Is The War On Terror Really The Phantom Menace?
Nov 04 '04 (Updated Aug 08 '05)
The Bottom Line Some thoughts on the possible reality of the "terror threat", and the re-election of George Bush.
So, there we have it, and live with it we must, whether we like it or not. America has chosen, and voted for the President they want ( and, some would say, deserve ). For many people across the world, and particularly here in the UK, I suspect the result is a nightmare. To elect such a rabidly unpopular President once seemed, to those outside the States, like carelessness. To do it twice could come to be seen as a hostile raspberry blown in the face of world opinion. Exactly how can a President who has turned the record budget surplus of the Clinton years into a record deficit, and overseen a dramatic net job loss, be re-elected? How is it they can choose a man who has presided over a disastrous war in Iraq? For myself, I certainly didn’t want Bush to win, but I consider myself neither right or left wing, neither in favour of Republicans or Democrats, Labour or Conservative. Party politics is of little interest to me in my daily life, and I have no time for politicians in general, though I admit, if I was American and was forced to choose, there is no way I would have voted Republican on Tuesday.
I think Bush has made some disastrous decisions of policy and judgement, not least the war in Iraq, undertaken on the flimsiest of pretexts, now estimated to have cost an approximate total of 100,000 lives, and during which he has made fundamental misjudgements about the number of troops that would be needed. His environmental record is deplorable – Pulling out of the Kyoto agreement and refusing to acknowledge that, despite overwhelming evidence, climate change is becoming a serious problem, when the US contributes 25% per year of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, is not the encouraging action of a world leader concerned with the state of his planet.
The election seems, as the news reports come in, to have won by the Republicans on moral and religious issues, and the rise of the religious right is something which certainly baffles us in Britain. We are not a religious country, and religion is never a factor when we come to choose our leaders, nor is it used by our politicians when canvassing for our votes. To us, rightly or wrongly, it’s an archaic, primitive and foolish thing to bring into politics, no matter what your personal beliefs, and the photograph in a paper this morning of someone holding a placard reading “Finally A Christian Fighting Evil” grates like fingernails on a blackboard. For myself, I don’t like the fact that this group with its stridently intolerant beliefs now holds so much sway in America, but I wouldn’t waste my time trying to do anything about it. Beliefs such as those are almost impossible to sway or change, so I wouldn’t like to get drawn into a debate about it. The evangelical right believes Jesus is coming and they’re all going to heaven, so leave them to it ( although they’re in for a shock ).
What does fascinate and rile me, however, as illustrated by that photograph, is the climate of fear and terror that has been perpetuated in the last few years by the Bush administration and the U.K government. I watched an intriguing programme on the BBC last night entitled “The Power Of Nightmares”, which was basically a documentary about how today’s politicians no longer have the ability to sell us ideologies and dreams, and so have to rely on the power of fear and terror to get us on their side. Convince us we’ll be safe with them, and they will remain in power, was the thrust of the message. A lot of it was certainly leftist paranoia, but there were some genuinely shocking insights and challenging questions asked. One of them, certainly the most provocative, was, “Is there actually such a thing as Al Queda? Are we fighting an enemy that actually doesn’t really exist?”
At first glance, it seems absurd, and it’s possible it is. It’s also possible, however, that it’s not, depending on how you look at it, and when you consider a few significant things. In 1998, an Arab fraudster and criminal named Abu Zubaida was arrested by the FBI in connection with the Kenyan embassy bombings. This was the first time that Osama Bin Laden’s name really permeated into the public consciousness. The FBI, apparently determined to prosecute Bin Laden in absentia for the bombings, offered Zubaida incentives and concessions for providing them with information on Bin Laden and his group. These included hefty sums of money and the waiving of most of the charges against him. In return, Zubaida helpfully supplied them with exactly what they wanted. He claimed that Bin Laden was the head of a vast, well-organized and deadly terrorist cabal, known as Al-Queda. It is important to note that before this point, the name Al-Queda had never been heard, and Bin Laden never once spoke of an Al-Queda, until after the organization had been labelled this by outsiders. Which could beg the question: Did the FBI need to create an Al-Queda, in order to pursue Bin Laden and give their investigation focus?
