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WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : Britain
Britain: Parliamentary debate reveals growing dissent in "war against
terrorism"
By Julie Hyland
18 October 2001
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The fourth emergency parliamentary debate on the “war against
terrorism” on Tuesday revealed the tension and nervousness among
sections of the political establishment, concerned at the
international and domestic implications of Prime Minister Blair’s
commitment to the US-led campaign.
Previous debates have largely served as a platform for Blair to
flaunt his newfound status as international statesman par excellence,
and for the opposition parties to declare their support for his every
decision. This time, however, six Labour MPs had tabled a strongly
worded “early day motion” drawing attention to United Nations’
warnings that Afghanistan faced a “humanitarian crisis of ‘stunning
proportions’”. Their motion argued, “The grief and suffering of
innocent victims in the USA cannot be answered by the bombing and
starvation of equally innocent victims in Afghanistan”. Noting that
the US bombardment had intensified the refugee crisis, disrupted
vital food distribution and “caused substantial civilian deaths and
injuries”, the motion called on the British government “to halt the
bombing and urge the United States to do likewise”.
Signed by Paul Marsden, Alan Simpson, Robert Marshall-Andrews, Lyn
Jones, Tam Dalyell and Alice Mahon, the tabling of such a motion is
parliamentary device, which enables backbenchers to record their
views on a particular topic, without it being actually debated.
However, such was the government’s sensitivity to even the slightest
criticism that Foreign Secretary Jack Straw chose to attack the early
day motion in his own address to parliament on the “coalition against
terrorism”.
Straw accused the motion’s authors of attempting to appease Osama bin
Laden and other international terrorists. Government critics were
simply dodging the choice between “appeasement and allowing the
Taliban regime to harbour terrorists”, he said.
Tam Dalyell, the longest-serving MP, severely criticised the
government’s response to US terror attacks and demanded to know what
its military objectives in Afghanistan were. Government references to
carrying out “carefully calibrated reactions” were “cosy self-
delusion”, Dalyell said. Dropping bombs from 30,000 feet did not
constitute “effective military action” but could only lead to a
“massacre of civilians.”
The Scottish MP continued, “Some of us simply do not believe that the
atrocities against Manhattan and the Pentagon were in any way honed
or finalised in some cave in Afghanistan. The truth is that they were
honed and finalised much nearer home—in Western Europe, in Hamburg-
Harburg, London and Leicester, and in the United States itself. What
is being done to follow up the leads to those who were actually
involved in committing the crimes?”
Senior Labour MP Gwyneth Dunwoody warned of the “deep unease in the
British population, who know that one does not on the whole deal with
terrorism by mass intervention at state level”.
Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party, said that the US-
led coalition was losing the “battle of public opinion” amongst
Muslims. Talk of the conflict going on for years was “extremely
dangerous” under conditions in which the “humanitarian clock” was
ticking, he said. “If a substantial number of people starve to death
this winter, it won’t be the Taliban that are held responsible for
that particular disaster. While the government certainly has broad
support, it is not support that in any way can be taken for granted.”
George Galloway (Labour) responded to Straw’s allegations of
appeasement by stating, “the only supporters of the Taliban are in
the government’s coalition... which contains the only countries which
until a few days ago—and, in one case, until now—maintain diplomatic
relations with the Taliban...”
He added, “The American and British governments invented the
Taliban,” whom they had once armed, financed and trained. Bin Laden’s
guards had been “trained at what can only be described as a terrorist
training camp near Fort William by the Special Air Service of the
British Army”, Galloway continued.
Neither the government nor the opposition parties should fool
themselves that there was not “great unease about and considerable
opposition” to the bombing of Afghanistan, warned Galloway. Nor
should they believe “that the support of juntas, potentates and
western dependent leaders for their course of action represents
opinion in the countries that are under the heel” of the self-same
dictatorships. In truth the US and British governments have
“assembled in a coalition for ‘enduring freedom’ some of the least
free countries in the world.”
