Instead of saying; it is too early to say who is responsible for the 7/7 London bombing, Tony Blair immediately accused Muslims and Islam of the crimes. No evidence, no names and no documentation were provided to support his accusations. This happened despite the fact that all Muslim nations have strongly condemned the attacks on innocent people. They do so, Blair said, because they “hate our way of life” and “our values”. Why these ‘Muslim terrorists’ chose Britain of Blair not Switzerland or Sweden? The word why has simply disappeared from the language of both politicians and the media.
Western media, pundits and commentators were quick to jump on the Blair-Bush bandwagon and continue to amplify and encourage this anti-Muslim prejudice. To blindly accuse Muslims and Islam of violence is to ignore the real purveyors of today’s violence and terrorism in the world. Do few individuals represent the whole faith of Islam or Christianity?
Those responsible ‘have no respect for human life’, Blair said. Do those who participated in the barbaric “Shock and Awe” bombings of Baghdad and in the destruction of Iraqi towns and cities have respect for human life? What kind of terrorists has the capacity to perpetuate the criminal atrocity inflicted on the Iraqi people? Baghdad was the heart of the Muslim world and cultural capital of Islam for more than seven centuries.
Since March 2003, there has been a London bombing in Baghdad every day. The holly cities of Najef and Fallujah have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children have been murdered. Tens of thousands of Iraqis are imprisoned, and tortured every day. The whole fabric of the Iraqi society has been deliberately decimated. Why?
The British public were told that the London bombing bears “all the hallmarks of al-Qaeda attacks”. Even if the ‘terrorists’ are ‘white’, the British daily, The Independent, insured its readers, the ‘terrorists’ have to be “’mercenary terrorists’ hired by al-Qaeda to carry out these attacks”. Al-Qaeda is now the West’s label for everything Muslim.
What is al-Qaeda? Al-Qaida (the ‘Base’ in Arabic) was the CIA sponsored training camp for the Afghan Mujahideen, including Osama bin Laden and his fighters. The group was created and financed by the US administration against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. They were called “freedom fighters” by former US president Reagan. In fact after meeting a group of bearded Mujahideen in the White House, the former president said: “These are the moral equivalent of America’s founding fathers”. So, not long ago Mr Bin Laden and his men were the equivalent of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln.
Al-Qaeda has become a convenient phantom to justify an ongoing war. The continuing existence of al-Qaeda is a very useful pretext for the Blair-Bush axis and allies. It provides the necessary tool to create fear and manipulate public opinion.
The 7/7 London bombing was next to impossible to conduct in the middle of high security without the intelligence and coordination of important people in Britain. Like the 9/11 attacks, the 7/7 London bombing remains a mystery, and the crimes against innocent people will provide Blair’s government with enough pretexts to:
(1) justify the introduction of unpopular new British identity card;
(2) implement intrusive surveillance and policing of Muslims and the Muslim community;
(3) introduce new draconian legislations that will curtail freedom, civil liberties, and limits dissent, such as protest;
(4) continue to support Bush’s war of terror against defenceless nations; and
(5) divert public attention from the “pre-emptive” terrorism and the war crimes committed against the Iraqi people.
Throughout the Cold War, which was a pretext for state of fear, Western secret agents and NATO collaborated in attacks against civilian targets, which they then blamed on left-wing groups in order to create panic and force the public to turn to governments for more security and protection. One of these right-wing groups, implicated in attacks on civilians, was code-name Gladio. The existence of this group only became known in Italy in the 1990s and the Italian Senate, amid public protests, had to close it down, because it ‘was beyond democratic control’. In other words, the lies became too big to hide from the public. (Cited in ‘Secret Warfare: Gladio’, by Daniele Ganser). Criminals are not difficult to find to instil fear and panic in the population. (See Fear: A political tool)
It is not surprising that just before the 7/7 bombing, the pretexts for the war on Iraq and the Occupation have changed. In order to continue the Occupation of Iraq, and justify ongoing crimes against the Iraqi people, the Blair-Bush axis and their agents are fabricating new “packs of lies”. Iraq is now the “focal point of terrorism” and “we have to stay the course”, we are told. Nonetheless, the US aim remains the same: the colonisation of Iraq and the promotion of the US imperial agenda of dominating the world through control over energy resources.
War is not the way to fight terrorism. War is the most violent form of terrorism. Terrorism is not an ideology; it is a method of fear. It can only be fought through collaboration and exchange of intelligence between law-abiding nations. It should be borne in mind that terrorism is less of threat to human survival than war, mass hunger or disease, and it is much less difficult to deal with the root of terrorism.
If Blair, Bush and their allies are serious about removing the scourge of terrorism, they need to take a hard look in the mirror and ask themselves one single question: Do people like to be occupied, killed, abused tortured and humiliated by foreign forces?
Western powers are too busy condemning the retail terrorism created by their own intelligence apparatus, while turning a blind eye to their own state terrorism. In fact this retail terrorism, resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians is an integral part of their own terrorist agenda. The Blair-Bush axis should take an important lesson from the history of Iraq when Iraqis have shown fierce Resistance against foreign occupation and imperialism. The 1920 and 1958 revolts against the British are still marked with annual celebrations in Iraq.
The best that could happen to Iraqis, Brits and Americans is for the Blair-Bush axis to withdraw their forces from Iraq immediately, end this brutal Occupation and return Iraq to full sovereignty.
Contributing Editor Ghali Hassan lives in Perth, Western Australia. He can be reached by e-mail here.
