[A-List] US imperialism: accumulating blowback 3

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

Peter Kilfoyle, former defence minister who resigned over Blair's dithering
over Europe, nails it with respect to the likely political fallout of any
"inevitable" terrorist attack. And note his interesting reference to Bloody
Sunday.

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Tony Blair will not be forgiven

The stakes for the prime minister have now increased dramatically

Peter Kilfoyle
Tuesday March 16, 2004
The Guardian

Even Hieronymus Bosch would have been hard pressed to convey the carnage of
last week's Madrid bombings. Yet it seems that we must become accustomed to
such slaughter.

In Britain, we have our own experience of terrorism. But regardless of what
the foreign secretary has said, we are more at risk from international
terrorism than ever. The reason can be summed up in one word: Iraq.

That does not mean that we were risk-free before we joined the American-led
war on Saddam. But it is undeniable that the war itself, and the
circumstances in which we went to war, raised Britain's profile as a target.
This was not only predictable, but was repeatedly predicted before the war.

Of course, terrorism should not only be confronted, but defeated. The
question is how the west goes about that task. The first requirement is to
dispose of the myths surrounding what has been hopelessly mislabelled "the
war on terrorism". After all, 9/11 was not the beginning of terrorism. What
was different was the scale of the attacks, the location on the American
mainland and the fact that they were committed by foreigners. The first
attack on the World Trade Centre claimed few lives, and Oklahoma City was
devastated by right-wing Americans. But 9/11 occurred on the watch of George
Bush.

He and his administration had a far more aggressive mindset than their
predecessors. They also had an ideological bent that demanded an enemy. The
coincidence of the attacks and this newly hostile approach was a recipe for
disaster.

None of the myths fabricated about Iraq is more relevant to recent events
than the linkage claimed with al-Qaida. The idea that the loathsome, but
secular, Saddam would entertain the fundamentalist Osama bin Laden was
ludicrous, yet repeatedly made.

When dissident voices argued that a war on Iraq would actually make it a
hotbed for terrorism, they were dismissed. In America, a majority still link
Saddam with 9/11.

Similarly, when it was argued that an attack on Iraq would inflame Muslim
opinion and increase the support for terrorism, that was also dismissed. It
is clear that a strand of fundamentalism flourishing in the souks and
refugee camps of the Muslim world will view such terrorists as heroes.

We see the Palestinian suicide bomber as a terrorist - but not Sharon, the
overseer of the massacres of Shatila and Sabra. We abhor the killers of
Omagh, but not yet those of Bloody Sunday. We rightly condemn the killing
fields of Pol Pot, but not the murderous attacks of Nixon and Kissinger. To
many in the third world, the hypocrisy of the west is beyond belief.

This leads to the final myth - that Islamist terrorism is mindless and
unpredictable. It is certainly true that it is not fired by the misplaced
ideology or perverted patriotism of other brands of terrorism. It is,
however, idealistic, bred from a distorted fundamentalist perspective on
Islam. Remember that al-Qaida's original "mission" was to expel the
communist-atheists from Afghanistan; get the Americans out of Saudi Arabia;
and return the Palestinians to what is now Israel. We have now added the
cause of Iraq to its prospectus.

Where does that leave the British government? Tony Blair must look at the
Spanish election result and wonder. The Madrid atrocities appear to have
aroused the deep reservations that Spaniards had about the war in Iraq.
Their doubts were overlaid with a distrust of a government that
precipitately sought to lay blame for the bombing at the door of Eta, for
political advantage.

God forbid that such crimes should be visited on our shores, but we must be
prepared for what the security services deem a probability rather than a
possibility. We are renowned as a phlegmatic people, but we are not
forgiving to those who let the side down, whether at home or abroad. If such
an attack were to take place here, the question would inevitably be whether
our support for America's war against Iraq had made it more likely.

The prime minister in particular will now ruminate on this. If ever there
was a case of an individual driving the nation into a war then it was him.
People will inevitably link his personal crusade to any failure to forestall
terrorist outrages. Thus the stakes for him have increased alarmingly.

The danger is that, in order to pre-empt the kind of hellish scenes
witnessed in Madrid, the prime minister and his cabinet will crack down even
harder on civil liberties than they have already. That creates political
perils of its own, without any guarantee of achieving the desired end. A
case of heads the prime minister loses, and tails his opponents win.