Jonathan Freedland (Guardian Utd): It's not only about Iraq

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated Wednesday July 20

It's not only about Iraq
The animating ideology of the caliphate helps explain al-Qaida actions that otherwise make no sense
By Jonathan Freedland

On one side stand Tony Blair, Jack Straw and a good chunk of the media. On the other Chatham House and, according to yesterday's Guardian/ICM poll, two-thirds of the British people. The issue that divides them is, once again, the Iraq war.

Our political culture seems fated to return to this sore spot. Whether it's the David Kelly affair or the attorney general's advice, one way or another British politics comes back to Iraq. Now the question is forced by the London bombings: what role, if any, did the invasion of Iraq play?

The prime minister is insistent: the two have nothing to do with each other. Al-Qaida was at war with the west long before the Iraq adventure; and if al-Qaida cares so much about Iraqi civilians then why is it killing so many of them, including children, through suicide bombings? Turning up the volume, the foreign secretary sought to drown out the Chatham House report - which said the Iraq war had given a "boost" to al-Qaida - by declaring: "The time for excuses for terrorism is over."

Meanwhile, those who see Iraq as a cause of the July 7 atrocities are becoming bolder. In the immediate aftermath of the bombings only George Galloway dared to make the link. He was shouted down, chiefly on grounds of taste, criticised for continuing a political argument when the hour called for mourning. But since then he has found some unexpected allies.

Read more.

[Cha]

1. "The prime minister is insistent"..

The prime minster was "insistent" that saddam was a clear and present DANGER!

tony has no street cred.

[Briar]

2. He doesn't need it

just power and a media prepared to parrot his lies and pretend he is fully dressed.

[baby_bear]

3. interesting stuff here

<snip>
Iraq has become what Afghanistan was before 2001, one huge university campus of terror. Analysts used to need a microscope to find links between Saddam's Iraq and international terror - usually lighting upon addresses for retired killers in suburban Baghdad. Now the place is positively crawling with active jihadists planting bombs, beheading hostages and plotting 57 varieties of mayhem for Europe and the west. In trying to root out a couple of weeds, we set the entire garden alight.
...
When Tony Blair asks "What was September 11 the reprisal for?" he should know the answer. It was for eight decades of US-led, western meddling in territory that al-Qaida believes should be Muslims' alone.
...
What it adds up to is a more mixed picture than either Blair or the anti-war movement has allowed. Iraq has played a key part - of course it has - in angering large numbers of young Muslims, pulling them towards an extremist message once confined to the lunatic fringe. But that message is not only about Iraq, Afghanistan or even the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza - and we delude ourselves if we think it is.

</snip>

b_b

[T_i_B]

4. More from the article

Iraq is central. But it is not the whole story. For, as Taylor explains, al-Qaida is not like Eta or the IRA - organisations with a clear, single goal. It is not simply a troops-out movement, demanding nothing more than a withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq and justice for the Palestinians. It is not the armed wing of the Stop the War Coalition.

Its aims are rather different. Central to its ideology is the reintroduction of the caliphate, an Islamic state governed by sharia law that would stretch across all formerly Muslim lands, taking in Spain, Morocco, north Africa, Albania, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, as well as Pakistan, Indonesia and the Philippines. Plenty on the left tend to skim over this stuff, dismissing it as weird, obscurantist nonsense - and imagining it as somehow secondary to al-Qaida's anti-imperialist mission.

That's a big mistake. For it is this animating idea which helps to explain al-Qaida actions that otherwise make no sense. Why did the Madrid cell that staged last March's train bombings continue to plan attacks, even after Spain's new government had begun withdrawing from Iraq? Perhaps because al-Qaida wants to recapture at least part of Spain for Islamist rule. Why did it bomb a nightclub in Bali? Partly to attack western tourists, of course. (Taylor says the bombers thought the clubbers would be American, not Australian.) But its chief aim was to destabilise Indonesia, which it wants to place under Islamist rule as part of the yearned-for caliphate.

[Cha]

5. Thanks..that's good to keep in

mind.

The bottom line with tony and bush going into Iraq is what they did was very wrong and nothing good has or will come from it.

tony's insisting the London bombings have nothing to do with it but he and the chimp opened up a powder keg(as we knew they would) in the Middle East and they ain't seen nothin' yet.

[Jack Rabbit]

6. That is an excellent point

Although I've encountered one or two at DU, very few people believe that Osama is just a poor, misunderstood freedom fighter who wants to talk to the US government about his grievances. If he were that, he would advertise the fact that he or his organization (for want of a better word) is behind this kind of violence and that if we want it to stop, we must take certain steps which he would then outline.

As far as Osama is concerned, the only good American is a dead American. He does not know or care about the distinction between a Republican and a Democrat, between a Freeper or a DUer or between David Duke and Noam Chomsky. In that respect, he is perversely democratic.

Of course, Osama is by no means a democrat. He has a vision that is every bit as imperial and ant-democratic as what is found on the website of PNAC. The difference that the top of his hierarchy would stand devout Muslims (as defined by him) rather than those who inherit industrial wealth.

While Osama wants us dead, Bush wants us to be content to be cannon fodder for the industrial elites. There is no "us" between the two of them to apply a black-or-white With us or with them. Osama's jihadism and American neoconservativism are both menacing ideologies that must be defeated.