Attacking Afghanistan, the poorest country in the world, from B52
bombers was the moral equivalent of placing “Mike Tyson in a ring
with a five-year-old child”, he concluded.
Former minister Peter Kilfoyle (Labour) said that whilst it was true
that Osama bin Laden was guilty of terrible crimes, no evidence had
been presented directly linking him and his network to the September
11 attacks. Responding to Straw’s earlier statement that, if
apprehended, bin Laden should be tried before a US court, Kilfoyle
questioned whether, on the same criteria, Israeli Prime Minister and
indicted war criminal Ariel Sharon would be tried in the Lebanon for
ordering the massacres of Palestinian’s in the Shatila and Sabra
refugee camps, or if “Cambodia or Chile [could] arraign [former US
Secretary of State] Henry Kissinger on charges of international
terrorism?”
More troubling, was that it was “no secret” that factions within the
US government were seeking to “shape an agenda...dramatically
different from that of the British government”, Kilfoyle continued.
How did Blair propose to counteract right-wing hawks in the Bush
administration like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, who are seeking
to widen the war to include countries like Iraq and Syria? he asked.
Galloway had also raised a similar question, warning that should the
US decide to extend the war against Afghanistan to other countries,
“it will pitch us from what is shaping up to be a disaster into an
international catastrophe”.
Clearly many Labour MPs are concerned that Blair has relinquished any
control over the conduct of the war to the US. The prime minister
believes his pro-war stance will ensure British interests are looked
upon more favourably by the US in the future, but others fear he has
effectively signed away any independent British role, with
incalculable consequences.
Similar disaffection may have been responsible for preventing the
Welsh Assembly agreeing a united declaration on the international
coalition against terror earlier this week. A motion presented to a
meeting of party leaders last Friday by Labour’s First Minister
Rhodri Morgan was rejected by the Conservative Party because it
failed to mention the military action against Afghanistan, limiting
itself to a condemnation of the September 11 terror attacks. A
Conservative spokesman said it was evidence that the Labour Party was
not united behind the campaign.
Tuesday’s debate in Westminster led some to suggest that Blair should
ease up on his international shuttle diplomacy and spend more time
ensuring his domestic coalition held together. Such suggestions have
fallen on deaf ears, however. Blair has used the September 11 terror
attacks to further remove himself from parliamentary control. He was
not present at Tuesday’s debate. Nor was any minister from the
Ministry of Defence—the department responsible for “winding up” or
replying to the debate—leading Dalyell to protest that MPs were in
“danger of talking to thin air”. Questioned on the government’s
objectives in the war against Afghanistan, Straw acknowledged that a
briefing given to journalists five days previously had still not been
placed in the House of Common’s library for scrutiny by MPs.
None of the questions raised by MPs in the debate received any
serious reply from the government benches. Relying on the services of
a largely servile media that barely reported the parliamentary
proceedings, the government believes it can simply avoid providing
any answers.
Copyright 1998-2001
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved
>From www.wsws.org
WSWS : News & Analysis : The US War Drive
Behind the "anti-terrorism" mask: imperialist powers prepare new
forms of colonialism
By Nick Beams
18 October 2001
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>From the outset of the military assault against Afghanistan, the
World Socialist Web Site has explained that this is not a war for
justice or security against terrorist attacks but is bound up with
the geo-political aims of United States imperialism.
It has not taken long for a discussion of some of these wider aims to
surface in the international media. The past days have seen a series
of articles advocating both an extension of the war beyond
Afghanistan and the establishment of neo-colonial forms of rule in a
number of countries.
On October 8, the US ambassador to the United Nations, John
Negroponte, delivered a letter to the UN Security Council which left
no doubt that the Bush administration will extend the war beyond
Afghanistan should it deem that to be necessary. According to the
Negroponte letter, US military action had been taken in “self-
defence” and the inquiry into the organisation of the September 11
attack was only “in its early stages.”
Then came the warning of wider military action. “We may find that our
self-defence requires further actions with respect to other
organisations and other states,” the letter stated.
