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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,482-448206,00.html The Times (London) October 16, 2002 The Bali bombing must kill off war with Iraq Simon Jenkins -The thesis holds that the United Nations concept of national sovereignty is defunct. Might grants America the right of entry, search and arrest. Even a putative threat, as in Mr Blair’s Iraq dossier, justifies a pre-emptive attack. The War on Terror is, said George Bush a year ago, an all-out war, a world war, a war possibly without end. -The National Security Strategy and Mr Bush’s recent speeches suggest that the war on terrorism and the war on Iraq are now entwined with the thrust for global hegemony. There is a triumphalism to the talk of Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz....It is as if Afghanistan were sufficient balm for the wounds of September 11. Now other worlds must be conquered. -[L]ast week, as al-Qaeda was allegedly planning its Bali massacre, Mr Blair was in Moscow trying to sell his Iraq weapons dossier to Vladimir Putin. At the subsequent press conference Mr Putin’s face said it all: “You can’t possibly believe this stuff, surely?” Mr Blair looked like an antiques dealer caught passing off a Woolworth jug as Ming. What did he think he was doing? -It is bin Laden who has been allowed to set the global agenda for the new century, distracting the world’s attention from peace, poverty, trade, ecology and Aids. How did we come to accord this dreadful man such power? -The clear danger of hegemony is that it induces such stupidity. Those with absolute power always think they need more, and when they have it they yearn to use it. Sometimes they use it wrongly. Cold war leads to hot and many more people get killed. The merchants of fear say that Britain is next. Americans, French and Australians have been targeted by “al-Qaeda” since September 11. Britain has eerily escaped. Yet Britain stands shoulder to shoulder with George Bush. Britain bombs. What awful horror is now being hatched in some hotel room or garret? Yesterday the Foreign Office added its mite to global terror by telling British citizens to avoid poor Bali, which must be as safe as anywhere on Earth. London is far more at risk. At the same time Tony Blair told the House of Commons that the threat from “weapons of mass destruction” is as great as the threat from terrorism. I find it hard to credit that he really believes this. Even if it were true, no sensible person could hold that declaring war on Iraq is the best way of averting either threat. Over the past decade a gang of fanatics, financed by Saudis and trained mostly in Western cities, have tried to sow mayhem round the world. Occasionally they have succeeded. They have apparently not been caught. Afghanistan was a show of retaliative firepower. Iraq is a sabre-rattling distraction. Both have been upstaged by an exploding vehicle. People are being murdered now, not in two years’ time “if Saddam were able to get some uranium from an African source”. There is not a shred of evidence that President Saddam Hussein is behind any recent outrage. There is evidence that al-Qaeda is still active. Mr Blair may be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, but Iraq must now be distracting every intelligence resource in the whole of Asia and recruiting hundreds to the militant cause. Bali should stir a real argument over the containment of terrorism. The argument is over means, not ends. Peace-loving people everywhere want terrorism crushed. They want relations between states governed by tolerance. They do not agree on how. The dialectic has thesis, antithesis and, I hope, synthesis. The thesis is simple. The growth of sophisticated terrorism can brook no compromise. The explosive force of September 11 has been repeated in less dramatic incidents in Yemen, Kuwait and Bali. States that house and train terrorists must be crushed. States that might do so in future must be crushed as well. America has the power. It must do the deed. The thesis holds that the United Nations concept of national sovereignty is defunct. Might grants America the right of entry, search and arrest. Even a putative threat, as in Mr Blair’s Iraq dossier, justifies a pre-emptive attack. The War on Terror is, said George Bush a year ago, an all-out war, a world war, a war possibly without end. Last month the thesis was restated in the White House’s astonishing and little-noticed National Security Strategy. This asserted America’s right to stop any other country “from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing or equalling the power of the United States”. It also asserted America’s generalised right to take pre-emptive action in support of that hegemony. The assertion acknowledged no external authority. Instead it required a large military budget — “full spectrum dominance” — because pre-emptive attack needed more power than mere deterrence. The antithesis regards this thesis as dumb. It holds that terrorism is fuelled not by the warrior’s zeal for territory but by a messianic yearning to give a bloody nose to the rich and powerful. Such