The
“The
next time a large bomb explodes in a western city, or an Arab or Muslim regime
topples and is replaced by extremists, the Government must consider the extent
to which their policy contributed to it. That is why hon. Members should pause
and why, unless evidence is produced for a breach and a material threat, my
judgment today is that we should not go to war [with
In a BBC 2
programme broadcast on 8 September 2002, Michael Cockerell asked the Prime
Minister whether one of the elements of the UK-US special relationship was
whether “
“Yes.
What is important though is that at moments of crisis they (the
The blood price he was referring to
there was military casualties on the battlefield, and that price has been paid
to the extent of nearly a hundred deaths and several hundred wounded to date in
There is an infallible defence
against this terrorism on the British homeland, and it doesn’t involve
draconian anti-terrorism laws, or searching everybody boarding the Tube, or
concrete bollards outside every public building. It is that we stay at home as a country; that
we cease stomping round the Muslim world in the wake of the
It’s a very straightforward, and a
very cost effective, counter-terrorism strategy: we don’t spend money and blood
invading Muslim countries, and we won’t need to spend money protecting the
British homeland from terrorism emanating from the Muslim world in response. And blood will not be spilled on our streets
when the protection proves to be fallible.
Bringing our troops home from
Fabricated nonsense
Since the bombings in
The ultimate “proof” of
this, all sides say in unison, is that al-Qaida’s targets have been many and
various, and started long before the
As we will see, this is fabricated nonsense. Bin Laden came to public attention in 1996
with his declaration of war against the American military presence in
As for al-Qaida’s targets, up until 9/11, they were
US interests abroad, but when other states, including
Prime
Minister Blair made a statement on the
“Together, we will ensure that, though
terrorists can kill, they will never destroy the way of life that we share and
value, which we will defend with such strength of belief and conviction that it
will be to us and not to the terrorists that victory will belong.”
For the
Conservative Party, Michael Howard agreed
that our “way of life” was under attack:
“I want to begin by paying tribute to him [the Prime
Minister] for the calm, resolute and statesmanlike way in which the Government
responded to last Thursday's attack on our capital city, on our citizens and on
our way of life. “
Only
one MP, Scottish Nationalist leader, Alex Salmond disturbed this mindless
consensus. He referred
to a remark by the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, a couple of days
earlier, who had blurted out the obvious fact that some countries are more at
risk than others:
"Even
intelligence from other countries shows the three Bs—Bush, Berlusconi and
Blair—are considered the most exposed to this type of risk."
Salmond
asked Blair if Berlusconi had “shared that intelligence information with our
Prime Minister”, to which he replied:
“No.
The one thing that is obvious from the long list of countries that have been
victims of this type of terrorism that I read out is that it does not
discriminate greatly between individual items of policy. I am afraid that I
must tell the hon. Gentleman that it is a form of terrorism aimed at our way of
life, not at any particular Government or policy.”
So,
Berlusconi is wrong that the
None
of the Labour MPs who opposed the invasion of
“As
one of those who opposed the military action in
Needless to say the Prime Minister
agreed. In a sense, Wright is right:
Even Ken Livingston has joined the
mindless consensus. Before the invasion
of
"An assault on
But now he
pretends with the rest of them that objective of the
What does it
mean?
The mantra that
al-Qaida is out to destroy our way of life is repeated over and over again from
all parts of the political spectrum, but what does it mean? Are these people killing themselves because they
object to our electing our leaders? Or
to our reading The Guardian? Do they
want the whole Western world to convert to Islam? And order our societies according to Islamic
law? And how many bombs in Western
cities is it going to take to bring this about?
This is mindless
nonsense, and the Government knows it’s mindless nonsense. The truth cannot be admitted, since to admit
the truth would be to admit that the Government’s actions in the Muslim world
have caused these awful events to be visited upon
The plain truth
is that al-Qaida is not
concerned with changing Western society.
Its objective is to change
This is clear from the many public
statements by bin Laden and his associates.
He is concerned with American foreign policy towards, and American
actions in, the Muslim world – with US support for Israel in its ongoing theft
of Arab land; US support for corrupt and repressive regimes in the Muslim world
(Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states); and so on. Post 9/11,
the
Before looking at some of bin Laden’s statements,
let me quote from two impeccable sources, which advance this view.
