London, November 21, 2003
David Irving
comments: Fisk --
one of the greats MEET Robert Fisk
-- consistently one of the world's
greatest and bravest writers. Unlikely to
win the Noble Prize for Literature or any
other "meaningful" award; but able, I make
so bold as to say, to sleep with his
conscience untroubled each night.
A few months ago
he spoke at a university in the United
States. No US newspaper (to my knowledge)
carries his despatches, and yet over a
thousand students turned up to meet and
hear the British journalist in person.
What does that tell us about
the growing might of the Internet? And
about why the traditional enemy is taking
frantic steps to control it? |
We Are Paying
The Price For An Infantile Attempt To Reshape The
Middle East By Robert Fisk IT'S the price of joining
George Bush's "war on terror". They couldn't
hit Britain while Bush was on his triumphalist
state visit to London, so they went for the jugular
in Turkey. The British consulate, the
British-headquartered HSBC bank. London-abroad. And
of course, no one -- least of all the Turks --
imagined they would strike twice in the same place.
Turkey had already had its dose of attacks, hadn't
it? "They" must mean "al-Qa'ida". And of course,
merely to point out that we -- the British -- are
now paying the price for George Bush's infantile
attempt to reshape the Middle East in Israel's
favour will attract the usual venom. To tell the
brutal truth about the human cost of Tony
Blair's alliance with the Bush administration
is to "do the terrorists' work for them", to be
their "propagandist". Thus, as usual, will all
discussion of yesterday's atrocities be closed
down. But the American and British administrations
know very well what this means. The Australians
paid the price for John Howard's alliance
with Bush in Bali. The Italians paid the price for
Silvio Berlusconi's alliance with Bush in
Nasiriyah. Now it is our turn. Al-Qa'ida was quite
specific. The Saudis would pay. The Australians
would pay. The Italians would pay. The British
would pay. They have. Canada is still on the list.
Until, I suppose, it is our turn again. Even in
1997, Osama bin Laden would repeat to me
that Britain would only escape Islamic "anger" if
it pulled out of the Gulf. Nor do these mass
murders have just one purpose. Turkey is allied to
Israel. Ariel Sharon has visited Ankara.
Turkey is hated in Iraq and much of the Arab world,
partly for its Ottoman antecedents. And if the Saudis are attacked because their
Islamic regime is led by a corrupt monarchy, Turkey
is attacked because it isn't Islamic enough. Break
up Turkey. Break up the relations between Muslims
and Jews in Istanbul -- the purpose of last
Saturday's suicide bombings -- and break up the
compromise "Islamist" overnment that now rules
Turkey. All must have formed a part of al-Qaida's
thinking. Nor should we fool ourselves about what I always
call "the brain". We have a habit of thinking that
the bombers don't understand the outside world. If
they are "against democracy", they wouldn't
understand us, would they? But they do. They knew
exactly what they were doing when they attacked the
Australians in Bali -- they knew the Iraqi invasion
was unpopular in Australia, that Howard might
ultimately be blamed. They knew the invasion was
unpopular in Italy. So Italy would be punished for
Berlusconi's hubris. They knew, too, of the demonstrations that
awaited George Bush in London. So why not distract
attention from the whole panjandrum by assaulting
Britain in Turkey. Who would care about Bush's
visit to Sedgefield when Britons are lying dead in
the grounds of their consulate in Istanbul? Just so
in Iraq. The Iraqi insurgents are well aware of
George Bush's falling opinion polls in the United
States. They know how desperate he is to extract
himself from Iraq before next year's presidential
elections. Thus are they increasing their assaults
on American forces and their Iraqi supporters,
provoking the US army to ever more ferocious
retaliation? We have a kind of fatal incomprehension about
those against whom we have gone to war; that they
are living in caves, cut off from reality, striking
blindly -- "desperately" as Mr Bush would have us
believe -- as they realise that the free world is
resolved to destroy them. Just now, I suspect they
are resolved to destroy Mr. Bush -- politically if
not physically. Mr Blair too. In a war in which we
go all out to crush the leadership of our
antagonists, we can only expect them to adopt the
same policy. But we go on
misunderstanding. Take those tiresome speeches
by Osama bin Laden. When his audio-tapes are
aired, we journalists always take the same line.
Is it really him? Is he alive? That becomes our
only story. But the Arab response is quite
different. They know it's him. And they listen
to what he says. So should we. But alas, we still pedal the old myths, as
George Bush did in London on Wednesday. His speech
contained the usual untruths. Note, for example,
the list of attacks he gave us: "Bali, Jakarta,
Casablanca, Bombay, Mombasa, Najaf, Jerusalem,
Riyadh, Baghdad and Istanbul". Najaf may well have
nothing to do with al-Qa'ida but the suicide
bombings in Jerusalem, vicious though they are,
have absolutely nothing to do with our "war on
terror". They are part of a brutal anti-colonial
struggle between Palestinians and Israelis. Yet the
inclusion of Jerusalem allows Ariel Sharon to join
his war against the Palestinians to Bush's war
against al-Qa'ida. This mendacity continued.
Israel, said Bush, had to "freeze" settlements on
Palestinian land -- not close them down -- and only
dismantle what he artfully called "unauthorised
outposts". "Outposts" is Israel's word for the most recent
land seizures in the West Bank and the word
"unauthorised" suggests that there is some legality
to the massive settlements already built on
Palestinian land. According to Bush, the "heart of
the matter" in the Middle East is "a viable
Palestinian democracy." Not once did Bush mention
"occupation". Why not? Is he so frightened of
Israel's lobby before next year's US presidential
election that even this most salient fact of the
Middle East experience has to be censored from his
narrative of events? There was, too, the familiar distortion of the
historical narrative. He said that America and
Britain would do "all in their power to prevent the
United Nations from solemnly choosing its own
irrelevance." Come again? Who was it who wouldn't
let the UN inspectors finish their search for
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq last year? Who
was it who wouldn't accept a UN stewardship of the
Iraq crisis? Bush claimed yet again that we "tolerated" the
dictatorships of the Middle East. Rubbish. We
created them, Saddam's regime being the most
obvious example. Who doubts, Mr Bush asked us,
"that Afghanistan is a more just society and less
dangerous without Mullah Omar playing host to
terrorists from around the world?" Could this be
the same Afghanistan which once more cringes under
the warlords of the old Northern Alliance, the
Afghanistan where the opium poppy is once again the
country's prime export, where aid workers are being
cut down by the Taliban? And in Iraq, where the occupying powers now face
an Iraqi insurgency of fearful proportions, Mr Bush
still thinks he is fighting "Ba'athist holdouts and
jihadists". Even his military officers are
repeating that it is a growing Iraqi guerrilla army
they are fighting -- not "foreign fighters" or
"jihadis". At the end, of course, we came back to
the Second World War and Churchill -- the "leader
who did not waver", with whom Bush last year
compared himself and with whom he on Wednesday
compared Tony Blair -- a "leader of good judgement
and blunt counsel and backbone." Where, oh where are we going? How much longer
must we suffer this false account of history? How
much longer must we willfully misread what we are
doing and what is being done to us? © The
Independent 
... on this
website
"They're
getting better," Chuck said approvingly. "That
one hit the runway" -
The hunt
for weapons of mass destruction yields --
nothing
-
Official Is
Prepared To Address Issue Of Iraqi
Deception
|
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