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A FEW OBSCENITIES
AZG Armenian Daily #141, 30/07/2005
Terrorism
Let's talk dirty. The 9/11 suicide hijackers ` all Arabs ` attacked
the United States instead of Brazil or Japan because the US government
has been neck-deep in the politics of the Arab world for a generation,
whereas the Brazilian and Japanese governments haven't. There is a
connection between Washington's Middle Eastern policies ` its support
for oppressive Arab regimes, its military interventions in the region,
and its uncritical backing for Israeli government policies ` and the
fact that Americans have become the preferred targets for Islamist
terrorist attacks.
Indeed, no other non-Muslim nation except Israel was a target for
Islamist terrorist attacks until after the invasion of Iraq in March,
2003. And the attacks since then have been aimed at the citizens of
countries that were complicit in that invasion: Londoners, not
Parisians; Spaniards, not Germans; Australians holidaying in Bali, not
Japanese holidaying in Malaysia.
There you have it: two full paragraphs of obscenity. Prime Minister
Tony Blair himself says so. He informed us last Tuesday that any
attempt to link the terrorist attacks that struck the London transport
system on 7 July, and the subsequent failed attempts on 21 July, to
his decision to follow the Bush administration in invading Iraq was
"an obscenity".
That's nonsense, of course. All the comments in the first two
paragraphs of this article are about cause and effect. You may agree
or disagree with the analysis, but discussions of cause and effect are
still permissible and even necessary. So how does Blair ` and
President George W. Bush in Washington, and Prime Minister John Howard
in Canberra, and their partners elsewhere ` get away with forbidding
us to talk about what is causing all this?
The key technique, which they all use, is to claim that any attempt to
explain why these attacks are happening is also an attempt to condone
and justify them.
None of their critics is actually saying that killing innocent people
in suicide attacks is justifiable. But the people who insist on
talking about cause and effect ` about how American foreign policy
radicalised a generation of Arabs, and how the invasion of Iraq
convinced some deluded Muslims in other parts of the world (including
in Western countries) that "Christendom" really is unleashing a
crusade against the Muslim world ` have to be shut up somehow.
Blair gave a virtuoso demonstration of the technique in his last press
conference on Tuesday. He urgently needed to put some distance between
his decision to invade Iraq and the phenomenon of young, British-born
Muslims, not of Arab origin, blowing themselves and a large number of
Londoners up. So he deployed his considerable rhetorical skills to
change the subject.
What he said was this. "It is time we stopped saying: `OK, we abhor
(al-Qaeda's) methods but we kind of see something in their ideas or
they have a sliver of an excuse or a justification for it.' They have
no justification for it. Neither do they have any justification for
killing people in Israel. Let's just get that out of the way as
well. There is no justification for suicide bombing in Palestine, in
Iraq, in London, in Egypt, in Turkey, anywhere."
Nobody had actually said that suicide bombings are justified. What
they are saying, in increasing numbers, is that actions have
consequences, and that the reason a few young British Muslims became
suicide bombers in 2005, whereas none at all became suicide bombers in
2000, is precisely the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Blair is condemned to deny that obvious fact until the day he dies,
because his only alternative is to admit that he made a huge and
unpardonable mistake. George W. Bush is in a similar situation, though
his main technique for denying it, even now, is to insist that the
invasion of Iraq really did have something to do with fighting
terrorism.
As the US Central Intelligence Agency pointed out recently, the
invasion of Iraq has turned the country into a breeding ground for a
new generation of Arab jihadis in the Middle East. What it failed to
add was that it has also spread the virus of Islamist terrorism into
Muslim communities in Western countries that previously contained only
a few fanatics (as any community does). Until Iraq, none of them
contained people so filled with rage and so convinced that they were
involved in a holy war that they were willing to blow themselves and
dozens of strangers up.
The problem is that the invasion of Iraq made it look (to those
already susceptible to such extreme religious arguments) as if the
Islamist extremists, who had barely any credibility outside the Arab
world even ten years ago, were right. If there were no terrorists in
Iraq, why did Western countries invade it? Because there is a
Judaeo-Christian conspiracy to destroy Islam, stupid. If there is
another Islamist terrorist attack in the United States, it is more
likely to come from within the resident Muslim community, as it has in
Britain, than from foreign infiltrators.
Most American Muslims, like most British Muslims, are appalled by the
radical doctrines that are sweeping some of their young men and women
away. But it is self-serving nonsense on the part of the governments
of these countries to pretend that this is just some inexplicable
outburst of violence by weird Muslim people. The laws of cause and
effect still rule.