Supporters of a wider war—particularly the launching of a military
attack on Iraq—eagerly seized on the letter, and its insistence that
the inquiry into the September 11 events had only begun. As columnist
John Podhertz put it in the October 9 edition of the New York Post:
“The implicit point: When the inquiry goes beyond the ‘early stages,’
the United States will uncover connections between al Qaeda and
‘other organisations and other states.’ And when we do so, we will
act as we deem fit ‘in accordance with the inherent right of
individual and collective self-defence.’”
The same point was underscored, albeit in slightly more restrained
language, in an article by Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, senior
fellows at the Brookings Institution, published in the Financial
Times on October 10.
Citing Negroponte’s reference to “other organisations and states”
they commented: “Much has been made in recent weeks about a supposed
rift within the Bush administration about the overarching goal of the
anti-terrorist campaign. In the early days, Colin Powell, the
secretary of state, and some in the Pentagon led by deputy secretary
Paul Wolfowitz, disagreed over whether to focus initially on
Afghanistan or begin with a broader military campaign that included
strikes against Iraq and other state sponsors of terrorism. Mr Bush
settled on an Afghanistan-first strategy. But it would be a mistake
to confuse this with an Afghanistan-only strategy.
“Mr Bush’s war against terrorism is therefore much broader than
simply focusing on Mr bin Laden and the Taliban. It encompasses the
al Qaeda network outside Afghanistan, Hizbollah, Hamas and other
groups of ‘global reach’ as well as the states that continue to
sponsor them—including possibly Iran, Iraq and Syria.”
The discussion is not confined to the selection of other targets for
military attack, but goes to the broader question of what forms of
rule must now be set in place by the imperialist powers at the
conclusion of military intervention.
Ten years ago the International Committee of the Fourth International
warned that the US-led war against Iraq marked the opening of a new
era of imperialism and colonialism. In the manifesto for its
conference against Imperialist War and Colonialism held in Berlin in
November 1991, the ICFI warned that the “ongoing and de facto
partition of Iraq signals the start of a new division of the world by
the imperialists. The colonies of yesterday are again to be
subjugated. The conquests and annexations which, according to the
opportunist apologists of imperialism, belonged to a bygone era are
once again on the order of the day.”
Those warnings have been verified in all the events since then and in
open declarations in the international press that the war against
Afghanistan must see the return of the old forms of colonialism.
A new form of colony
This is the theme of an article by the right-wing British historian
Paul Johnson entitled “The Answer to Terrorism? Colonialism.”
published in the October 9 edition of the Wall Street Journal.
“America,” Johnson writes, “has no alternative but to wage war
against states that habitually aid terrorists. President Bush warns
the war may be long but he has not, perhaps, yet grasped that America
may have to accept long-term political obligations too. For the
nearest historical parallel—the war against piracy in the 19th
century—was an important element in the expansion of colonialism. It
could be that a new form of colony, the Western-administered former
terrorist state, is only just over the horizon.”
Johnson then proceeds to give a potted history of the 19th century in
which he asserts that the colonial expansion of the major imperialist
powers, above all the British Empire, was aimed at bringing a halt to
piracy. The purpose of this rewriting of history is all too
transparent. It is aimed at covering over the fact that imperialist
conquest in the 19th century had nothing to do with “piracy” but was
the outcome of a struggle by the major capitalist powers to enhance
their position in the global competition for profits, markets and
resource, just as today’s war against “terrorism” is being pursued
for the same aims.
Johnson concludes his article by spelling out not only the other
targets for attack but setting out the new forms of rule which should
be established.
“America and her allies,” he writes, “may find themselves,
temporarily at least, not just occupying with troops but
administering obdurate terrorist states. These may eventually include
not only Afghanistan but Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Iran and Syria.
Democratic regimes willing to abide by international law will be
implanted where possible, but a Western presence seems unavoidable in
some cases.