Michael Scheuer
First, from Michael Scheuer, who worked
for the CIA for 22 years, and was the first head of its al-Qaida desk, serving
in this capacity for two years. While
still working for the CIA, he wrote a book entitled Imperial Hubris: Why the West is
losing the War on Terror, which was published in 2004. His view, as summarised in this book, is as
follows:
“… the greatest danger for
Americans confronting the radical Islamist threat is to believe – at the urging
of
“Rhetorical political
blustering ‘informs’ the public that Islamists are offended by the Western
world’s democratic freedoms, civil liberties, intermingling of genders, and
separation of church and state. However,
although aspects of the modern world may offend conservative Muslims, no
Islamist leader has, for example, fomented jihad in order to destroy
participatory democracy, the national association of credit unions, or coed
universities. …
“Al-Qaida’s public
statements condemn
“[Scheuer] contends they
will go to any length, not to destroy our secular, democratic way of life, but
to deter what they view as specific attacks on their lands, their communities
and their religion. Unless US leaders
recognize this fact and adjust their policies abroad accordingly, even moderate
Muslims will be radicalized into supporting bin Laden’s anti-Western
offensive.”
A similar view was expressed in a
report in September 2004 from the US Defense Science Board, which exists to
provide independent advice to the
“Thus the critical problem in American public diplomacy directed toward
the Muslim World is not one of ‘dissemination of information’, or even one of
crafting and delivering the ‘right’ message. Rather, it is a fundamental
problem of credibility. Simply, there is none – the
And, according to the report, the
“American direct intervention
in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for
radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the
“Muslims do not ‘hate our
freedom’, but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice
their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of
“Thus when American public
diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as
no more than self-serving hypocrisy. Moreover, saying that ‘freedom is the
future of the Middle East’ is seen as patronizing, suggesting that Arabs are
like the enslaved peoples of the old Communist World — but Muslims do not feel
this way: they feel oppressed, but not enslaved.
“Furthermore, in the eyes
of Muslims, American occupation of
“Therefore, the dramatic
narrative since 9/11 has essentially borne out the entire radical Islamist bill
of particulars. American actions and the flow of events have elevated the
authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among
Muslims. Fighting groups portray themselves as the true defenders of an Ummah
(the entire Muslim community) invaded and under attack — to broad public
support.
“What was a marginal network
is now an Ummah-wide movement of fighting groups. Not only has there been a
proliferation of ‘terrorist’ groups: the unifying context of a shared cause
creates a sense of affiliation across the many cultural and sectarian
boundaries that divide Islam.” (pages 40-41)
When George Galloway expressed similar
views in the House of Commons a few hours after the
Bin Laden statements
Now let us look at a few of bin Laden’s public
statements.
He first came to public attention with his declaration of war against the
“It is a duty now on every tribe in the
The only demand made of the
Likewise in another fatwa from February 1998 (see,
for example, here),
which says:
“. . . the
killing of Americans and their civilian and military allies is a religious duty
for each and every Muslim to be carried out in whichever country they are until
Al Aksa mosque [in
Again, there is nothing in it about destroying our
way of life in the West.
More recently, in a video message broadcast on
al-Jezeera on 1 November 2004 just before the
“People of
”Before I begin, I say to you that security is an indispensable pillar of human
life and that free men do not forfeit their security, contrary to Bush's claim
that we hate freedom.
“If so, then let him
explain to us why we don't strike, for example,
”No, we fight because we are free men who don't sleep under oppression. We want
to restore freedom to our nation, just as you lay waste to our nation. So shall
we lay waste to yours.
”No one except a dumb thief plays with the security of others and then makes
himself believe he will be secure. Whereas thinking people, when disaster
strikes, make it their priority to look for its causes, in order to prevent it
happening again.
”But I am amazed at you. Even though we are in the fourth year after the events
of September 11th, Bush is still engaged in distortion, deception and hiding
from you the real causes. And thus, the reasons are still there for a repeat of
what occurred.”
Blair and the whole political establishment are hiding “the
real causes” of the
His final words to the American
people were:
“In
conclusion, I tell you in truth, that your security is not in the hands of
Kerry, nor Bush, nor al-Qaida. No. Your
security is in your own hands. And every state that doesn't play with our
security has automatically guaranteed its own security.”
The
message is clear: leave the Muslin world alone and you will be left alone.
On 29
November 2004, a video tape by Ayman al-Zawahiri was broadcast on
al-Jezeera. For the first time, to the
best of my knowledge, an al-Qaida tape was widely reported in the West as
stating that the issue at stake was
“In a video tape aired Monday, Osama bin Laden's top
lieutenant vowed to continue fighting the
It was
prepared before the
“The results of the elections do not matter for
us. Vote whoever you want, Bush, Kerry
or the devil himself. This does not concern us. What concerns us is to purge
our land from the aggressors.”