resentment is encouraged rather than diminished by talk of war. Anti-Western sentiment has long underpinned Third World politics. It will do so as long as wealth coexists with poverty. But the terrorist’s power lies in his capacity not to kill but to incite fear, to play on Western cowardice and paranoia. This antithesis demands that America make itself loved, not feared. The terrorist should be treated as a criminal. The tank of envy in which he swims should be drained, not filled with the “blood of martyrs”. Americans should show the confidence of the powerful, not the trigger-happy jumpiness of the vulnerable. Westerners may be hurt by al-Qaeda, but the West is not threatened. Those who flaunt their wealth to the world must expect occasional stabs of resentment. So, cries the antithesis, America stay at home. Stop trying to bully the world. To thesis and antithesis there must be synthesis. As a “pro-American” I have no objection in principle to the world’s richest, most open and most democratic state seeking the “whole enchilada”, as the Pentagon strategy is dubbed. I would have supported Woodrow Wilson’s similar, albeit abortive, crusade in 1918. Absolute power may corrupt absolutely, but democracy carries its own protection against abuse. Mr Bush’s most cogent critics today are not in Europe but in America. Strategists, diplomats, politicians and commentators seethe with argument and debate. They and public opinion will ultimately decide how big an enchilada Mr Bush consumes. Meanwhile, synthesis must cling to common sense. It defies common sense now to light a fuse under Islamic militancy with a “pre-emptive war” on Iraq. It defies common sense to incite extremist opposition in Pakistan, Iran and Egypt, on whose Governments the search for al-Qaeda depends. It defies common sense to confuse Saddam and al-Qaeda and link them to every outrage. The Bali bombs could be an Indonesian reaction to Australian action in East Timor. Why glorify al-Qaeda with omnipresence? Common sense would a year ago have built on the outpouring of sympathy for America after September 11. Even Iran, Syria, Libya and the Palestinians offered help to combat the new terrorist curse. To be anti-American was then to be beyond any tolerable pale. September’s “coalition against terror” was genuine. A campaign to isolate al-Qaeda could have been launched across the world, including in Indonesia whose Islamic militants are now on the rampage. The bombs that fell on Kabul wrecked that coalition. The bombs that may again fall on Baghdad will obliterate it. Setting up Osama bin Laden and Saddam, once sworn enemies, as idols of anti-Americanism was strategically reckless. Al-Qaeda was not crushed in Afghanistan. If the Bali bomb was indeed al-Qaeda’s, the organisation has clearly lost none of its ability to reduce Western states and their economies to quivering terror. The National Security Strategy and Mr Bush’s recent speeches suggest that the war on terrorism and the war on Iraq are now entwined with the thrust for global hegemony. There is a triumphalism to the talk of Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, that is out of character with America’s traditional caution. It is as if Afghanistan were sufficient balm for the wounds of September 11. Now other worlds must be conquered. Britain’s role during such periodic bursts of American imperialism is to be a friendly restraining hand. Yet last week, as al-Qaeda was allegedly planning its Bali massacre, Mr Blair was in Moscow trying to sell his Iraq weapons dossier to Vladimir Putin. At the subsequent press conference Mr Putin’s face said it all: “You can’t possibly believe this stuff, surely?” Mr Blair looked like an antiques dealer caught passing off a Woolworth jug as Ming. What did he think he was doing? The Bali bomb is a symptom of anti-Western sentiment, generated not by Osama bin Laden but by the American and British reaction to him, a reaction now shifted to Saddam. America would not be threatening war on Iraq but for September 11 and Mr Blair would not be acting as his salesman. It is bin Laden who has called forth the drums of war. It is bin Laden who has been allowed to set the global agenda for the new century, distracting the world’s attention from peace, poverty, trade, ecology and Aids. How did we come to accord this dreadful man such power? I still believe that al-Qaeda should have been treated as common criminals, not set on a plinth as warriors. They should have been depicted as mere gangsters whom every state, even Afghanistan, could be induced to surrender with appropriate inducements. Terrorists should not now be free to turn the tap of anti-Americanism on and off at will. To wage “war on terrorism” in bin Laden’s name may have been justified, even moral. It was stupid. The clear danger of hegemony is that it induces such stupidity. Those with absolute power always think they need more, and when they have it they yearn to use it. Sometimes they use it wrongly. Cold war leads to hot and many more people get killed. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? 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