|
War
without end
Only justice, not bombs, can make our dangerous world a safer place
By Robert Fisk
12/30/05 "The
Independent" -- -- This was the year the "war on
terror" - an obnoxious expression which we all parroted after 11
September 2001 - appeared to be almost as endless as George Bush
once claimed it would be. And unsuccessful. For, after all the
bombing of Afghanistan, the overthrow of the Taliban, the invasion
of Iraq and its appallingly tragic aftermath, can anyone claim today
that they feel safer than they did a year ago?
We have gone on smashing away at the human rights we trumpeted at
the Russians - and the Arabs - during the Cold War. We have perhaps
fatally weakened all those provisions that were written into our
treaties and conventions in the aftermath of the Second World War to
make the world a safer place. And we claim we are winning.
Where, for example, is the terror? In the streets of Baghdad, to be
sure. And perhaps again in our glorious West if we go on with this
folly. But terror is also in the prisons and torture chambers of the
Middle East. It is in the very jails to which we have been merrily
sending out trussed-up prisoners these past three years. For Jack
Straw to claim that men are not being sent on their way to torture
is surely one of the most extraordinary - perhaps absurd is closer
to the mark - statements to have been made in the "war on terror".
If they are not going to be tortured - like the luckless Canadian
shipped off to Damascus from New York - then what is the purpose of
sending them anywhere?
And how are we supposed to "win" this war by ignoring all the
injustices we are inflicting on that part of the world from which
the hijackers of September 11 originally came? How many times have
Messrs Bush and Blair talked about "democracy"? How few times have
they talked about "justice", the righting of historic wrongs, the
ending of torture? Our principal victims of the "war on terror", of
course, have been in Iraq (where we have done quite a bit of
torturing ourselves).
But, strange to say, we are silent about the horrors the people of
Iraq are now enduring. We do not even know - are not allowed to know
- how many of them have died. We know that 1,100 Iraqis died by
violence in Baghdad in July alone. That's terror.
But how many died in the other cities of Iraq, in Mosul and Kirkuk
and Irbil, and in Amara and Fallujah and Ramadi and Najaf and
Kerbala and Basra? Three thousand in July? Or four thousand? And if
those projections are accurate, we are talking about 36,000 or
48,000 over the year - which makes that projected post-April 2003
figure of 100,000 dead, which Blair ridiculed, rather conservative,
doesn't it?
It's not so long ago, I recall, that Bush explained to us that all
the Arabs would one day wish to have the freedoms of Iraq. I cannot
think of an Arab today who would wish to contemplate such ill
fortune, not least because of the increasingly sectarian nature of
the authorities, elected though they are.
The year did allow Ariel Sharon to achieve his aim of turning his
colonial war into part of the "war on terror". It also allowed al-Qa'ida's
violence to embrace more Arab countries. Jordan was added to Egypt.
Woe betide those of us who are now locked into the huge military
machine that embraces the Middle East. Why, Iraqis sometimes ask me,
are American forces - aerial or land - in Uzbekistan? And Kazakhstan
and Afghanistan, in Turkey and Jordan (and Iraq) and in Kuwait and
Qatar and Bahrain and Oman and Yemen and Egypt and Algeria (there is
a US special forces unit based near Tamanrasset, co-operating with
the same Algerian army that was involved in the massacre of
civilians the 1990s)?
In fact, just look at the map and you can see the Americans in
Greenland and Iceland and Britain and Germany and ex-Yugoslavia and
Greece - where we join up with Turkey. How did this iron curtain
from the ice cap to the borders of Sudan emerge? What is its
purpose? These are the key questions that should engage anyone
trying to understand the "war on terror".
And what of the bombers? Where are they coming from, these armies of
suiciders? Still we are obsessed with Osama bin Laden. Is he alive?
Yes. But does he matter? Quite possibly not. For he has created al-Qa'ida.
The monster has been born. To squander our millions searching for
people like Bin Laden is about as useless as arresting nuclear
scientists after the invention of the atom bomb. It is with us.
Alas, as long as we are not attending to the real problems of the
Middle East, of its record of suffering and injustice, it - al-Qa'ida
- will still be with us. My year began with a massive explosion in
Beirut, just 400 metres from me, as a bomb killed the ex-prime
minister Rafiq Hariri. It continued on 7 July when a bomb blew up
two trains back from me on the Piccadilly line. Oh, the dangerous
world we live in now. I suppose we all have to make our personal
choices these days. Mine is that I am not going to allow 11
September 2001 to change my world. Bush may believe that 19 Arab
murderers changed his world. But I'm not going to let them change
mine. I hope I'm right.
© 2005 Independent News and Media Limited
Translate
this page
(In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational purposes.
Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the
originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) |