It
concluded:
“Either you choose to treat us with respect and based
on an exchange of interests ... or we will continue to fight you until you
change your policies.”
Could
al-Qaida’s objective be clearer? It is
not about forcing us to convert to Islam and making us accept Islamic law: it
is about ending Western, particularly US, interference in the Muslim world.
9/11 was before
To any suggestion that
Britain’s participation in the invasion of Iraq played any part in provoking
the London bombings, the reply from Government and Opposition alike has been:
“Don’t you remember that the greatest atrocity of all, in New York on 9/11,
took place before the invasion of Iraq?”, as if this had some bearing on the
issue.
On BBC
Radio 4’sToday programme on 9 July 2005, James Naughtie gently asked
Blair:
“Have you ever worried in the last two days - has it
crossed your mind just as an individual – that if you hadn’t gone to war that
we might have been spared this?”
He
replied:
“What was interesting, round the table [at
the G8] was, if you take President Putin, who was passionately opposed to the
war in Iraq, and yet suffered Beslan, if you think of Bali, and what happened
there, if you think that even after the change of government in Madrid, the
terrorists there were planning further terrorist acts before they were caught,
fortunately for the people of Spain, and if you remember that September 11,
that was the reason we went into Afghanistan, September 11 happened before
Iraq, before Afghanistan, before any of these issues, and that was the worst
terrorist atrocity of all.“
(To emphasise the point that al-Qaida’s targets have
been many and various, a list has now been published on the Downing Street
website here,
beginning with the attack on the
On BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions on 8 July 2005,
David Cameron, a contender for the leadership of the Conservative Party, faced
with the apt question: “Are we starting to reap that which we have sown?”, sang
from the same hymn sheet:
“I don’t think, I don’t think that’s the
right way to look at it. … we’ve got to
be clear about this, the 9/11 attacks, the bombs in the Kenyan embassy, the
Tanzanian embassy, the first World Trade Center bomb, the attack on the USS
Cole, all happened before the Iraq war.”
Absolutely true, but absolutely irrelevant. All of these attacks were on US interests. None of them was on British interests. Al-Qaida or al-Qaida inspired groups did not
attack British interests, until after Blair volunteered
A few weeks earlier, on 18 October 2003, in a message
to the American people about the US invasion of Iraq broadcast on Al Jezeera television
(transcript
here), bin Laden specifically warned that US
allies in Iraq would be attacked, saying:
“We reserve the right to retaliate at the appropriate
time and place against all countries involved, especially the UK, Spain,
Australia, Poland, Japan and Italy, not to exclude those Muslim states that
took part, especially the Gulf states, and in particular Kuwait, which has
become a launch pad for the crusading forces.”
Following this message, 19 Italian Carabinieri were
killed in Nasiriyah in
“Our actions [on September 11 and March
11] come in response to your actions of destroying and killing our people in
He then offered a truce:
“I offer a truce to them [European states]
with a commitment to stop operations against any state which vows to stop
attacking Muslims or interfere in their affairs, including [participating] in
the American conspiracy against the wider Muslim world. …
“And the announcement of the truce starts
with the withdrawal of the last soldier from our land, and the door is open for
three months from the date of the announcement of this statement.”
Note, these countries were not required to convert to
Islam as a condition for al-Qaida stopping operations against them. All they had to do was withdraw their
soldiers from Muslim lands.
There is not much doubt that
An organisation styling
itself the Secret Organisation of al-Qaida Jihad in Europe claimed credit for
the
“We continue to warn the governments of
Some of the
“Crusader” governments –
BBC Panorama journalist,
Peter Taylor, wrote in
the Guardian on 8 July 2005:
“The common
denominator in
I am not in a position to name these 23 countries or
to say when they were threatened and when they were attacked. But, Peter Taylor is a reputable journalist
and Michael Schauer is in a position to know, so this is probably accurate. The notion that al-Qaida targets, including
(Blair’s citing of the Beslan siege as “proof” that
the British invasion of
Berlusconi was
right
Today, in the
wake of the bombs in
Then, echoing Silvio Berlusconi’s recent
remark, the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, argued that our special
relationship with the US put us in special danger, that we were under greater
threat from al-Qaida than any other of the 45 signatories to the European
Convention on Human Rights, including Spain that has experienced al-Qaida attacks. This is
why, he said, we alone had found it necessary to derogate from the Convention
in order to introduce detention without trial.
We know this from the House
of Lords judgment
on 16 December 2004, which found the indefinite detention of foreign nationals
without charge or trial to be incompatible with the Convention. Lawyers for the detainees
naturally questioned why
“Insofar as any difference of
practice as between the United Kingdom and other Council of Europe members
called for justification, it could be found in this country’s prominent role as
an enemy of Al-Qaida and an ally of the United States.” (paragraph 25)
So, there you have it: last autumn, the Government
stated that being the special friend of the
Silvio Berlusconi was right, after all.