Well, truthfully, I don’t know, and I’m certainly no fan of conspiracy theories. But from that point onwards, the “myth”, if you like, of Al-Queda has grown and grown. Bin Laden would often appear in his propaganda videos in Afghanistan surrounded by, and leading, apparently large groups of men with turbans and AK-47’s. Since then, it’s been made clear that in many of these films, he had basically hired these men for the day from the Taliban, for the express reason of making it look like he was running a terrorist training camp. There is little doubt that Bin Laden had ambitions along those lines, but consider something else, just for a second. The journalist Adam Curtis recently spoke to several intelligence experts who stated that Bin Laden’s “organization”, such as it was, effectively perished during the American invasion of Afghanistan following 9/11. His core supporters were only to be found amongst various elements of the Taliban, the most radical fundamentalist muslims in existence at that time. With their demise and subsequent scattering, Bin Laden’s ambitions crumbled.
These claims, in a day and age where we are reminded daily that we are locked in a deadly good-and-evil battle against terrorism, may seem like the most ridiculous kind of hearsay. But consider something else: The difference between the claims and propaganda spread by people like Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush, and the actual reality, the solid evidence that does exist. Could it be that Bin Laden had to be elevated to the status of supervillain following 9/11, in order to justify the pre-emptive actions and military policies the US was about to follow?
Again, I'm not entirely sure, but there is tantalising evidence to suggest that this could well be the case. For example, there exists some hilarious footage of the one and only Donald Rumsfeld sitting solemnly telling a news anchorman about Bin Laden’s “hidden cave network” in the mountains of Tora Bora, and how he had an “organized terror network stretching from 50 to 60 countries”. You may remember diagrams and computer-generated schematics of these underground complexes: Multi-levelled, stocked with food and devastating weapons supplies, living quarters, tunnels and campaign planning rooms. They were something that your average Bond villain would give his balls for. And what did the American troops find when they got up there? Dusty holes, piles of goat crap and a few startled shepherds. Does something not strike you as being amiss here?
Then there are the “Al-Queda fighters” captured in Afghanistan. Who were they, exactly? Well, they were people rounded up by the soldiers of the Northern Alliance, who were paid money by the U.S for every prisoner they delivered. It is an understatement to say that the Northern Alliance had a few axes to grind among certain sections of Afghanistan’s population, so am I way off base in thinking that it’s possible they rounded up an awful lot of people they wanted out of the way and effectively sold them to the U.S? How many convictions and how much hard evidence is there to show for all these threats to western civilization? How reliable can all this be? Again, I don’t claim to know, but there doesn’t seem to be an awful lot.
One of the funniest and simultaneously most disturbing things I have ever seen is a video of a trip to Disneyland. Let me explain: Bush and Rumsfeld have gone to great pains to point out that there are terrorist “sleeper cells” operating in the US and UK, and throughout the world. Which, it must be said, there certainly are, as evidenced by the Madrid and Bali bombings. But how is the US going about tracking them down? In 2002, a group of three young Arab men living in Tampa, Florida decided to go on a trip to Disneyland, and took their camcorder. The footage shows these three lads enjoying the rides, seeing the sights, queuing for rollercoasters, mugging for the camera and generally farting around. The conclusion drawn by an FBI expert after viewing this tape? It was actually footage of them “casing the joint”, in preparation for a terrorist attack. A moment where a waste basket came into view was actually them looking for suitable places to hide a bomb. And when they apparently forgot to turn off the camera and left it running as it was pointing at the ground? They were actually counting out their paces in order to work out distances. Is that not just fantastically priceless?
These men were, unsurprisingly, quietly released without charge. You’d think that might be a one-off, but there are numerous other examples of such flimsy reasoning and intelligence being used in such a way. The FBI also picked up a young Muslim man who sent a message to his friends which stated that he was going to Behran to get married, and wouldn’t see them for a while. This was interpreted to mean that he was going off to meet up with some terrorist cohorts, and would have to keep a low profile due to his nefarious activities. The reality? He was going to Behran to get married, and so wouldn’t see them for a while.