“I suspect the best medium-term solution will be to revive the old
League of Nations mandate system, which served well as a
‘respectable’ form of colonialism between the wars. Syria and Iraq
were once highly successful mandates. Sudan, Libya and Iran have
likewise been placed under special regimes by international treaty.
“Countries that cannot live at peace with their neighbours and wage
covert war against the international community cannot expect total
independence. With all the permanent members of the Security Council
now backing, in varying degrees, the American-led initiative, it
should not be difficult to devise a new form of United Nations
mandate that places terrorist states under responsible supervision.”
While Johnson directs his remarks to the Bush administration, across
the Atlantic, Martin Wolf, the global economics columnist for the
Financial Times, addresses the same call to British prime minister
Tony Blair.
In an article entitled “The need for a new imperialism” published on
October 10, he writes: “Mr Blair views today’s events as a chance to
reorder the world. Yet even he may not realise how radical that
reordering must be. The aim entails a transformation in our approach
to national sovereignty—the building block of today’s world.”
“Failed states”
Wolf bases his call for a new imperialism on the concept of the so-
called “failed state” of which Afghanistan is but an extreme example.
Such “failed states”, he says, not only pose a threat to the rest of
the world—providing a cradle of disease, a source of refugees, and a
haven for criminals and providers of hard drugs—but reduce the lives
of their own people.
Wolf cites the work of British diplomat Robert Cooper who pointed to
the emergence of a “zone of chaos”, including Afghanistan. Such areas
were not new, Cooper wrote, but were previously isolated from the
rest of the world. “Not so today ... If they become too dangerous for
the established states to tolerate, it is possible to imagine a
defensive imperialism.”
The argument that the existence of “failed states” provides the
justification for imperialist rule is as specious and hypocritical as
Johnson’s invocation of piracy. The so-called “failed state” is a
direct product of the interventions of the imperialist
powers—organising coups, stoking up civil wars and ethnic conflicts
for their own purposes, and arming repressive regimes—and the
imposition of economic policies that have created a social disaster
for people of these countries.
The impoverishment of the entire sub-Saharan region of the African
continent, for example—the region of many such “failed states”—stems
from the fact that in any year the repayment of loans and interest to
the major Western banks and bodies such as the International Monetary
Fund is greater than the entire budget for health and education.
But Wolf, like earlier proponents of imperialism, is not one to let
facts stand in the way of his political agenda. He maintains the
central problem confronting the “failed states” is that there is no
organised state apparatus capable of imposing order, the precondition
for civilised life. They become trapped in a vicious circle in which
poverty begets lawlessness and lawlessness begets more poverty.
“Afghanistan,” he continues, “is an example of such a failed state:
it is divided into mutually suspicious tribal groupings; it is
desperately poor; war has become a way of life; the ruling regime
funds itself with money from the export of hard drugs; and Osama bin
Laden is the godfather.” The facts concerning the role of the US, in
collaboration with the Saudi regime and Pakistan in financing the
warring factions to the tune of at least $10 billion, the support
provided to the Taliban and the promotion of Osama bin Laden when it
served the interests of the imperialist powers, are completely
ignored.
The chaos caused by yesterday’s crimes is made the starting point for
the perpetration of new ones, beginning with the establishment of
colonial forms of rule.
“If a failed state is to be rescued,” Wolf writes, “the essential
parts of honest government—above all the coercive apparatus—must be
provided from outside. That is what the west is doing today in the
former Yugoslavia. To tackle the challenge of the failed state, what
is needed is not pious aspirations but an honest and organised
coercive force.
“There are two reasons why the idea will cause horror: imperialism
remains suspect; and the effort will be costly. Yet these objections
can be met. Some form of United Nations temporary protectorate can
surely be created.”
Greater US assertiveness
Another call to “colonise wayward nations” with the application of a
“dose of US imperialism” was published in the Australian of October
15. Written by Max Boot, the opinion page editor of the Wall Street
Journal, the article takes issue with suggestions that the September
11 attack was some kind of “payback for US imperialism.”
