-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2001/557/4war1.htm
}}}>Begin
Al-Ahram Weekly Online
25 - 31 October 2001
Issue No.557
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875
Current issue | Previous issue | Site map
Time for a policy rethink
US punitive strikes on Afghanistan have yet to flush out the enemy,
but manifold and unforeseen repercussions are already evident, writes
Mohamed Hakki in Washington
BEST OF FRIENDS: From humour (top, stall holders in masks at a Hong
Kong toy show) to demonstrations (above, women speak out in
Pakistan), there are many ways of questioning the motives of the US
attack on Afghanistan (photos: AFP & AP)
More than two weeks into the US-led bombing campaign in Afghanistan,
there are still no answers to the questions that the terrorist
attacks on America evoked. Rather, America and its allies are coming
to terms with the reality of this war: the air attacks will be
neither swift nor surgical. After declaring that the military
coalition was "running out of targets," US Secretary of Defence
Donald Rumsfeld is now saying "We are discovering ne
w targets as we go along." This, in a country that has itself been "rubblised" -- a
delicious new verb added to the cultural lexicon meaning "rendered into rubble", as
was the case in Afghanistan in the course of the Russ
ian occupation and the tribal warfare that followed.
Until they find prime suspect Osama Bin Laden, tackle the fighters of his Al- Qa'ida
terrorist network or successfully uproot the Taliban regime, the US forces will
continue to rain down bombs and missiles on battered Afg
hanistan. These explosives include the famous 5,000- pound "smart bombs" deployed to
obliterate mountain caves. At daily news conferences, it is amazing how much is said
when absolutely nothing is actually revealed. The A
merican people are expected to be satisfied with a few nebulous infrared images and
aerial photos of targets exploding that evoke nothing more than a computer-generated
game.
Information from Afghanistan, as the London-based weekly magazine The Economist
reminds us, is patchy at best, misleading at worst. For instance, all the American
people see are those "humanitarian" food packages being dr
opped from some 10,000 or 12,000 feet. This is "spit in a bucket" compared to the food
and medicine shipments of United Nations and NGO agencies that have been halted
because of the war. The longer the war drags on, the m
ore problems it will create for America. Forget about the domestic scare created by a
few cases of anthrax. The devastating terrorist attacks, combined with the growing
fear of more dangerous forms of bioterrorism, is tur
ning America, in some respects, into a Third World country. Widespread sacrificing of
civil liberties, telephone wire taps, snooping cameras, long delays due to security
measures not only at airports, but in federal gover
nment offices and most major corporations are all part of the new face of
terror-stricken America -- as is, it seems, a quarantined Congress.
A year ago, many people -- including then presidential candidate Bush -- were pushing
for an easing of the tight security restrictions in and around the White House,
including the re-opening of Pennsylvania Ave. Now, addi
tional streets have been closed off around Congress. The American people have accepted
these sacrifices with patriotism and patience. It has truly brought people together.
Even the level of fear is still remarkably manage
able despite the confusing and sometimes utterly foolish commentaries by everyone and
his cousin on television.
If the war drags on, what is to be done if other forms of terrorism reach America. So
far, it is not clear whether the anthrax scare is being spread by home- grown crazies,
or members of Bin Laden's Al-Qa'ida. What is not
able, however, is that all of those "Israel first-ers" and US politicians falling over
themselves to blame Iraq have not succeeded so far in pushing the administration to
expand the war to include Iraq. What if they succe
ed? What if civilian casualties begin to be intolerable?
Right now, the US is facing a number of serious questions all at once: the scope of
the war in Afghanistan; when and how to end it; how to rebuild this ravished country
and with whose help? More to the point, how will the
US maintain such a fragile coalition and for how long? Right now, most Arab and
Muslim countries are behind America, reasoning that it has the right to defend itself.
If civilian casualties begin to grow out of proportio
n, however, and the thirst for revenge outweighs the justice served, then it is
inevitable that some governments will begin to strain the tenuous bonds that hold them
to an unlikely and cobbled-together coalition.