In September 2001, Blair went to considerable lengths
to “prove” that
But perhaps there was another motive: perhaps, he was
preparing a defence against the charge that his actions had put
Be that as it may, on 4 October 2001, a few days
before the US/UK started bombing
I was puzzled when I heard that the British Government
was going to publish such a document.
Why was the British Government doing it, and not the American? The attack took place on American soil and
was being investigated by the FBI, which along with the CIA was bound to be the
source of the “evidence” about who was responsible. So what business was it of the British
Government?
The answer became clear on reading the document. It has four conclusions. The first two are that bin Laden and al-Qaida
were responsible for the attacks and that they are capable of mounting further
attacks. The third is the reason why the
document was published: it is that “the
This was based on two statements by bin Laden (see
paragraph 22). First, the declaration of
war against the
The
Government concluded from this that:
“Although
US targets are Al Qaida’s priority, it also explicitly threatens the
This was a doubtful conclusion:
“This is confirmed by more specific references in a
broadcast of 13 October, during which Bin Laden's spokesman said: ‘Al Qaida
declares that Bush Sr, Bush Jr, Clinton, Blair and Sharon are the
arch-criminals from among the Zionists and Crusaders . . . Al Qaida stresses
that the blood of those killed will not go to waste, God willing, until we
punish these criminals . . . We also say and advise the Muslims in the United
States and Britain . . . not to travel by plane. We also advise them not to
live in high-rise buildings and towers’”
This
explicit threat against Blair was made on 13 October 2001. It could conceivably have been prompted by
the US/UK bombing of
That the
Government added this explicit threat to the document shows that it was very
keen to prove that the
Increased risk warning
Prior to the invasion of
“The next time a large bomb explodes in a
western city, or an Arab or Muslim regime topples and is replaced by
extremists, the Government must consider the extent to which their policy
contributed to it. That is why hon. Members should pause and why, unless
evidence is produced for a breach and a material threat, my judgment today is
that we should not go to war.”
By contrast, Blair presented the action as a necessary
counter measure against al-Qaida, so much so that a major part of his public
case for military action was that there was “a real and present danger” that
chemical and biological weapons (remember them?) would find their way from Iraq
to al-Qaida or associated groups. For example, on 18 March 2003 he told
the House of Commons:
“The key today is stability and order. The
threat is chaos and disorder—and there are two begetters of chaos: tyrannical
regimes with weapons of mass destruction and extreme terrorist groups who
profess a perverted and false view of Islam. …
“Those two threats have, of course, different motives
and different origins, but they share one basic common view: they detest the
freedom, democracy and tolerance that are the hallmarks of our way of life. At
the moment, I accept fully that the association between the two is loose—but it
is hardening. The possibility of the two coming together—of terrorist groups in
possession of weapons of mass destruction or even of a so-called dirty
radiological bomb—is now, in my judgment, a real and present danger to Britain
and its national security.”
The Intelligence & Security
Committee report published in September
2003 revealed (paragraphs 125-127) that, when Blair said this, he was aware that the intelligence
services had no evidence that Iraq had considered using chemical and biological
agents in terrorist attacks or had passed such agents on to al-Qaida. He
was also aware that, in the judgment of the intelligence services, a collapse
of the Iraqi regime would increase the risk of chemical and biological
warfare technology or agents finding their way into the hands of al-Qaida or
associated groups, whether or not as a deliberate Iraqi regime policy.
Understandably, Blair chose not to
divulge this information to Parliament, since it blew a hole in an important
part of his public case for taking military action.
The intelligence services also judged that al-Qaida
and associated groups continued to represent by far the greatest terrorist
threat to Western interests, and that threat would be heightened by
military action against
Understandably, the Prime Minister chose not to
divulge this to Parliament either.
On 19 July 2005, the New York
Times published
leaked extracts from an assessment by the
"Events
in
(The same assessment concluded that "at present
there is not a group with both the current intent and the capability to attack
the
Given
that, from the outset, President Bush presented the invasion of
In his
address to the nation on 19 March 2003, after military action had started, Bush
told the American people that he was taking action in order to eliminate
terrorists who would otherwise attack the
“We will meet that threat now, with our
Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marines, so that we do not have to meet
it later with armies of fire fighters and police and doctors on the streets of
our cities.”
