London calling--long reply

[Masud Sheikh]

Dear Paul,
I was deeply disappointed to see Friedman's piece, and even more
disappointed to see your support of it. I am afraid that the "Clash of
Civilizations" (which is perhaps more a "Clash of haves and have nots")
started with 9/11 & 911 (you can have your pick of the perceptions).
Bush's response with talk of crusades and comment "you are either with us,
or against us" confirmed the clash. That is a mirror image of what Bin
Laden says. The clash became entrenched when the emperor (without clothes)
decided to invade Iraq, in an illegal invasion. Do you see any difference
between "Jihad" and "crusade"? In fact "Jihad" is often peaceful,
while "crusade" is perhaps more specific (please correct me if I am
wrong)

I have started calling this war the "war between terrorists" (of which one
side is above the law, and the other beyond the law). I cannot agree that
supporting those who are above the law is any better than supporting those
beyond the law. I wish there was some way that moderate Muslims could
influence Muslim terrorists. With the "with us or agianst us syndrome",
that is impossible.

In Friedman's advocacy, what is most interesting that he is preaching
to "the other", who has been identified as "the enemy". I would have been
far happier if Friedman had said what American citizens need to do, who
after all live in a democracy. Influential citizens like Friedman have an
even greater responsibility to influence "terrorists who are above the
law".

I can post many articles which would be as unbalanced as Friedman's, but
the piece that I liked the best was written by Robin Cook, who resigned
from Blair's cabinet, to protest the invasion of Iraq.

I look forward to seeing you in Halifax
Take care, all of you
===
The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means

The G8 must seize the opportunity to address the wider issues at the root
of such atrocities        by Robin Cook,  Friday July 8, 2005 Guardian

I have rarely seen the Commons so full and so silent as when it met
yesterday to hear of the London bombings. A forum that often is raucous
and rowdy was solemn and grave. A chamber that normally is a bear pit of
partisan emotions was united in shock and sorrow. Even Ian Paisley made a
humane plea to the press not to repeat the offence that occurred in
Northern Ireland when journalists demanded comment from relatives before
they were informed that their loved ones were dead.

The immediate response to such human tragedy must be empathy with the pain
of those injured and the grief of those bereaved. We recoil more deeply
from loss of life in such an atrocity because we know the unexpected
disappearance of partners, children and parents must be even harder to
bear than a natural death. It is sudden, and therefore there is no
farewell or preparation for the blow. Across London today there are
relatives whose pain may be more acute because they never had the chance
to offer or hear last words of affection.

It is arbitrary and therefore an event that changes whole lives, which
turn on the accident of momentary decisions. How many people this morning
ask themselves how different it might have been if their partner had taken
the next bus or caught an earlier tube?

But perhaps the loss is hardest to bear because it is so difficult to
answer the question why it should have happened. This weekend we will
salute the heroism of the generation that defended Britain in the last
war. In advance of the commemoration there have been many stories told of
the courage of those who risked their lives and sometimes lost their lives
to defeat fascism. They provide moving, humbling examples of what the
human spirit is capable, but at least the relatives of the men and women
who died then knew what they were fighting for. What purpose is there to
yesterday's senseless murders? Who could possibly imagine that they have a
cause that might profit from such pointless carnage?

At the time of writing, no group has surfaced even to explain why they
launched the assault. Sometime over the next few days we may be offered a
website entry or a video message attempting to justify the impossible, but
there is no language that can supply a rational basis for such arbitrary
slaughter. The explanation, when it is offered, is likely to rely not on
reason but on the declaration of an obsessive fundamentalist identity that
leaves no room for pity for victims who do not share that identity.

Yesterday the prime minister described the bombings as an attack on our
values as a society. In the next few days we should remember that among
those values are tolerance and mutual respect for those from different
cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Only the day before, London was
celebrating its coup in winning the Olympic Games, partly through
demonstrating to the world the success of our multicultural credentials.
Nothing would please better those who planted yesterday's bombs than for
the atrocity to breed suspicion and hostility to minorities in our own
community. Defeating the terrorists also means defeating their poisonous
belief that peoples of different faiths and ethnic origins cannot coexist.

In the absence of anyone else owning up to yesterday's crimes, we will be
subjected to a spate of articles analysing the threat of militant Islam.
Ironically they will fall in the same week that we recall the tenth
anniversary of the massacre at Srebrenica, when the powerful nations of
Europe failed to protect 8,000 Muslims from being annihilated in the worst
terrorist act in Europe of the past generation.

Osama bin Laden is no more a true representative of Islam than General
Mladic, who commanded the Serbian forces, could be held up as an example
of Christianity. After all, it is written in the Qur'an that we were made
into different peoples not that we might despise each other, but that we
might understand each other.

Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western
security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded
by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.
Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of
the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from
the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous
consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once
Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its
attention to the west.

The danger now is that the west's current response to the terrorist threat
compounds that original error. So long as the struggle against terrorism
is conceived as a war that can be won by military means, it is doomed to
fail. The more the west emphasises confrontation, the more it silences
moderate voices in the Muslim world who want to speak up for cooperation.
Success will only come from isolating the terrorists and denying them
support, funds and recruits, which means focusing more on our common
ground with the Muslim world than on what divides us.

The G8 summit is not the best-designed forum in which to launch such a
dialogue with Muslim countries, as none of them is included in the core
membership. Nor do any of them make up the outer circle of select emerging
economies, such as China, Brazil and India, which are also invited to
Gleneagles. We are not going to address the sense of marginalisation among
Muslim countries if we do not make more of an effort to be inclusive of
them in the architecture of global governance.

But the G8 does have the opportunity in its communique today to give a
forceful response to the latest terrorist attack. That should include a
statement of their joint resolve to hunt down those who bear
responsibility for yesterday's crimes. But it must seize the opportunity
to address the wider issues at the root of terrorism.

In particular, it would be perverse if the focus of the G8 on making
poverty history was now obscured by yesterday's bombings. The breeding
grounds of terrorism are to be found in the poverty of back streets, where
fundamentalism offers a false, easy sense of pride and identity to young
men who feel denied of any hope or any economic opportunity for
themselves. A war on world poverty may well do more for the security of
the west than a war on terror.

And in the privacy of their extensive suites, yesterday's atrocities
should prompt heart-searching among some of those present. President Bush
is given to justifying the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that by
fighting terrorism abroad, it protects the west from having to fight
terrorists at home. Whatever else can be said in defence of the war in
Iraq today, it cannot be claimed that it has protected us from terrorism
on our soil.

*
*
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