Current events have greatly altered the terms of the debate at home about US foreign
policy. There is a vast undercurrent of ordinary Americans who are beginning to
question US-Israeli relations. This new-found deliberati
on is beginning to challenge the dominance of writers and commentators who have always
been in Israel's camp, right or wrong. It is noticeable that television networks are
not flooding the airwaves with Israeli politician
s or experts on Islam from Yeshiva University.
This is the first time ever that this debate is taking place. It does not mean that
Israel is in danger of losing its unwavering US support anytime soon. We still have
not heard one voice point out that the US has spent s
ome $100 billion in aid to Israel in the last 50 years, but lost $1.3 trillion dollars
in one day because of it. The only voices which are frantically repeating that Israel
is not the problem are the card-carrying members
of the Israeli apparatchik.
Mark Danner of the weekly New Yorker magazine put it this way: "This attack [11
September] created in an instant a sense of pervasive and unprecedented vulnerability
among Americans, revivified by each new report of anthr
ax. It transformed American foreign policy, heretofore a matter of disregard among
most Americans, into a vital question of their own security, a matter of their own
life and death."
Most people in America do not know the facts about the Middle East. They are genuinely
asking, "Why do people hate us?" Professor Peter Bechtold of the Foreign Service
Institute told me that when he tells his students tha
t there are two Americas, they simply don't understand. There is the America they live
in: tolerant, multi-ethnic, generous and cosmopolitan. No one bothers if you are a
Buddhist, a Hindu or a Muslim. Special interest gro
ups, however, drive US foreign policy -- the face of America abroad. These groups tend
to twist American policy to their respective ends, but this takes place largely away
from public debate within the US. That is why Ame
ricans do not understand why they are not popular or why they are hated. Those who
say, "They hate us because of what we are," or because we are "rich, democratic and
successful" are simply misleading their people.
If you tell anyone in America that all Middle East peace process negotiators for the
last 12 years have been Jewish, he would be incredulous. Most would say, "I didn't
know that." Only the Arabs accepted this state of aff
airs, figuring that a negotiating team does not represent the individuals that
constitute it, but US policy as a whole. Yet, I have not heard any Arab leader saying
that accepting Israel among us -- which we all do -- is
an act of magnanimity. The US should acknowledge this. The fact is that all Arabs
accepted Israel in its pre-1967 borders. If you tell any American that the only two
countries in the world that recognise Jerusalem as the
capital of Israel are Micronesia and Costa Rica, they will be quite surprised.
It is really tiring to constantly refer back to Camp David and the settlement problem.
At Camp David, US President Jimmy Carter promised Egyptian President Anwar El-Sadat
that he would explain to the other "moderate Arabs
" that he had received personal assurances from Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin
that Begin would freeze all settlement-building in the West Bank and Gaza for five
years -- the duration of the self-determination talk
s. Former Assistant Secretary of State Nicholas Veliotis told me that when Secretary
of State Cyrus Vance went to Amman to do just that, he was literally banging on the
table, saying, "By God, we will see to it that Israe
l fulfils its side of the bargain!" Carter also dispatched Ambassador Roy Atherton,
then assistant secretary of state, to the Gulf countries to assure them of this fact.
Later, even good old Carter lost out in the 1980 ge
neral election.
During the Blair House talks, and I was there, Moshe Dayan said that Egypt was making
a mountain out of this settlement "mole hill". He told us that "these settlements are
bedroom communities for people working in Israel
proper, and we cannot fill them." He said no Israeli Sabra (born in Palestine) or
Sephardic Jew (Arab Jew) ever goes to live there, implying that only the crazies went
to live there. The rest, as they say, is history.
