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Even if
the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld troika doesn’t review their strategy, the rest of the
world is. KwC World Opinion Roundup Brits Debate Iraq Factor in Bombings: Commentators
Argue Over How Best to Fight Threat of Terrorism By Jefferson Morley,
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer, Friday, July 8, 2005; 12:33 PM On the day after
"the worst attack since World War II," that fundamental question divides
British commentators, even as the country's political leaders unanimously decry
the attacks. The question matters
because the answer suggests how Britain and the West can most effectively respond
to a deadly threat that traditional security forces were unable to prevent. Robert Fisk of the Independent (by subscription), while condemning the attacks as
"barbaric," asked, "If we are fighting insurgency in Iraq, what
makes us think insurgency won't come to us?" He quoted Osama bin Laden's
videotaped threat from last year: "'If you bomb our cities, we will bomb
yours." "It was crystal
clear Britain would be a target ever since Tony Blair decided to join George
Bush's 'war on terror' and his invasion of Iraq," Fisk said. "It's no use Mr Blair telling us
yesterday that 'they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear,'"
he went on. "'They' are not trying to destroy 'what we hold dear.' They
are trying to get public opinion to force Blair to withdraw from Iraq, from his
alliance with the United States, and from his adherence to Bush's policies in
the Middle East." Christopher Hitchens,
writing in the Mirror, excoriates those who look to assign blame at
home. "I know perfectly well
there are people thinking, and even saying, that Tony Blair brought this upon
us by his alliance with George Bush," he said. "A word of advice
to them: try and keep it down, will you? Or wait at least until the funerals
are over. And beware of the non-sequitur: you can be as opposed to the Iraq
operation as much as you like, but you can't get from that 'grievance' to the
detonating of explosives at rush hour on London buses and tubes. "Don't even try to connect the
two," Hitchens said. By such logic, "British squaddies in Iraq are
the root cause of dead bodies at home. How can anyone bear to be so wicked and
stupid? How can anyone bear to act as a megaphone for psychotic killers?" When George Galloway,
the controversial antiwar member of parliament, made that argument on Thursday,
the Daily Mail condemned his "twisted logic." Iranian journalist
Amin Taheri, writing in the Times, said "Sorry, old chaps, you are dealing
with an enemy that does not want
anything specific, and cannot be talked back into reason through anger
management or round-table discussions. Or, rather, this enemy does want
something specific: to take full control of your lives, dictate every single
move you make round the clock and, if you dare resist, he will feel it his
divine duty to kill you." Those who blame the
Iraq war for the London attacks, said the editors of the Daily Telegraph,
"misread the nature of the struggle." The jihadist offensive, they said, "goes back to the
1993 assault on the World Trade Centre in New York, the same which was
destroyed eight years later." It continued with bombings in Saudi Arabia
in 1995 and 1996, the attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania
in 1998, and the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. "So, well before
September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden and his likes had taken the battle to the
enemy," they write. "Iraq may have added a new theatre to the war on
global terror but, even without it, the West and its Asian allies would be
locked in combat with bin Laden and his affiliates." But the London
bombings, countered former foreign secretary Robin Cook in the Guardian, disprove one of the chief American
arguments for the war.
"President Bush is given to justifying the invasion of Iraq on the
grounds that by fighting terrorism abroad, it protects the west from having to
fight terrorists at home," Cook wrote. "Whatever else can
be said in defence of the war in Iraq today, it cannot be claimed that it has
protected us from terrorism on our soil." If there were common
ground in the post-attack debate it was that Muslim public opinion is key to
ending the terrorist threat. "The more the west
emphasizes confrontation, the more it silences moderate voices in the Muslim world
who want to speak up for cooperation," said Cook. "Success will only come from
isolating the terrorists and denying them support, funds and recruits, which
means focusing more on our common ground with the Muslim world than on what
divides us." The Bush
administration's message that "America and the world are safer because of
the US invasion of Iraq and its anti-terror strategy ... may have been finally
buried by Thursday's bombings in London," said the centrist Financial Times. "Clearly [the
world] is not safer," said John Hamre, president of the Washington-based
Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and a former U.S.
deputy secretary of defense. "I think this [bombing] highlights the
complexity of the problem." "We must defend a vast infrastructure
constantly while extremists get to pick the time and place with very limited
tools," Hamre told the FT. "Obviously we must try to intercept the
terrorists. But we must also address the broader socio-political context. We
can't solve this with a relatively limited dimensional model of counterforce.
Being mighty is one thing. Being effective is another." Hitchens spoke for
many Britons when he said the bombers' "sordid love of death is as nothing
compared to our love of London which we will defend as always, and which will
survive this with ease." But
the question of whether the Anglo-American military presence in Iraq protects
or endangers commuters in Western capitals is now more urgent than ever.
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