Taking Stock on the War

by Kevin Carey

G21 Staff Writer

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Kevin Carey

Six weeks after the attacks on the WTO and Pentagon and a week after the commencement of the bombing of Afghanistan, KEVIN CAREY takes stock.

In viewing exactly where we are in the welter of what has passed for analysis since the attacks on New York and Washington, let us start with some fundamentals.

The first, which I mentioned on September 12th, is that United States' Middle East and development assistance policies could in no way have "caused" these attacks; they may explain them to a certain extent but causality of the sort proposed confuses, as I said then, phenomena in a scientific laboratory with the acts of people and organisations that possess will and conscience. It was no more inevitable that these buildings should have been attacked on September 11th than it was inevitable that they were not attacked a day, a month, a year before, or not at all.

Secondly, in terms of the supposed explanation for the attacks, I say "may" advisedly. A great many people, including Mr. Bin Laden and the Al Qa'ida network, may oppose United States policy towards Israel and the Palestinians but this hardly explains why at least one of the planes ear-marked to participate in the September 11th attacks belonged to Air Canada.

Thirdly, many people, including me, resent American and European niggardliness over development assistance but we need to ask, in a world where spheres of influence are recognised, if not legislated, what the Islamic world in general and rich Arab states in particular have done for their poor neighbours, not least in Afghanistan. The Qu'uran is a much shorter set of texts than those which are looked to by Jews and Christians and its ethical pronouncements are few but almost every Sura urges good Muslims to give alms to the poor.

President Bush and Prime Minister Blair have said that aid will be a matter of key concern in parallel with military action; a novel concept which some people find in some way tasteless but better than a situation where aid has to wait until the troops have finished.

The fourth point is that the attacks cannot be seen as expressing resentment against global capitalism in general and American economic behaviour in particular. You cannot with one breath condemn America for having a 'slanted' Middle East policy in order to protect its supply of cheap oil and then maintain that there is deep anti-capitalist sentiment in oil producing countries. The world price of oil, nudged up or down by OPEC, has, since the crisis of the late 1970s, become a matter of mutual self interest between producers and consumers.

As for Mr. Bin Laden's own 'motivation', rational or otherwise, one of the few facts we can agree upon in discussing him is that he is and always has been an ardent advocate of inherited wealth and a vigorous capitalist.

As I write, there are discussions on both sides of the Atlantic about the role of the media in a democratic society in a struggle against an enemy. Clearly, the media in dictatorships such as those that rule most Muslim countries, are under the thumbs of the politicians and clearly, too, our politicians would like to tighten their control on news in a time of crisis, but it does not follow from these propositions that our democratic governments are compulsive liars whereas those who disagree with us (particularly the Taliban and its allies) are always truthful, nor does it follow that a free press is necessarily informative and an assistance to the democratic process.

In the first three weeks after September 11th, British newspapers (unquestioningly parroted by the electronic media, including the supposedly public broadcasting BBC) anxious to 'keep the story moving', systematically falsified reports of polling data to imply that the vast majority of British people were in favour of military intervention when they were not.

Since Prime Minister Blair's speech of 2nd October -- which significantly reversed opinion and, of course, since US bombing began -- the media has switched to implying that a majority is against military action. The majority of us may not be very definite in our support, nor are we cavalier or cheerful, but we, poor souls, cannot see an alternative.

Those who purport to possess greater wisdom need to be much more clear and consistent in what they are advocating.

Immediately after the attacks I heard no-one, even from the most liberal quarters, saying that the United States should do nothing at all, or should confine its response to a little diplomacy and intelligence work.

• The first great cry was that Mr. Bush should not lash out. He did not.
• The next was that the United States should get permission of the United Nations before any military retaliation. It did.
• The third was that it should think through its initial, limited response, think through its implications and explain matters to all parties. It has.
• The fourth demand was that nothing should happen except under the auspices of the United Nations but after UN troops stood helplessly watching the mass slaughter of civilians in Central Africa and the Balkans this is hardly to be recommended and, conveniently ignored by the UN supporters, what sort of mandate would the 'Western allies' get from a Security Council with Syria as a Member?
• Finally, we are told, we should stop now in our tracks, send in massive food aid to Afghanistan and pretend the whole thing never happened.

Everything we do, it is argued, is a propaganda coup for Mr. Bin Laden. So if we bomb Afghanistan that is a victory for him; if we consider a new Middle Eastern policy which meets many objections from the Islamic world, that is a victory for him.

As a poor, ill informed historian, I can only recall the two years before the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe when we thought that somehow if we ignored Hitler and went along with his plans it would all turn out for the best.

If we were to do nothing (even worse, if we were to stop what we have started) Mr. Bin Laden, if he and his advisers are rational, would infer that we do not have the stomach to resist the mass slaughter of our own citizens and will be quite obliged if he would send some more planes to attempt to destroy the White House.