The US must not go back to the status quo ante. This will not solve anything. They
must realise that US relations with the Arab world also need rebuilding -- they, too,
have been "rubblised". The US needs a new, vast Mars
hall plan. Maybe Bin Laden is just using the Palestinian cause. The fact, however, is
that America's policies are at the root of all Arab anger. Terrorism proved it has no
borders. The irony is that the US hired an Israel
i security expert to advise them on how to secure Logan Airport. The same week, a
Palestinian walks into a fashionable hotel in Tel Aviv, shoots an Israeli cabinet
minister and walks away. This happened in the heart of Is
rael in broad daylight and means that Israeli security is either a sieve, a myth or a
joke.
A friend of mine told me once: "I stopped listening to political pundits. I tried to
find my answers in literature." One enjoyable modern writer is John Le Carré, who used
the Middle East as a setting in one of his novels
. In a recent article, he laments the fact that the West has wasted its Cold War
victory and is now assisting the enemy.
Le Carré says: "It's not a new world order, not yet, and it's not God's war. It's a
horrible, necessary, humiliating police action to redress the failure of our
intelligence services and our blind political stupidity in a
rming and exploiting Islamic fanatics to fight the Soviet invader, then abandoning
them to a devastated leaderless country. As a result, it's our miserable duty to seek
out and punish a bunch of modern medieval religious
zealots who will gain mythic stature from the death we propose to dish out to them."
He continues to say: "We are invited to believe that the conscience of the West has
been awakened to the dilemma of the poor and homeles
s of the Earth. And, possibly out of fear, necessity and rhetoric, a
new sort of political morality has indeed been born."
By the same token, we in the Muslim world have our own set of
dilemmas to overcome. We have to ask ourselves how we can achieve
religious renewal. We may be able to quell terrorism in one country
or another with police measures, but the problem of fanaticism will
remain. Reform and rebirth has to come from within; from intelligent
and enlightened introspection by Muslims, not governments. We have to
ask ourselves what turns an educated doctor and scion of one of
Egypt's most reputable families into Bin Laden's right-hand man. How
and why did the middle class vanish? What is replacing it? How did we
allow one hard-line sect of Islam to grow so powerful?
One of the more recent converts to Islam is a Englishman who is twice
as jealous about Islam's pure teachings. He is Abdel-Hakim Mourad,
who was born in London, and educated both at Cambridge and Al-Azhar.
In his essay, "The Poverty of Fanaticism", Mourad reminds us: "There
was a time, not long ago, when the 'ultras' were few, forming only a
tiny wart on the face of the worldwide attempt to revivify Islam.
Sadly, we can no longer enjoy the luxury of ignoring them. The
extreme has broadened, and the middle ground, giving way, is
everywhere dislocated and confused."
He goes on to say: "If these things go on, the Islamic movement will
cease to form an authentic summons to cultural and spiritual renewal
and will exist as little more than a splintered array of extremist
factions. The prospect of such an appalling development in the story
of a religion which once surpassed all others in its capacity for
tolerating debate and dissent is now a real possibility." A little
strong, perhaps, but nevertheless true.
We should be the first to condemn all terrorist practices around the
Arab world instead of finding apologies and pretexts for them. Self-
renewal never comes from without, only from within. We had it, and we
lost it. We need to rediscover, rebuild and revivify this minaret of
faith, science and learning for all times.
Recommend this page
Related stories:
Two deadlines
Battling against the odds
Special coverage: War
War
18 - 24 October 2001
War
11 - 17 October 2001
Fall-out 4 - 10 October 2001
Fall-out
27 Sep. - 3 Oct. 2001
US Tragedy: The fall-out20 - 26 September 2001
US Attacked
13 - 19 September 2001
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
End<{{{
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe
simply because it has been handed down for many generations. Do not
believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do
not believe in anything simply because it is written in Holy Scriptures. Do not
believe in anything merely on the authority of Teachers, elders or wise men.
Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it
agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all.
Then accept it and live up to it."
The Buddha on Belief, from the Kalama Sutta
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled
one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller,
German Writer (1759-1805)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that
prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and regardless
of frontiers."
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will
teach you to keep your mouth shut."
--- Ernest Hemingway
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
