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October
9, 2001
Patrick
Cockburn
Bombs
Weaken Taliban
Lenni
Brenner
Powell
the Owl
Zha
Marginalization
and Terror
Steve
Perry
It
Begins
October
8, 2001
Zbigniew
Brzezinski
How
Jimmy Carter and
I Started the Muj
Philip Agee
The
USA and Terrorism
Mahajan
and Jensen
A
War of Lies
Patrick
Cockburn
Northern
Alliance
Builds an Airport
October
7, 2001
John Pilger
Hitchens'
Slurs
Tariq
Ali
Who
Said History
Stopped Being Ironical?
October
6, 2001
Vijay
Prashad
US
War Aims
Kevin
Gray
The
Trap:
Blacks and 9/11
October
5, 2001
Ronnie
Gilbert
Déjà
Vu: The FBI's War
on Civil Liberties
Patrick
Cockburn
Taliban
Cluster Bombs
Dave
Marsh
John
Brown, Woody Guthrie
and the Secret Music of 9/11
Babak
Nahid
A
Suspect's Perspective
October
4, 2001
David
Vest
Send
in the Cons
Robin
Blackburn
Road
to Armageddon
Noam
Chomsky
Chatting
with Chomsky
Tony
Blair
The
Dossier on bin Laden
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Ridge Long Groomed
for
Cheney's Job
Those CIA Killing
Bids
Never Stopped
The Not-So-Great
Mayor Giuliani
Crop Duster
Ban
Will Save Lives
Madeleine Albright's
Deadly Legacy
How the Bin
Laden Women
Fled Bel Air
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A Pocket Guide to
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October 10,
2001
Aerial Bombardment
The Dumbest Weapon
of War
By Simon Jenkins
The
Times of London
The faces of Britain's rulers on Monday
night said it all. They had lost the argument. Sitting in Parliament
they looked haggard and wretched. Tony Blair thumped on yet again
about Osama bin Laden being a fiend and a monster. Everyone chanted
that bombing should be "proportionate, measured, targeted",
knowing that this was beyond their control. Clare Short's face
was a picture of misery. She must now excuse the civilian deaths,
the laying of cluster mines, the airborne terror for which she
is responsible as a War Cabinet member. How skin-deep is humanity
when the guns begin to fire. Whenever Americans start bombing,
Britons dive under a blanket of Churchillian waffle.
Britain is not at war at present,
any more than it was at war during the IRA bombing of London
or after bin Laden's previous attack on New York's World Trade
Centre. To describe what should be a relentless campaign against
criminal terror as war is metaphor abuse. By hurling resources
and media attention at some distant theatre, it deflects effort
from the domestic front. It also insults those who fought and
died in real wars, when territory was threatened and states were
at risk.
For the past three weeks, the
case against bombing was marshalled in every capital in the world.
It was advanced in Washington itself by Colin Powell and Condoleezza
Rice. Tony Blair's every waking hour was devoted to it. His round-the-clock
diplomacy was to build up the case for "cunning not killing",
not in the Middle East but in Washington. He was sincere but
eventually he lost.
We need hardly repeat the argument.
For the West to extract bin Laden from his lair before winter
is near impossible. While his networks and cash could and should
be choked, regional diplomacy should use every conceivable means
to get others to extract him. The heat should be put on every
ally. All back-channels and bribes should be activated. September
11 had yielded an unprecedented "coalition of the willing"
across the Middle East. Give it time to work, not just three
weeks. Do not give up when the Taleban are showing some sign
of wobbling if not collapsing.
Above all, the argument said,
do not bomb. Do not raise expectations of military success. Bombing
would not deter a new atrocity, only make it more likely. Bombing
would achieve little in a land of hand-to-hand combat. It would
kill civilians and risk the security of cross-border platforms
for special forces. It would turn hesitant new friends into sullen
old enemies.
Round every table the argument
raged, with Britain on the side of common sense. But once the
bombers were in place, there was a dreadful inevitability to
the outcome. As in Iraq, air forces can play all the best overtures
to war. They promise to kick butt and whup ass. They would avenge
America for the World Trade Centre. They would have the tabloids
purring, speech-writers drooling and liberals trapped by their
vitals. As for consequence, that was for politicians and wimps.
There is a fond belief in Downing
Street that Britain has "influence" in Washington.
It does not. Britain has the leverage of a comfort blanket. Now
that sophistication has lost out in Washington, Britain must
toe the line like an obedient junior. Indeed to prove its loyalty,
it must bomb first. So much for influence.
