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July 09, 2005
We should mourn the loss of civilian life and express deep sympathy with the injured and the bereaved who have lost family and friends:
Steve Bell
The security analyist account is that Iraqi resistance forces have taken their insurgent military operations to enemy territory, Britain. The "chickens were coming home to roost" for US and UK politicians who continue to obscure the nature of the al-Qaeda struggle by maintaining that the organization attacks the West because "they hate our values" and not because of specific western policies, such as US/UK military occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq or US/Uk support for Israel against the Palestinians.
Should we not try to avert or avoid greater civilian tragedy by starting the serious and difficult process of rethinking the conduct of this "war on terror"? Is that not a better response to the bombings than flexing the muscles, or saying we won't be intimidated, we need to show solidarity with the Bush administration in order to strengthen the US-[fill country in as required] security alliance, etc, etc.
Let's look at this editorial from Murdoch's Australian, entitled 'Standing firm in the face of Terror'.
It says:
What deserves universal horror is the way they presumed the right to take life, and all its promise, from people who were going about their business in London on Thursday morning. This was more than an attack on London, it was an assault on the billions of people around the world who share Londoners' values, and today sympathise with their suffering....These attacks are the work of misanthropes who have no faith in humanity, no hope for the future, outcasts who compensate for their own inadequacies by killing innocent individuals who have done them no harm. The attacks are all the more monstrous for the utter absence of any achievable objective...This was a senseless slaughter, another attack in the terror war perpetrated by people whose only objective is to kill, and to keep on killing - because it is the only way they can assuage their odious anger with all who will not bow to their will.
Something has been forgotten here. Fallujah.
The sustained assault employing extraordinary firepower that left a city with a good deal more than 1,000 people killed or injured, half the dwellings wrecked, almost every school, mosque or public building destroyed or damaged, and most of the population fleeing the city as refugees.
The Australian refuses make the connection between the two realities. It says that "any argument that Iraq and Afghanistan are the catalyst for this, or any other attack, is a nonsense." It's pathway is one of endless war that will involve thousands more civilian deaths and tens of thousands of ciivlians maimed. The Australian, as the voice of the war party, recommends that we stand firm and strong on our democratic faith amidst a bitter cycle of ever increasing violence.
We citizens should make the connection between London, Madrid and Bali on the one hand, and Iraq and Afghanistan on the other.
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Both sides of this supposed war are playing power politics, and doing so with violence as their main weapon. I thought Afghanistan was justified, as the US asked for Bin Laden so they could bring him to justice. But Iraq was a dumb decision, and given the Bush Administration's lack of adherence to the rule of law, I doubt they would have been able to deal with Bin Laden correctly.
Indonesia and Spain have treated terrorism as a civil disturbance and gone after terrorists with the law. They have been successful. Australia, the USA and UK have treated terrorism as a military issue, and have managed to turn the pursuit of terrorism into a snake that is eating its own tail.
Indonesia has been making strides in democracy and as a market economy, by removing their military from their system; from parliament, from policy, from their budgets, from civil law enforcement and social stability. It is making remarkable advances.
Yet me in our anglo-dumbass-wisdom, have invaded Iraq and replaced a military backed regime with .... a miitary that is keeping civil order, that is making civil policy, that is controlling civil budgets, that is the martial government and is attempting to maintain social stability.
Everything Indonesia is shedding on their path to democracy, we are ensuring remain present in Iraq. When the US tanks rattled through the Baghdad, that is when the LAPD and NYPD should have been flown in - not the National Guard.
Terror is a civil issue, and will only be defeated through civil measures, not military ones. A policemen is more than sufficiently armed to deal with a terrorist. Our courts are more than enough to deal with a terrorist's criminal behaviour.
Unfortunately this war on terror has been used an excuse to collpase power to the Executive and expand the state.