[A-List] UK sub-imperialism: a Scottish view

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Few campaigners come as dirty and low as Jim Sillars, whose lack of scruple
has been documented here in the past. However, on this occasion he uses his
rhetorical gifts rather well.

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A bigger catastrophe for Britain than Suez
JIM SILLARS
The Herald, 2 April 2003

Comment

THE war is a catastrophe. US military forces faced with suicide bombing,
nervous in the face of a civilian population which has not responded with
joy to being bombed and blasted, are heading for an urban Vietnam, which
will brutalise them just as their allies, the Israeli Defence Force, have
been brutalised in Palestine.

The British military are now sucked into that scene, although there is no
state interest for us in forming part of the invading and occupying army.

US and UK relations with the Arab and Islamic worlds are ruptured. The
double standards angering the Arab and Islamic peoples in respect of Iraq
and Israel, enrages them. That Colin Powell should have chosen the American
Israeli Political Action Committee as his platform to threaten Syria is
insane provocation, which simply fills to overflowing the wells of
bitterness already dug deep in Arabia, by the US.

Those will water the ground of terrorism. As the Arabs and other Muslims see
the might of America and its junior ally, they know they can only compete at
a cruder level - the terror attack and its ultimate horror, the suicide
bomber.

This catastrophe of an attack upon an Arab Islamic people is taking place at
a time when Islam is in a resurgent state. The attack upon Iraq is seen as
an attack upon Islam, and gives credence to the recruiting cry of Osama bin
Laden that for us, Muslim blood is less valuable than Western blood.

This event will accelerate the radicalisation of Arab youth, and present a
challenge to Islamic fundamentalism which it will answer, recruiting that
youth, in a terrible revenge upon the US and UK civil populations. Iraqis
face catastrophe today; it will be our turn tomorrow.

To protect our civil society we shall surrender more of our civil liberties
to government. But, terrorists will get through, and that catastrophe will
claim as its victims some who, like the Iraqi children dying today, are
innocents.

The catastrophe in human relations and in international relations also
embraces British-Arab economic relations.

To talk of trade in the context of a bloody war may seem inappropriate, but
if people are to have jobs, to eat, then the effect upon economic life
cannot be dismissed as of little account.

Britain, with £10bn a year in visible and invisible exports to the Arab
world, is vulnerable. Arabs don't need to buy from us. Asia is the workshop
of the world, offering stiff competition to our manufacturers, and many
nations present alternative sources of financial services than the City
offers.

This war is a greater catastrophe for Britain than Suez. In 1956, Nasser was
only kick-starting nationalism in an Arab world where, outside the great
urban areas, literacy levels were low, development was lower, and the Gulf
still mainly a desert society. Moreover, Nasser's was a secular based
revolution.

Today, the Arab world is very different. Modern nations have emerged;
literacy levels are high; vast numbers have international experience; and
there exist satellite TV stations able to describe the world as Arab eyes
see it, and not, as in the Gulf war, as CNN sees it.

That combination, when allied to Islamic solidarity and fuelled by anger at
Western double standards, presents a more potent threat than we endured
after Suez. Catastrophe is a word used throughout this piece. No other fits.

Jim Sillars is a former assistant secretary-general to The Arab-British
Chamber of Commerce, and former Scottish Nationalist MP for Glasgow Govan.