There is some intellectual force behind the argument that we should not have started the bombing but now that we have it is an altogether different matter to advocate stopping it before its supposed objectives have been achieved. I personally believe that it was wrong to start bombing but that it would now be very wrong to stop.

Finally, we are urged to do nothing until "The evidence" is clear.

I would have thought that, given their gift for etymological niceties, President Bush's critics might have spotted that Mr. Bin Laden's promise of "further attacks" implies that he has undertaken some already.

Perhaps the most outrageous humbug is the support for an international court case where it is envisaged that the accused will courteously turn up at The Hague and ask to be booked in. I would not waste space de-bunking this folly were it not so widespread amongst the broadsheet reading classes.

Prime Minister Blair has had some very wise words to say on the subject of the United States itself. Goodness knows, the country has its faults in liberal eyes (not least judicial murder and its poor treatment of its own poor citizens) but any abdication of moral judgment to assert that all cultures are the same and of equal value is a nonsense to which I will return. But to maintain, further, that the United States is a more retrograde society than that of Afghanistan is grotesque.

In all the welter of rhetoric about civil rights I have not heard it mentioned that in almost every sphere you care to think of the United States is further forward in these matters than any other country in the world. When the United Nations replaced the United States with Sudan on its Human Rights Commission it committed a grave error for which Mary Robinson should have apologised profusely instead of giving advice on politico-military matters in which she is, if possible, less competent than in pursuing her own brief. Anti-Americanism is a crude and thoughtless legacy of the cold war; if the Russians can give it up, so should former Marxist adherents.

Conversely, for President Bush and Prime Minister Blair to state that the struggle they are undertaking is against terrorism and not Islam is palpably correct but both have been right to urge Muslims of every kind to consider their own religious and moral codes.

Blair, who is now said to have consulted three different translations of the Qu'uran, will know that its pronouncements on religious tolerance and religious warfare are equivocal in the extreme. No surprise there, an equal charge could be levelled at Jewish and Christian scripture but whereas Judaism's only wars have been local and largely retaliatory (up until the birth of the State of Israel at least, after which there is room for debate) and whereas Christianity did not wage war on its behalf of its own theology in its first five hundred years of existence, Islam was given to the world on a tide of military conquest which engulfed half of the Euro-Africa-Asian 'world' in less than a hundred years.

President Bush should not have used the word "Crusade" because of the historical baggage associated with the word but three facts about the Crusades ought to be remembered: the first three, based on the ideal of Christianity re-possessing Jerusalem, no matter how ill conceived, were retaliatory acts following Islamic aggression; secondly, the last five did far more harm to Eastern Christians than they did to the Islamic world; and, thirdly, the last five were almost entirely a matter of internecine Christian politics and economics and had nothing whatsoever to do with Islam.

As late as 1570 in the Mediterranean and as late as 1680 outside the gates of Vienna, Christians were resisting Muslim military expansionism. If a religion and culture is to be judged by what it does and not what it says then Islamic attitudes to warfare are clear enough.

By contrast, the last major Christian conflict (civil, not aggressive) was the 30 Years War of 1618-48 which was the last chapter in the separation of religion from the political state.

The fundamental problem with Islam is that it has not been through this revolution and lacks any deep sense of self criticism. In Britain, Islamic clerics inveigh against the government, even incite their followers to racially, religiously and ethnically based violence, but cannot understand that their freedom to do so arises out of a democratic settlement they could not enjoy in their countries of origin. Just as Christianity had to develop an ethics of warfare out of its fundamental beliefs (largely articulated by St. Thomas Aquinas), the Islamic world, or at least the moderate majority, needs to develop an ethics of warfare so that there can be a sensible dialogue. If there is a God then she is surely proportionate and does not expect the same level of zeal in respect of every injustice. Blair and Bush have been deliberately, emoliently disingenuous without much reciprocity.

It is now time to turn to the present and the future of the military-political situation.

First, as I have implied, there is no such thing as the "Islamic" world which can either be satisfied or subdued. Mr. Bin Laden may be 'winning' a limited propaganda war inside the global Islamic community but I doubt it. He is certainly winning converts to his militant cause, particularly amongst disaffected people whose main grudge is against their own Muslim leaders and not the United States. It has to be remembered that Bin Laden's primary target is the destabilisation of Saudi Arabia, not the United States. It must also be remembered that in any situation where peace is being sought there will always be some militants who can never be appeased, whose objective is to wreck a peace settlement as soon as they see one. Such people, wherever they exist, are most often criminally connected psychopaths and are often confused with political idealists.

Which brings us on nicely to the situation in the Middle East. Again, on September 12th I urged that the major world powers should impose a settlement on both Israel and the Palestinians, similar if not identical to that proposed by Eduard Barak which President Arafat turned down.

At the time I thought Arafat's refusal was ill-judged but I wonder now if he had a choice at all; he gives every appearance of being out of control of his territories, barely able to exercise authority in war and absolutely incapable of insisting on peace. He is a prisoner of the men with guns, responsible to no one, who use victimhood as a convenient cover for thuggery.

