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A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
November 15, 2001
RAWA
We Do Not Accept
the Northern Alliance
November 14, 2001
Jensen/Mahajan
The
Press Must Press Harder on Afghanistan
David Vest
The Great Unificator
Harry
Browne
Preventing
Future Terrorism
November 13, 2001
Peter Mahoney
Veteran's
Day, 2001
Rep. Ron
Paul
Expanding
NATO
Is a Bad Idea
November 12, 2001
Robert Jensen
Goodbye to
All That...
Patriotism
Nancy
Oden
My
Day at the Airport
CounterPunch Wire
East Timor
10 Years
After the Massacre
C.G. Estabrook
Instead
of Terror
Alexander Cockburn
Wide World
of Torture
November 11, 2001
Douglas
Valentine
Homeland
Insecurity: The Politics of Terror in America
November 10, 2001
Grover Furr
Seeking an Opposition
to the Afghan War
Bruce
Kyle
Anatomy
of a Green Smear:
Backstabbing Nancy Oden
November 9, 2001
Karen Snell
Torture By
Proxy
John Troyer
A
New Kind of Activism
Tariq Ali
Q &
A About the War
Michael
Colby
Schoolgirl
Gets Booted
for Anti-war Views
November 8, 2001
Mokhiber/Weissman
The
Cipro Rip-Off
Mitchel Cohen
The Smear Campaign
Against Nancy Oden
Steve
Perry
American
Roulette
November 7, 2001
Bahour/Dahan
Placebo Peace
Plan
Tom Turnipseed
Bush
Gives Billions
to His Oil Buddies
Cockburn/St. Clair
Greens, Airports
and
National ID Cards
Dr. Susan
Block
Ayatollah
Asscroft
Brian J. Foley
Bombing Campaign
Not "Self-Defense" Under International Law
November 6, 2001
Mark Scaramella
Where's
That Red Cross Money Going
C.G. Estabrook
Our Torturers
Sheperd
Bliss
Scott
Nearing on War
Rep. Ron Paul
Underwriting
the Taliban
Tariq
Ali
The
General Who
Came to Dinner
Evan Ravitz
Stop the War
Through
Direct Democracy
Steve
Perry
Hunger
in Afghanistan
November 5, 2001
Patrick Cockburn
Living
in the Minefields
David Price
Terror
and Indigenous People
November 3, 2001
Declan McCullagh
Nancy Oden Interview
Daniel
Wolff
The
Memphis Blues Again
Mark Weisbrot
War on Civilians
Dave Marsh
How
the RIAA (and the FBI) Cheat Musicians
Robert Jensen
Speaking
Out Against
War on Campus
November 2, 2001
CounterPunch
Wire
Green
Party Leader Detained at Maine Airport; Prevented from Boarding
Any Plane
Alexander Cockburn
FBI Eyes
Torture
November 1, 2001
Dean Baker
Dying
for Patents
Sami Amarah
US Attempts
to Recruit
Russian Vets of Afghan War
Molly Secours
Where
Are the Voices of Reason? Let the Women
Be Heard
William Blum
Unleashing the
CIA
October 31, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
Terrorize
the Poor,
Subsidize the Rich
Chris Clarke
Thank God
for Berkeley
Steve
Perry
The
Silent Genocide
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bin Laden and Bush
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Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
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Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
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A Pocket Guide to
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November
15, 2001
Blasting our way to peace
Justice
has been redefined as success in a war that is sounding a retreat
from civilisation
By George Monbiot
The
Guardian
The armchair warriors have proved no more merciful
in victory than the Northern Alliance. Yesterday's Sun gave
two pages to an editorial entitled "Shame of the traitors:
wrong, wrong, wrong ... the fools who said Allies faced disaster".
Christopher Hitchens raised the moral and intellectual tone
of the debate in the Guardian yesterday with this lofty sentiment:
"Well, ha ha ha and yah, boo --It was ... obvious that
defeat was impossible". Such magnanimity suggests that
it is not Afghanistan which we have bombed into the stone age,
but ourselves.
But almost everyone now agrees that this
is the end of history, all over again. The sceptics have been
routed as swiftly as the Taliban. George Bush and Tony Blair,
with the help of their daisy cutters and cluster bombs, have
ushered in a new, new world order, the long awaited golden age
of democracy. But have the warriors of the west, both actual
and virtual, really won? And if so, what precisely is the prize?
There's no question that the rapid advance
of the Northern Alliance took hawks as well as doves by surprise.
All of us, warriors and sceptics, overestimated the difficulties
of capturing Kabul. But the Telegraph's repetition of Mrs Thatcher's
injunction --"just rejoice, rejoice" --may prove to
be a little premature.