These things are beginning to make me believe, as I have previously suspected, that it is not Bush himself who is the dangerous element in this equation. He has often been portrayed as a bumbling, inarticulate fool. Inarticulate he may well be, but I've never really believed the notion that he was as big a fool as some would make out. Rather, it is flawed information from within the FBI, CIA and intelligence services, and further misrepresented by individuals in the Bush administration, which is the biggest problem, best exemplified by the noxious Donald Rumsfeld. This is the man who in the seventies and early eighties was telling us that the Soviet Union was dedicated to wiping out western civilization and had an organized network designed to spread communism throughout the world. The reality? The Soviet Union was on its last legs and would disintegrate within 20 years. Can there be anyone who has done more to spread fear and paranoia in our lives than this bumbling, catastrophically misguided man? Exactly where did he get the information that Bin Laden had these vast underground bases? Where is the intelligence coming from that told us Saddam Hussein had these weapons of mass destruction that could kill us all? Why is it that so many claims made by the US and British governments regarding the war on terror and the threats to our way of life are being shown to be, if you’ll forgive me, utter bollocks?
Of course, there are those who stood and watched the World Trade Centre crumble, and stood in the Pentagon on 9/11, and who were in Madrid and Bali, who will understandably say that there are people out there who want to destroy our way of life, who have declared war on freedom, who have the capacity to inflict appalling damage on us all, and who must be fought, no matter the cost to civil liberties and no matter what measures must be taken. And there are indeed people like that in the world. But this is the crucial, most important and most fundamentally misunderstood thing about our world just now: These people have always been there. There are terrorists groups all through the world, have been all the way through the twentieth century. They will, more than likely, always be around in some form or another. They are small, ruthless, dedicated groups, nothing new in the experience of the world, and must be dealt with sensibly.
But what they are not is part of some huge network spread across the globe, planning the annihilation of the western world, brilliantly organized into sleeper cells, hiding within every town and city, and controlled by Bin Laden the supervillain, controlling his evil empire with board meetings from his lair and sending out orders on Al-Quaeda headed notepaper. Think about it, objectively, for a moment. Does it really seem credible?
Yet this is what Rumsfeld, Bush and Blair would have you believe. In the panicked vigilance following 9/11, they want us to see terrorists and the threat of terror everywhere. We are told that they are successfully pursuing terrorists within American and British borders, and yet where are all the convictions, where is the hard evidence? There have been a few, but an awful lot of cases and charges collapse quietly once the absurdity of the evidence becomes clear. Exactly who are all the people locked up in Guantanamo Bay? Where is the evidence that they are part of this horrific global cabal? If it exists, what is the reason for not seeing it, or putting them on trial? Who is deciding who should be sent there, what are their reasons, and can we really believe them?
There comes a point when simple blind trust in politicians has to stop. Telling us that secret bases exist, that weapons of mass destruction exist, and then finding out that these things just aren’t true, should deeply challenge our sense of security and faith in our democratically elected governments. But apparently it doesn’t, if Bush’s comfortable winning margin is anything to go by. People really believe he is leading some kind of global crusade against the forces of evil and is protecting the west from this fantastically organized, SMERSH-style group. His policies in Iraq and the Middle East ( unless they change ) will ensure that more and more angry Muslims will join one terrorist group or another, and the world will then certainly become a more dangerous place, which really will be something to start worrying about. It's not going to happen any other way.
I hope not. I hope that Bush will have listened to at least some of his critics, and we will see a genuine attempt to make that Middle East “roadmap” work, which was so casually abandoned. Iraq is, at the moment, a disaster, but I hope Bush and his government manage to make some kind of meaningful progress. More than anything, I hope that people will begin to see past the destructive climate of fear and paranoia that has now become so deeply sown into the fabric of our societies, and look past the spin and propaganda to begin asking questions about what the real problems and solutions are to the problems we face.
I present these views here as my own, provoked by things I have read, heard and considered, hopefully to stimulate some civil debate and maybe provoke a little thought. You’ve maybe heard it all before, and maybe are tired of the whole thing. I don’t plan on writing much on these subjects in the future as I find writing about politics a much less enjoyable subject than music, films and books, and am less erudite than writers such as Bryan_Carey, Jack Sommersby and popsrocks, to name a few, but there you have it.
Don’t follow leaders, and watch your parking meters
www.news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4171213.stm
Related: What Happened To The Post-War Dream?
( Any comments are of course welcome, but please keep it civil and reasonably mature. I have no interest in engaging in a slanging match with anyone, as I'm aware these things slip into, and will ignore any obvious dickheads. I'd rather have some intelligent conversation. Thanks. )
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Member: Steve
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