In his desperate speech on
Monday, Mr Blair played a cheap card. He depicted opponents of
the bombing as being soft on bin Laden and the Taleban. Was he
not an opponent himself just a week ago? Like the tongue-tied,
fencesitting religious leaders who met him that day in Downing
Street, he merely demonstrates Britain's subservience to America.
How can Britain ever hope to join a panEuropean foreign policy
on this performance? Those who disagree with Mr Blair are not
on the side of bin Laden and the Taleban. They disagree over
means, not ends. Britain is now committed to bombing Afghanistan
to the next stage of the war, an obscure destination. In comparison,
the bombing of Beirut, Tripoli, Baghdad, Mogadishu and Belgrade
seem shrewd and calculated. Some pundits are explaining that
the bombs will enable a special forces base to be set up to capture
bin Laden. How rearranging the rubble of suburban Kabul achieves
this is a mystery.
If I were special forces, I
would be far more worried if the bombing led to a withdrawal
of logistical support by neighbouring states. I would be alarmed
at the mission creep which already has the Americans requesting
an extended war against other states in the region. I would want
no return of the old CNN ritual of whooshing rockets, screaming
rioters and wailing women. I would be appalled at Donald Rumsfeld
mimicking Moscow's boast, that we can "forget about exit
strategies; we are looking at a sustained engagement". When
American Defence Secretaries ignore exit strategies we can bet
the exit will be fast.
The bombing is not military
but political. It is revenge, no less ferocious for being postponed.
It will probably freeze the Taleban in their hold on power as
long as it lasts, as is usual with bombed regimes. Nor is global
terror deterred by such onslaughts, least of all the new suicidal
terror. Bruce Hoffman of St Andrews University, in his recent
and prescient Inside Terrorism, cites the conclusion of a 1996
US government paper, that neither sanctions nor military action
had ever had an effect against state-sponsored terrorism, except
to be counter-productive. The growth of religious fanaticism
and chemical weapons, he said, renders this policy failure extremely
dangerous.
In retrospect, the lack of
follow-up to the 1993 New York bombing, given the evidence revealed
at the trial, was criminal negligence on the part of Western
Intelligence. So too was the refusal of later Sudanese help against
bin Laden. Yet somehow a thundering blitz of Kabul atones for
these mistakes.
For a moment this past month,
we saw a new wisdom. Washington seemed to realise that the Muslim
world resented its decades of mistreatment. A moment for possible
rapprochement was at hand. The horror of September 11 meant that
East might join West in one humanitarian cause. When Mr Blair
has not been on helium, he too seemed to glimpse that new dawn.
He surely cannot see it now.
The past fortnight has been
a battle of new guard against old. Those who wanted to concentrate
on counter-terrorism, covert operations and "coercive diplomacy"
and who protested that bombing would endanger their work, have
lost. Those who wanted a reprise of Baghdad and Belgrade, who
wanted to play to the gallery with things that go bang on television,
have won. The old guard have triumphed. They must now deliver,
as must those who kowtowed to them.
The Defence Secretary, Geoff
Hoon, must show how his Tomahawks will really help to find bin
Laden. He must bond with the bandits of the Northern Alliance
as his predecessor, George Robertson, bonded with the Kosovo
Liberation Army. Mr Blair must explain how firing missiles at
empty hillsides will enhance his world congregation of virtue.
Jack Straw must construct a puppet regime in Kabul more secure
than that left by the Soviet Union. They must all explain how
they will prop up a new regime indefinitely, or risk losing the
"war" all over again.
From these people we want no
nonsense about precision weapons and surgical strikes. Bombs
miss targets. Only infantry can shoot straight. We want no weasel
words about "no quarrel with the Afghans". We want
no fake dismay at a surge of anti-American riots, at British
contracts cancelled, hostages taken and lives put at risk. This
is the course on which the Government is set. When it bombs people,
the innocent get hurt and the rest get angry.
Aerial bombardment is never
proportionate, measured or targeted. It evolves a logic of its
own, an escalation of horror similar to that unleashed by the
terrorist. Like all distant and indiscriminate violence, it breeds
a violent response. It is the dumbest weapon of war.
At present the bombing is likely
to increase anti-Western hysteria in the Middle East and dissolve
Mr Blair's coalition. We can only hope that it at least installs
"our" villains in Kabul, and one day captures bin Laden.
It had better. CP
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