“In fact,” Boot declares, “this analysis is exactly backward: the
September 11 attack was the result of insufficient American
involvement and ambition. The solution is to be more expansive in the
US’s goals and more assertive in their implementation.”
According to Boot, the problem in Afghanistan was not that the US
armed the mujaheddin in Afghanistan in order to wage a proxy war
against the Soviet Union during the 1980s but that it pulled out of
Afghanistan with the withdrawal of Soviet forces in 1989. Boot
attacks previous military actions by the Clinton administration—the
withdrawal from Somalia after the death of 18 US soldiers and the
sending of cruise missiles, not soldiers, against the training camps
of Osama bin Laden in 1998—as insufficient and “displays of weakness”
that “emboldened our enemies to commit greater and more outrageous
acts of aggression.”
“The problem, in short, has not been excessive American assertiveness
but insufficient assertiveness. The question is whether, having now
been attacked, the US will act as a great power should.”
Boot leaves no doubt as to the model of “great power” action he has
in mind—British imperialism of the 19th century.
“It is striking—and no coincidence,” he continues, “that the US now
faces the prospect of military action in many of the same lands where
generations of British colonial soldiers went on campaigns.
Afghanistan, Sudan, Libya, Egypt, Arabia, Mesopotamia (Iraq),
Palestine, Persia, the North-West Frontier (Pakistan)—these are all
places where, by the 19th century, ancient imperial authority,
whether Ottoman, Moghul or Safavid, was crumbling, and Western armies
had to quell the resulting disorder.
“Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of
enlightened foreign administration once provided by confident
Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.”
Like Paul Johnson, he invokes the League of Nations mandatory
territories of the inter-war period as providing the model and notes
that the process has already started in the 1990s with the placing of
East Timor, Cambodia, Kosovo and Bosnia under UN rule.
“Unilateral US rule may no longer be an option. But the US can lead
an international occupation force under UN auspices with the co-
operation of some Muslim states.”
Boot singles out Afghanistan and Iraq as the two states where the
imposition of this new form of rule could begin and voices the widely
held opinion in US ruling circles that a mistake was made when the US
did not march on to Baghdad in the Gulf War. Now it has an
“opportunity to rectify this historic mistake.” And any legal
quibbles should be quickly pushed aside.
“The debate about whether Hussein was implicated in the September 11
attacks misses the point. Who cares if he was involved in this
particular barbarity? He has been involved in so many barbarities
over the years—from gassing the Kurds to raping the Kuwaitis—that he
has already earned himself a death sentence a thousand times over.”
The US should turn its attention to Iraq after dealing with
Afghanistan, Boot argues. “Once Hussein is disposed [through a US
invasion and occupation], an American-led, international regency in
Baghdad, to go along with the one in Kabul, should be imposed.”
The value of these articles is that they make all too clear that
under the banner of the global fight against terrorism the
imperialist powers, led by the United States, are preparing nothing
less than the re-organisation of the world through the imposition of
military power. This has immediate political consequences.
Militarisation of international relations inevitably implies
militarisation of politics at home: imperialism is incompatible with
democratic forms of rule.
Furthermore they all make one significant omission as they harken
back to the “glory days” of British imperialism. The carve-up of the
world in the latter part of the 19th century and the first part of
the 20th did not bring peace and prosperity. Rather, it led to two
inter-imperialist wars, resulting in hundreds of millions of deaths
as the major capitalist powers—the US, Britain, Germany, France, and
Japan—inevitably came into conflict with each other in the global
struggle for resources, markets and spheres of influence.
These writers pass over these experiences in order to provide a
justification for the opening of a new epoch of imperialist conquest.
But the working class will ignore these historical lessons at its
peril. Against the program of the imperialist powers it must advance
its own independent perspective—the unification of its struggles on
an international scale and the re-organisation of the world on
socialist foundations as the only basis for peace and prosperity.
That is the program advanced by the ICFI and the World Socialist Web
Site.
Copyright 1998-2001
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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