Later in the year, he became more explicit: the
military action in
“… our current mission in
Later still in 2003, he deemed
“
The purpose of describing the war in
Prime Minister Blair has, on occasions, followed the President’s lead in
this matter, for example, on 20 November 2003, a few hours
after the bombing of British targets in
“And what this latest terrorist outrage
shows us is that this is a war, its main battleground is
So,
according to Blair, the bombings in
(The
great success of the US/UK invasion of
By
coincidence, on the afternoon of the
As a
possessor of the ultimate means of self-defence, that is, nuclear weapons,
Britain is not going to be subject to military invasion by other states, as
Iraq was invaded in March 2003 (unless the US takes away our US-maintained
Trident delivery systems). Defence
against other states is not a problem, since they can be threatened with
annihilation. The only significant
threat to the British homeland is from non-state actors, who cannot be deterred
in this way. It is lunatic therefore
that what purports to be a defence strategy has the effect of stimulating a
threat against which there is no infallible defence.
As befits
a debate entitled Defence in the World, it was not concerned with the
breach in our homeland defence that had occurred a few hours earlier, but with
our great success in stomping round the world, and how our military machine
needs to be improved in order to do the job better.
It began
with John Reid, the new Secretary of State (and ex member of the Communist
Party), giving his personal justification for this British imperialism in the
modern world. He said:
“Let me set out in simple terms my own
view of
Bend others to our
will? It’s just like the days when the
sun never set on the British Empire, isn’t it, except that this time round we
have to play second fiddle to the
No MP – apart from one very
unwelcome intruder - objected to this principle that
“Moving on from
No MP – apart from the
unwelcome intruder - was so crass as to mention Afghan or Iraqi casualties, or
even British casualties. American
casualties were mentioned by John Reid, who commended “the
The unwelcome intruder was, of course, George
Galloway, who said
that the morning’s events couldn’t be separated from the political backdrop:
“They did not come out of a clear blue
sky, any more than those monstrous mosquitoes that struck the twin towers and
other buildings in the United States on 9/11 2001. …
“Does the House not believe that hatred
and bitterness have been engendered by the invasion and occupation of
“When I was on the Labour Benches and
spoke in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 … I said that if they handled that
event in the wrong way, they would create 10,000 bin Ladens. Does anyone doubt
that 10,000 bin Ladens at least have been created by the events of the past two
and a half years? If they do, they have their head in the sand.”
He also pointed to the
double standard applied in the House to the deaths of Iraqi and British
civilians:
“When the US armed forces, … systematically
reduced Falluja, a city the size of Coventry, brick by brick and killed an
unknown number of people—probably the number runs to thousands, if not tens of
thousands—not a whisper found its way into the Chamber. I have grown used to
that. I know that for many people in the House and in power in this country the
blood of some people is worth more than the blood of others.”
The House didn’t want to hear any of this. Winding up for the opposition, Julian Lewis
agreed with Galloway that “there would be an air of unreality about a defence
debate taking place on such a day if it did not in any way allude at least to
the type of conflict of which we have seen such a terrible and despicable
manifestation in the streets and on the tube network of London today”. Lewis alluded to it to the extent of saying
that the US/UK killed civilians in
Neither Lewis, nor anybody else, tried to answer
Galloway’s his central point that the events of 7 July 2005 in
Winding up the debate, Defence Minister, Adam Ingram gave
the Government’s “answer”. It was:
“I think that the hon. Gentleman is
dipping his poisonous tongue in a pool of blood, and I think it is
disgraceful.”
This was said at the very end of the time allotted to
the debate, so as to prevent
Double standard
Over 50 people were killed in
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in
Plainly, as George Galloway said, the blood of some
people is worth more than the blood of others.
Before the invasion, the Prime Minister assured us
that civilian deaths in the conflict would be fewer than Saddam Hussein
regularly killed in a year. He told
the House of Commons on 19 March 2003:
“Of course, I understand that, if there is
conflict, there will be civilian casualties. That, I am afraid, is in the
nature of any conflict, but we will do our best to minimise them. However, I
point out to my hon. Friend that civilian casualties in
Amnesty International estimated that “scores of
people, including possible prisoners of conscience, were executed” in 2002, a similar
number in 2001
and “hundreds” in 2000, and
nobody can accuse Amnesty International of being soft on Saddam Hussein.
Had Saddam Hussein been left in place perhaps two
hundred people would have been killed by his regime in the interim, compared
with the tens of thousands of extra deaths as a result of his overthrow. It would have taken Saddam Hussein’s regime
hundreds of years to match the carnage produced by Bush and Blair in just over
two.
David Morrison
Labour & Trade Union Review
21 July 2005