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e US Bomb This Tragic People? - Robert Fisk
The Independent (London) September 23, 2001
How Can the US Bomb This Tragic People?
by Robert Fisk
We are witnessing this weekend one of the most epic events since the Second
World War, certainly since Vietnam. I am not talking about the ruins of the
World Trade Center in New York and the grotesque physical scenes which we
watched on 11 September, an atrocity which I described last week as a crime
against humanity (of which more later). No, I am referring to the
extraordinary, almost unbelievable preparations now under way for the most
powerful nation ever to have existed on God's Earth to bomb the most
devastated, ravaged, starvation-haunted and tragic country in the world.
Afghanistan, raped and eviscerated by the Russian army for 10 years,
abandoned by its friends - us, of course - once the Russians had fled, is
about to be attacked by the surviving superpower.
I watch these events with incredulity, not least because I was a witness to
the Russian invasion and occupation. How they fought for us, those Afghans,
how they believed our word. How they trusted President Carter when he
promised the West's support. I even met the CIA spook in Peshawar,
brandishing the identity papers of a Soviet pilot, shot down with one of our
missiles - which had been scooped from the wreckage of his Mig. "Poor guy,"
the CIA man said, before showing us a movie about GIs zapping the Vietcong
in his private cinema. And yes, I remember what the Soviet officers told me
after arresting me at Salang. They were performing their international duty
in Afghanistan, they told me. They were "punishing the terrorists" who
wished to overthrow the (communist) Afghan government and destroy its
people. Sound familiar?
I was working for The Times in 1980, and just south of Kabul I picked up a
very disturbing story. A group of religious mujahedin fighters had attacked
a school because the communist regime had forced girls to be educated
alongside boys. So they had bombed the school, murdered the head teacher's
wife and cut off her husband's head. It was all true. But when The Times ran
the story, the Foreign Office complained to the foreign desk that my report
gave support to the Russians. Of course. Because the Afghan fighters were
the good guys. Because Osama bin Laden was a good guy. Charles Douglas-Home,
then editor of The Times would always insist that Afghan guerrillas were
called "freedom fighters" in the headline. There was nothing you couldn't do
with words.
And so it is today. President Bush now threatens the obscurantist, ignorant,
super-conservative Taliban with the same punishment as he intends to mete
out to bin Laden. Bush originally talked about "justice and punishment" and
about "bringing to justice" the perpetrators of the atrocities. But he's not
sending policemen to the Middle East; he's sending B-52s. And F-16s and
AWACS planes and Apache helicopters. We are not going to arrest bin Laden.
We are going to destroy him. And that's fine if he's the guilty man. But
B-52s don't discriminate between men wearing turbans, or between men and
women or women and children.
I wrote last week about the culture of censorship which is now to smother
us, and of the personal attacks which any journalist questioning the roots
of this crisis endures. Last week, in a national European newspaper, I got a
new and revealing example of what this means. I was accused of being
anti-American and then informed that anti-Americanism was akin to
anti-Semitism. You get the point, of course. I'm not really sure what
anti-Americanism is. But criticizing the United States is now to be the
moral equivalent of Jew-hating. It's OK to write headlines about "Islamic
terror" or my favorite French example "God's madmen", but it's definitely
out of bounds to ask why the United States is loathed by so many Arab
Muslims in the Middle East. We can give the murderers a Muslim identity: we
can finger the Middle East for the crime - but we may not suggest any
reasons for the crime.
But let's go back to that word justice. Re-watching that pornography of
mass-murder in New York, there must be many people who share my view that
this was a crime against humanity. More than 6,000 dead; that's a Srebrenica
of a slaughter. Even the Serbs spared most of the women and children when
they killed their menfolk. The dead of Srebrenica deserve - and are getting
- international justice at the Hague. So surely what we need is an
International Criminal Court to deal with the sorts of killer who devastated
New York on 11 September. Yet "crime against humanity" is not a phrase we
are hearing from the Americans. They prefer "terrorist atrocity", which is
slightly less powerful. Why, I wonder? Because to speak of a terrorist crime
against humanity would be a tautology. Or because the US is against
international justice. Or because it specifically opposed the creation of an
international court on the grounds that its own citizens may one day be
arraigned in front of it.
The problem is that America wants its own version of justice, a concept
rooted, it seems, in the Wild West and Hollywood's version of the Second
World War. President Bush speaks of smoking them out, of the old posters
that once graced Dodge City: "Wanted, Dead or Alive". Tony Blair now tells
us that we must stand by America as America stood by us in the Second World
War. Yes, it's true that America helped us liberate Western Europe. But in
both world wars, the US chose to intervene after only a long and - in the
case of the Second World War - very profitable period of neutrality.
Don't the dead of Manhattan deserve better than this? It's less than three
years since we launched a 200-Cruise missile attack on Iraq for throwing out
the UN arms inspectors. Needless to say, nothing was achieved. More Iraqis
were killed, and the UN inspectors never got back, and sanctions continued,
and Iraqi children continued to die. No policy, no perspective. Action, not
words.
And that's where we are today. Instead of helping Afghanistan, instead of
pouring our aid into that country 10 years ago, rebuilding its cities and
culture and creating a new political center that would go beyond tribalism,
we left it to rot. Sarajevo would be rebuilt. Not Kabul. Democracy, of a
kind, could be set up in Bosnia. Not in Afghanistan. Schools could be
reopened in Tuzla and Travnik. Not in Jaladabad. When the Taliban arrived,
stringing up every opponent, chopping off the arms of thieves, stoning women
for adultery, the United States regarded this dreadful outfit as a force for
stability after the years of anarchy.
Bush's threats have effectively forced the evacuation of every Western aid
worker. Already, Afghans are dying because of their absence. Drought and
starvation go on killing millions - I mean millions - and between 20 and 25
Afghans are blown up every day by the 10 million mines the Russians left
behind. Of course, the Russians never went back to clear the mines. I
suppose those B-52 bombs will explode a few of them. But that'll be the only
humanitarian work we're likely to see in the near future.
Look at the most startling image of all this past week. Pakistan has closed
its border with Afghanistan. So has Iran. The Afghans are to stay in their
prison. Unless they make it through Pakistan and wash up on the beaches of
France or the waters of Australia or climb through the Channel Tunnel or
hijack a plane to Britain to face the wrath of our Home Secretary. In which
case, they must be sent back, returned, refused entry. It's a truly terrible
irony that the only man we would be interested in receiving from Afghanistan
is the man we are told is the evil genius behind the greatest mass-murder in
American history: bin Laden. The others can stay at home and die.
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