It would be rather easier to measure
the success of the west's war aims if those aims had not shifted
with every presidential announcement. But a few key questions
may help us to determine how much the B-52s have achieved. The
first and most obvious is: will the advance of the Northern
Alliance lead to the overthrow of the barbarous Taliban? The
answer is, almost certainly, yes --although they may persist
as a guerrilla force. The question this then raises is, will
it improve the lives of the Afghan people? Almost everyone
appears to believe that it will. But we would be foolish to
forget that just five years ago both Afghans and western diplomats
welcomed the Taliban's capture of Kabul, as it relieved the
inhabitants of the murderous dominion of the men who now run
the Northern Alliance. Yesterday the Telegraph claimed that
the Northern Alliance's "fearful violence" towards
Arab and Pakistani soldiers "is a shocking reminder of
the fact that Bin Laden's zealots have been a hated army of
occupation". Well, perhaps. But it is also a shocking reminder
of the fact that the Northern Alliance can be just as brutal
as the hated regime it has displaced. To the claim Polly Toynbee
made on these pages yesterday that "nothing could be worse"
than the Taliban, one can only respond: don't tempt fate.
The Northern Alliance's willingness to
cooperate with western plans for Afghanistan is also questionable.
Four days ago, we were told that its soldiers had been persuaded
not to advance on Kabul, and this was judged a victory for
the west. Now they have taken Kabul, and this too is hailed
as a victory for the west. That the military action has not
gone according to plan, in other words, is presented as a vindication
of the plan.
Given that the Northern Alliance has
so far shown little interest in doing as the west requests,
why should we assume that it would be prepared to abandon its
military gains for a "broad-based" political settlement?
Countless comparisons to the outcome in Serbia have been made,
as if this somehow offers proof that armed intervention leads
inexorably to democracy. But Serbia, unlike Afghanistan, already
possessed a mature democracy movement. Where is the Afghan equivalent?
Where are the moderate leaders with whom the west wants to
replace the Taliban? Who among all the named credible candidates
does not have blood on his hands? And will the fiercely independent
Afghans accept the writ of the UN? Or, given that both Russia
and the west have strategic and energy interests in central
Asia, will it come to be seen in the same light as the Soviet
occupation?
Will the advance of the Northern Alliance
save people who are at risk of famine in Afghanistan? It will
almost certainly save some of them. Much more aid is now entering
the areas which have come under Northern Alliance control,
though, like the retreating Taliban, the Alliance fighters have
been looting supplies and commandeering UN vehicles. But for
thousands the help is likely to have arrived too late. The interruption
of supplies during the eight weeks in which they should have
been stockpiled for the winter means that many of those living
in the valleys made inaccessible by snow will die before they
can be reached.
Will it lead to the capture or killing
of Osama bin Laden? Possibly. Will it free the world from terrorism?
No. Will it deliver regional or global security? Probably not.
The Northern Alliance's gains represented a bounty for Russia
and a blow for Pakistan, whose government is now facing a far
graver test in victory than it would have faced in defeat. Even
in Britain, a new poll by the Today programme shows 80% of Muslims
opposed to the west's war.
But, as well as asking what this war
has done to Asia, we must also ask what it has done to us. And
here, it seems to me, the bugles sounding victory for civilised
values are also sounding a retreat.
The first and most obvious loss is our
repudiation of the very basis of civilisation: human rights.
The new terrorism bills in America and Britain have required
the suspension of both the US constitution and the UK's human
rights act --it seems that in trying to shut the terrorists
out, we have merely imprisoned ourselves.
One of the last smart bombs deployed
in Kabul destroyed the offices of al-Jazeera, the only truly
independent major television station in the Arab world. Al-Jazeera
has consistently provided a voice for Muslims opposed to US
military intervention in Afghanistan, as well as airing Bin
Laden's inflammatory videos. A few weeks ago Colin Powell sought
to persuade the emir of Qatar to close it down, without success.
Its destruction suggests that free speech and dissent have now
joined terrorism as the business of "evil-doers".
The second loss to the west is the triumph
of war-war over jaw-jaw. The partial victory in Afghanistan
appears to have convinced both governments and commentators
that we can blast our way to world peace. No serious attempt
was made, before the bombing began, to differentiate between
just and unjust war. Justice in war, as almost every philosopher
since Thomas Aquinas onwards agrees, requires that the peaceful
alternatives should first have been exhausted. There is plenty
to suggest that the initial aim --to capture Bin Laden --could
have been achieved without recourse to arms. The Taliban twice
offered to hand him over on receipt of evidence pointing to
his guilt: a much lower barrier to extradition than western
governments would have raised. We appear to have made no attempt
to discover whether or not they could have been taken at their
word. Now justice appears to have been redefined as success,
and war as the only route to peace.
This new triumphalism is sliding effortlessly
into a new imperialism. It conflates armed and ethical success,
munitions and morality. If this is a victory for civilisation,
I would hate to see what defeat looks like.
George Monbiot is a columnist for The
Guardian. An archive of his columns can be found at http://www.monbiot.com
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