Still, a great deal of international bluff ought to be called if the United States proposes acceptance of a Barak-type settlement. Mr Bin Laden may, on the other hand, want Israel to be obliterated from the face of the earth which ought to deny him those allies so bent on maintaining international law in general and UN Resolution 242 in particular which, lest we forget, has a key passage on Israel's right not only to exist but to enjoy security.

President Anwar Sadat of Egypt died in the cause of peace, he won't be the last moderate politician from the same sphere to be killed by his supposed co-religionists. How many more Sadats will it take to convince the idealogues that there is more to the Middle East than a simple clash of claims to a piece of not very attractive land?

On the other hand, the trigger for the collapse of Barak's offer and then Barak was, as I have said before, Sharon's cynical walk to the Alaxha Mosque. If there is a head of state to be manoeuvred out by the CIA (if it really can do that sort of thing), then Sharon should go along with the Taliban of whom he is an unlikely but strong echo. There is then the matter of Iraq to consider. I was in a tiny minority amongst the liberals when I urged President Bush's father to go all the way to Baghdad and then hand over Iraq to the United Nations. The over-elaborate foreign policy which prevented that outcome has all unravelled badly. The weapons inspectors have gone; Saddam Hussein may or may not be manufacturing weapons of mass destruction based on nerve gas and anthrax; he has suppressed his own people but the 'West' gets the blame; the Kurds are in a terrible plight. Just as I am convinced that there needs to be a coalition settlement in Afghanistan and an imposed settlement on Israel and the Palestinians I cannot see any ending to this current conflict that does not encompass the defeat of the Baghdad regime and maybe even the fall of Baghdad itself.

It may not be prudent for politicians and soldiers to say this and some may honestly not be thinking it but there is a logic which will not be baulked. If there is a struggle against terrorism it does not matter how you define the terms, it has to encompass Iraq.

Sadly but inevitably, the exigencies of struggle put equally worthy objectives into the medium term. Mr. Blair has been strong on the subject of justice for the world's poor and we will surely hold him to it. We have also heard as much as anybody can reasonably take about the need for human rights but less about the infringement of them by the Taliban, particularly in respect of women. We might then wish to pursue the matter of democratic rights, assumed in the 'wicked West' but denied in most of the Islamic world.

Next, just a little word on Kyoto whose signature is the tiniest price for British support for America and last but by no means least, we need a new, rational internationalism which corrects many of the egregious ills of the United Nations and equips it to be more even-handed and efficient.

This is a large agenda being put before Messrs. Bush and Blair by the very people who think them stupid, egotistical warmongers who ignore the obvious.

Recently I advised a 'green' organisation which was so mixed up about what it wanted that I volunteered, in a sad moment of irritation, that the world would be safer run by the oil companies.

Sad to say, faced with the niggling and frequently sneering media and the absurdities of most of my own kind in the liberal intelligentsia, I am forced to the inevitable conclusion that we are better in the hands of Blair and Bush than their detractors. Bush is not the cleverest nor the wisest President the United States has enjoyed but neither is he the worst nor the most foolish. He has good advisers and his instincts have been sounder than his choice of words. He has made some simple but not very terrible mistakes. Blair, as usual, has erred through promising what he can never deliver. These faults are obvious. Both are almost certainly deliberately misleading us and the world as the collateral damage of prosecuting a risky and uncertain policy which involves human life, civilian and military, and it would be close to a miracle if they could see what the end of the proceeding might be, let alone see it.

As far as it goes, what they have done so far is better than doing nothing. We have no guarantee that it will always be so. In the meantime, in a democratic society they have no right to expect support from anyone but in a society where we are supposed to value rational discussion they are entitled to a degree of rationalism, particularly from those who claim the intellectual and moral high ground.

That involves more than hair splitting over whether what is going on should be described as "A War Against Terrorism".

It involves difficult moral judgments which allow us to distinguish between American policy in Iraq and the Middle East on the one hand and the attacks on New York and Washington on the other.

It involves saying some difficult things about differences in human rights brought about by history and culture. Above all, most problematic for rationalists, it involves a judgment about what you do with people who are irrational. The biggest, single fallacy amongst the intelligentsia is that those whom Bush and Blair see as our enemies are in fact a small number of reasonable people who only need persuading by our reasonable words, good manners and some painless adjustments to foreign and economic policy. Had Israel not been founded by international law, had the oil wealth of the Middle East been shared with the Muslim poor, had the United States learned humility in the context of world power, had the bombing of Afghanistan not begun, things might have been different; but it is too late for such thoughts until the inevitable post mortems. For now there are quite enough difficult decisions before us.

KEVIN CAREY is social entrepreneur, economist and Director of the UK's humanITy. He can be reached via e-mail at "humanity@atlas.co.uk".

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