Asked by a reporter last week about the (obvious!) connections between the terrorist attacks in London and British participation in the immoral and criminal war in Iraq, Prime Minister Tony Blair was fortunate to have the conservative Australian P.M. John Howard on hand to confuse the issues. Here is Howard's response, with my commentary interspersed:
Can I just say very directly, Paul, on the issue of the policies of my government and indeed the policies of the British and American governments on Iraq, that the first point of reference is that once a country allows its foreign policy to be determined by terrorism, it's given the game away, to use the vernacular. And no Australian government that I lead will ever have policies determined by terrorism or terrorist threats, and no self-respecting government of any political stripe in Australia would allow that to happen.
This certainly sounds suitably tough-minded and macho (and, of course, it is easy to be macho when you're surrounded by heavily armed security agents 24 hours per day), and coming from a stubborn adolescent, it would even be perfectly understandable. But one might have hoped that those entrusted with the welfare of their citizenry would allow that foreign policy ought to be affected by its consequences, including its potential to provoke dangerous enemies. Imagine if John Howard ran an asylum for the criminally insane, and took the view that no decisions about, for example, how the staff would treat their charges would take into account how their charges might respond. This would seem a bit odd, would it not? What if, during the Cold War, U.S. Presidents took the view that the U.S. would do what it wants anywhere in the world, regardless of how the U.S.S.R. might respond? How is it any different, though, to disclaim even the relevance of all-too-real terrorist responses to foreign policy?
Can I remind you that the murder of 88 Australians in Bali took place before the operation in Iraq.
Indeed, this is why no one was claiming that the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq was the cause of all terrorism in the world. Moving right along...
And I remind you that the 11th of September occurred before the operation in Iraq.
Indeed, it did, but it also occurred after bin Laden's 1996 declaration of jihad against the U.S., in which the clearly stated objective was the removal of U.S. military forces from Saudi Arabia. This objective was reiterated in his 1998 fatwa, which also implicated U.S. policy towards Iraq and in the region more generally. Should the U.S. have withdrawn its forces from Saudi Arabia? I am hard-pressed to imagine even President Bush telling the nation that it was worth the horrors of September 11 so that we could continue to prop up the fanatics and tyrants in Saudi Arabia. But even putting that aside, the real points that John Howard the Ostrich obscures are twofold: first, that no one has claimed that the Iraq War is the cause of all terrorism in the world; and second, it seems clear from repeated statements by the killers that they act with strategic objectives in mind, and so perhaps there ought to be a public and rational debate about how important our objectives (to which they object) are to us, given the very real risk of loss of life at the hands of zealous killers.
Can I also remind you that the very first occasion that bin Laden specifically referred to Australia was in the context of Australia's involvement in liberating the people of East Timor. Are people by implication suggesting we shouldn't have done that?
Strawmen make for cheap rhetorical points, but they don't enhance public understanding or public safety. Critics have focussed on the connection between the Iraq War and terrorist incidents in, for example, London and Madrid, precisely because the Iraq War was illegal and unjust, and thus should never have been undertaken in the first place. That it also has as a (reasonably) predictable consequence the incitement of more mass murder by religious fanatics is, one might think, a further objection to the policy, at least among those who have not been apologists for war crimes. Insofar as a policy--say, Australian aid to East Timor--is a legal and just one, then its continuation may be important even in the face of terrorist incidents. But that, of course, is why no one, to my knowledge, has raised Bali in the wake of the London bombings--except, of course, the apologists for the illegal and immoral Iraq War.
When a group claimed responsibility on the website for the attacks on the 7th of July, they talked about British policy not just in Iraq, but in Afghanistan. Are people suggesting we shouldn't be in Afghanistan?
Many people, of course, suggested this from the start. Dead civilians in Afghanistan are also human beings, even if they are ruled by religious fanatics. The Golden Rule, which apparently P.M. Howard did not learn as a child, suggests that we should treat others as we would want to be treated ourselves, which at least raises a question whether indiscriminate bombing and military invasion of someone else's country is a proper response to terrorist acts hatched by a group within that country. But even putting that aside, P.M. Howard is, once again, changing the topic: it may be that there is some justification for actions in Afghanistan, and that justification is sufficiently robust to warrant enduring heinous consequences inflicted on the British civilian population. But the simple fact is that he U.S. attacked Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, and London was left in peace until the summer of 2005, after British participation in a criminal and immoral war in Iraq. It is not unreasonable to think the latter actions stand in a pertinent causal (not justificatory) relationship to the carnage in the streets of London.
When Sergio de Mello was murdered in Iraq -- a brave man, a distinguished international diplomat, a person immensely respected for his work in the United Nations -- when al Qaeda gloated about that, they referred specifically to the role that de Mello had carried out in East Timor because he was the United Nations administrator in East Timor.
Really, now, Mr. Howard is having a lot of trouble staying on topic. We have already noted the irrelevance of Bali to the question at hand.
Now I don't know the mind of the terrorists. By definition, you can't put yourself in the mind of a successful suicide bomber. I can only look at objective facts, and the objective facts are as I've cited.
Mr. Howard has certainly referred to events that actually occurred, but the relevance of several of them is in doubt. And repeated statements of objectives by the perpetrators of terrorist acts are among the objective facts one might have deemed relevant here (the fact that the statements were made, that is, not necessarily what they tell us about the actual objectives--for that, the statements must be compared with the actions and their temporal relation to other events). And then, of course, there are other objective facts that have not been mentioned in Mr. Howard's apologia (e.g., Madrid was attacked, the government changed and withdrew from Iraq, and Madrid has not been attacked since).
The objective evidence is that Australia was a terrorist target long before the operation in Iraq. And indeed, all the evidence, as distinct from the suppositions, suggests to me that this is about hatred of a way of life, this is about the perverted use of principles of the great world religion that, at its root, preaches peace and cooperation.
This from the man who just told us he doesn't "know the mind of the terrorists." One piece of evidence we have about their "minds" are what they do; another we have is what they say about why they do what they do. Put those two together and there is simply no evidence that this is about hostility to "a way of life" (though, being religious fanatics, they are no doubt hostile to it). If it were about "a way of life," then, as even the leading fanatic himself has noted, al-Qaeda would have struck Sweden. Mysteriously--or mysteriously, at least, to Mr. Howard--they have attacked Western nations like Britain and Spain involved in a criminal and immoral war.
And I think we lose sight of the challenge we have if we allow ourselves to see these attacks in the context of particular circumstances rather than the abuse through a perverted ideology of people and their murder.
Actually, we lose sight of possible rational, effective responses when we insist that discussion of particular circumstances is somehow off-limits.
I shall let Juan Cole (History, Michigan) have the final word:
Many commentators are putting out the straw man argument that the Iraq War cannot be blamed for terrorism because September 11 and Bali, e.g., happened before the Iraq War.
This argument is so dishonest that it should make your blood boil when you hear it. No one is alleging that all the instances of radical Muslim terrorism can be traced to the Iraq War. What is being argued is that the Iraq War provided the already-existing terror networks with an enormous propaganda and recruiting windfall. Would Hasib Hussein, who was 14 in 2001, really have agreed to kill himself and 20 others on a London bus if Bush and Blair had acted responsibly and declined to bog the West down in a guerrilla war in the Muslim country of Iraq? What if instead they had captured Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, put $200 billion into rebuilding Afghanistan, and used their enormous diplomatic and military weight to resolved the Israeli-Palestinian and Kashmir issues?
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