanamo
There is another glaring example,
where the Bush/Blair attachment to democracy and the rule of law in theory is
contradicted in practice. During the
press conference in Downing Street on 20 November 2003 (transcript here),
Adam Boulton of Sky News referred to it in a question to them:
“What do you say to those people, both those who support
what your two governments have done since September 11th, and those who oppose
it, that, in fact, the treatment of the captives in Guantanamo Bay actually
belies all your talk of freedom, justice and tolerance?”
Bush
uttered the usual formula that these people were illegal combatants, picked up
off a battlefield, as if that justified holding people without trial and
incommunicado for more than two years.
(He actually said “illegal non-combatants”, but that must have
been a Bushism). In fact, not all of
them were picked up off the battlefield in Afghanistan: some were captured in
Pakistan, and in other states including Bosnia.
Blair’s response was:
“… let's just remember, this arose out of the battle
in Afghanistan, that arose out of September the 11th and the attack there. …
So, even though this arose out of this appalling, brutal attack on America on
September the 11th, nonetheless, we make sure that justice is done
for people.”
So, because the US was subject to an “appalling,
brutal attack”, the Blair version of the rule of law allows the US to:
1.
detain hundreds of
people in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the vast majority of whom had nothing to
do with 9/11,
2.
remove them from the
state in which they were detained without any judicial process, which, if done
by an individual, is called kidnapping,
3.
transport them to a
location specially chosen so that they can continue to be denied access to a
judicial process (because it is under US control but outside the jurisdiction
of US courts), and
4.
detain them without
trial and without access to legal representatives for more than two years.
And now he says they are making sure that justice is
done for these people.
That is, of course, another big lie. The six British detainees may get some form
of trial somewhere, because Blair has come under pressure at home about it, and
his friend George is trying to help him out.
But Blair hasn’t shown the slightest interest in “justice” for the other
99% of detainees. The Blair version of
the rule of law doesn’t include the concept of equality before the law.
Loss of life
Another thing: it is about time the loss of life in
the US on 11 September 2001 was put into perspective. 3,000 people died that day.
Bush and Blair have killed many times that number since, in Afghanistan
and Iraq. The number will never be
known with any precision, because they have never made any attempt to count
Afghan or Iraqi dead and wounded, either civilian or military. The US army doesn’t even keep a count of the
civilians it has killed during the occupation.
Their attitude is profoundly racist: dead Afghans and Iraqis, combatants
or non-combatants, don’t matter.
Various individuals and organisations have tried to
estimate civilian dead. Marc Herold
estimates, from news reports, that 3,000 to 3,400 civilians were killed in
Afghanistan (see here). The Iraq
Body Count organisation estimates Iraqi civilian deaths at 8-10,000,
including 1,500 who have died in Baghdad alone in the general mayhem since the
occupation began. God knows how many combatants have been killed, but it can
hardly be less than the civilian deaths.
Blair and Bush may have been responsible for the deaths of ten times the
number who died on 9/11. But these
deaths never get a mention.
And remember, at most a few of these people had
anything to do with 9/11.
Bad people
Adam Boulton’s devastating question at the Bush/Blair
press conference in Downing Street on 20 November 2003 (transcript here)
wasn’t the first time he had bowled a yorker at them about the detainees at
Guantanamo. On 17 July 2003 in the
White House, he asked if they had concerns that the detainees were not getting
justice. This prompted Bush to declare
them all guilty without trial, saying, in a remark worthy of David Blunkett:
“No, the only thing I know for
certain is that these are bad people”
Remember, in the military court system being prepared
to try the detainees, the US President is the court of last resort. He may have the power of life or death over
them. You can see what Blair means when
he says they are making sure that justice is done to the detainees.
Bush’s on the spot conviction of the detainees
prompted Nick Robinson to ask:
“Mr. President, do you realize that many people
hearing you say that we know these are bad people in Guantanamo Bay will merely
fuel their doubts that the United States regards them as innocent until proven
guilty and due a fair, free and open trial?”
Bush made a half-hearted attempt to withdraw his
guilty verdict:
“Well, let me just say these were illegal combatants.
They were picked up off the battlefield aiding and abetting the Taliban. I'm
not trying to try them in front of your cameras or in your newspaper.”
(Every year, the US State Department publishes
detailed reports on human rights violations around the world. They are readily available on the State
Department website. The report for 2002
on Saudi Arabia says (see here):
“Security forces continued to … arbitrarily arrest
and detain persons, and hold them in incommunicado detention.”
What are they complaining about?)
“Terrorist” free zone
Blair took Britain to war against Iraq, because, he
said, its possession of “weapons of
mass destruction” made it a threat to its neighbours and to the world. He specifically stated that, if Iraq gave up
these weapons, the Iraqi regime would not be overthrown. Disarming Iraq and removing the threat it
posed to its neighbours and the world was the object of Government policy, not
regime change. Vile though the regime
was, it would be left alone, providing it gave up its chemical and biological
weapons.
Now that no “weapons of mass destruction” have been
found, Blair invites us to rejoice at the overthrow of a regime which he said
he would be content to leave in place, providing it had no “weapons of mass
destruction” – which it obviously hadn’t.
The “liberation” of Iraq is now his ex post facto justification for the
invasion and occupation.
But faced with Iraqi resistance to being “liberated”
by the US/UK, he has had to engage in further piece of twisting. The line now is that the Iraqi resistance
are “terrorists” opposed to “freedom and democracy”, just like the “terrorists”
who flew aircraft into buildings on 9/11 and the ones who planted bombs in
Istanbul last month. Speaking on 20
November 2003, just after the bombing of the British targets in Istanbul, he said:
“And what this latest terrorist outrage shows us is
that this is a war, its main battleground is Iraq. We have got to make sure we
defeat these terrorists, the former Saddam people in Iraq, and we must do that
because that is an essential part of defeating this fanaticism and extremism
that is killing innocent people all over our world today.”
This is yet another theme
which Blair has copied from Bush, who, as Iraqi resistance has grown, has
increasingly portrayed his Iraqi adventure as an integral part of the “war on
terror” and therefore essential to prevent a repeat of 9/11. It’s understandable that Bush should mouth
such nonsense since he is up for re-election next year, but does Blair have to
insult our intelligence by repeating his nonsense.
How did Iraq become what
he now calls the “main battleground” in the war on terror? Could it be that it was something to do with
the fact that he and George Bush invaded Iraq in March this year and have
occupied it ever since? Could it be
that, had they not invaded Iraq, it would have remained a “terrorist”
free zone?
December 2003