By Gwynne Dyer, London-based independent journalist whose articles are
published in 45 countries
AZG Armenian Daily #141, 30/07/2005
Terrorism
Let's talk dirty. The 9/11 suicide hijackers ` all Arabs ` attacked
the United States instead of Brazil or Japan because the US government
has been neck-deep in the politics of the Arab world for a generation,
whereas the Brazilian and Japanese governments haven't. There is a
connection between Washington's Middle Eastern policies ` its support
for oppressive Arab regimes, its military interventions in the region,
and its uncritical backing for Israeli government policies ` and the
fact that Americans have become the preferred targets for Islamist
terrorist attacks.
Indeed, no other non-Muslim nation except Israel was a target for
Islamist terrorist attacks until after the invasion of Iraq in March,
2003. And the attacks since then have been aimed at the citizens of
countries that were complicit in that invasion: Londoners, not
Parisians; Spaniards, not Germans; Australians holidaying in Bali, not
Japanese holidaying in Malaysia.
There you have it: two full paragraphs of obscenity. Prime Minister
Tony Blair himself says so. He informed us last Tuesday that any
attempt to link the terrorist attacks that struck the London transport
system on 7 July, and the subsequent failed attempts on 21 July, to
his decision to follow the Bush administration in invading Iraq was
"an obscenity".
That's nonsense, of course. All the comments in the first two
paragraphs of this article are about cause and effect. You may agree
or disagree with the analysis, but discussions of cause and effect are
still permissible and even necessary. So how does Blair ` and
President George W. Bush in Washington, and Prime Minister John Howard
in Canberra, and their partners elsewhere ` get away with forbidding
us to talk about what is causing all this?
The key technique, which they all use, is to claim that any attempt to
explain why these attacks are happening is also an attempt to condone
and justify them.
None of their critics is actually saying that killing innocent people
in suicide attacks is justifiable. But the people who insist on
talking about cause and effect ` about how American foreign policy
radicalised a generation of Arabs, and how the invasion of Iraq
convinced some deluded Muslims in other parts of the world (including
in Western countries) that "Christendom" really is unleashing a
crusade against the Muslim world ` have to be shut up somehow.
Blair gave a virtuoso demonstration of the technique in his last press
conference on Tuesday. He urgently needed to put some distance between
his decision to invade Iraq and the phenomenon of young, British-born
Muslims, not of Arab origin, blowing themselves and a large number of
Londoners up. So he deployed his considerable rhetorical skills to
change the subject.
What he said was this. "It is time we stopped saying: `OK, we abhor
(al-Qaeda's) methods but we kind of see something in their ideas or
they have a sliver of an excuse or a justification for it.' They have
no justification for it. Neither do they have any justification for
killing people in Israel. Let's just get that out of the way as
well. There is no justification for suicide bombing in Palestine, in
Iraq, in London, in Egypt, in Turkey, anywhere."
Nobody had actually said that suicide bombings are justified. What
they are saying, in increasing numbers, is that actions have
consequences, and that the reason a few young British Muslims became
suicide bombers in 2005, whereas none at all became suicide bombers in
2000, is precisely the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Blair is condemned to deny that obvious fact until the day he dies,
because his only alternative is to admit that he made a huge and
unpardonable mistake. George W. Bush is in a similar situation, though
his main technique for denying it, even now, is to insist that the
invasion of Iraq really did have something to do with fighting
terrorism.
As the US Central Intelligence Agency pointed out recently, the
invasion of Iraq has turned the country into a breeding ground for a
new generation of Arab jihadis in the Middle East. What it failed to
add was that it has also spread the virus of Islamist terrorism into
Muslim communities in Western countries that previously contained only
a few fanatics (as any community does). Until Iraq, none of them
contained people so filled with rage and so convinced that they were
involved in a holy war that they were willing to blow themselves and
dozens of strangers up.
The problem is that the invasion of Iraq made it look (to those
already susceptible to such extreme religious arguments) as if the
Islamist extremists, who had barely any credibility outside the Arab
world even ten years ago, were right. If there were no terrorists in
Iraq, why did Western countries invade it? Because there is a
Judaeo-Christian conspiracy to destroy Islam, stupid. If there is
another Islamist terrorist attack in the United States, it is more
likely to come from within the resident Muslim community, as it has in
Britain, than from foreign infiltrators.
Most American Muslims, like most British Muslims, are appalled by the
radical doctrines that are sweeping some of their young men and women
away. But it is self-serving nonsense on the part of the governments
of these countries to pretend that this is just some inexplicable
outburst of violence by weird Muslim people. The laws of cause and
effect still rule.
By Gwynne Dyer, London-based independent journalist whose articles are
published in 45 countries