No apologies

I return after a week's absence to find that the Labour-supporting blogosphere (or not, if you believe this — which I don't) is suffering the philosophical aftershocks of the London atrocities. Bloggers 4 Labour has asked that a debate about the subject of the pro-war Left begin. Here is my contribution. In writing it, I'm conscious that other bloggers who are far more well-informed and academic than I have put a similar case much more clearly and insightfully; nevertheless, I feel moved to defend my position.

First, yes, I am a left-winger; I supported the war in Iraq; and I reject the idea that the two are incompatible. I saw, and still see, the Iraq war as an essential component of the war on terrorism. I consider that the risk of al-Qaeda or its affiliates having access to materials by which they could fabricate radiological, biological or other weapons of mass destruction meant that Iraq was the right place to take a stand against nations which thumb their nose at the international community and violate international law. I won't rehearse the arguments for or against the war, but I will say, as it's been raised elsewhere, that I deny the conflict "remains as illegal today as it was on the day it was launched" — unless the 1999 Kosovo campaign, which attracts nowhere near the same vitriol, was similarly illegal.

Even that comparison is tenuous, considering that the Allies had already fought a war against Saddam Hussein once and that the end of that war never occurred — the conflict was merely put on hold by United Nations Security Council Resolutions 678 and 687. It should be remembered throughout all of the dialogue about Iraq that we took part in the 1991 Gulf War to liberate Kuwait — a Muslim nation — from occupation by Iraq, which was then under the control of a fascist dictatorship (yes, fascist, in the sense of Arab nationalism, but of a different type than Islamofacism — discussed below). That war protected the holiest sites in Islam in Saudi Arabia from falling under the heel of Saddam; and, lest we forget, it was fear of Iraq's belligerence (which had, after all, killed a million Muslims during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war) that led the Saudis to request the presence of US troops in the kingdom as a deterrent.

The basing of US troops in Saudi was, of course, one of al-Qaeda's supposed bugbears. The US has since pulled all of its men out of the kingdom, but was there any acknowledgement from Osama bin Laden and his ilk of this? Of course not — further proof that political progress is not al-Qaeda's aim. In fact, there is gross misunderstanding of their aims, which, while they exploit geopolitical and sociological situations in places like the Palestinian Territories and Iraq, are utterly nihilistic and destructive and not designed to assist anyone, least of all the oppressed. This is why all theories of the sort of atrocities we have seen in London and Madrid being caused by social conditions can only be valid up to a point.

Bloggers have been commenting on the "demonisation" of the terrorists and the denying to them of rationale for their actions. They have also been questioning the description of them as fascist. Anatol Lieven and Paul Berman put the answer to this quite convincingly in the October 2004 edition of Micromega, an Italian publication:

The fascist nature of Baathism I think is beyond dispute. Baathism was founded in 1943 in Damascus, under the authority of Vichy France, in collaboration with the Nazis. The Baath movement, in other words, was founded as something of an adaptation of Nazi ideas to the Arab world.

It is sometimes falsely maintained that Baathism is a secular movement and this is a popular and conventional idea, the origin of which I don't really understand. It was always the theory of Baathism that the Arab nation, meaning the Arabs as an ethnic nation, have a special role to play in the world. What defines the Arab nation is Islam, so the movement is not itself an Islamic movement, but it is a nationalist movement which defines Islam as the core of the Arab national idea. That is an idea that was perfectly acceptable for even Arab Christians, such as one of the founders of the movement, Aflaq, to affirm. One could maintain one's own Christian ideas or even secular ideas and still affirm this notion of an Arab nationalism, which is defined by the Islam which forms the center of the Arab soul. Of course, in later years Baathism took an increasingly religious turn, as everyone who has read the speeches of Saddam Hussein and watched the progress of the Baath party in Iraq knows.

The fascist origins of Islamism are different and are a little more tenuous but I think are none the less real, and that it is crucial for us to be able to understand them. I think the argument that Islamism is a genuine expression of Muslim fundamentalism is a grave error. The crucial concepts of Islamism come again from a fascist idea of a particular group of people with a divine-like mission to struggle against the world. The Islamists' idea reflects the paranoid and apocalyptic doctrines that are familiar to us from fascism, and of course like Baathism, one of the central aspects of Islamic Radicalism is anti-Semitism, not in the traditional Muslim sense but the anti-Semitism of the extreme Right of Europe. This is why the Protocol of the Elders of Zion and other documents of the European extreme Right and the Nazi movement have played such a very prominent role in the history of the Islamist movement.

Now the two movements have been bitter enemies and rivals for many years and there have been terrible wars between them. Similarly, there have been violent struggles of all sorts between different wings both of Baathist movement in its Syrian versus Iraqi branches, and between different wings of the Islamist movement in its Shiite and Sunni branches. But the fact that there are these different struggles and rivalries and hatreds and even wars among these groups should not blind us to the points that they have in common and should not blind us to the history of collaboration between them. The collaboration that I have in mind is not really the simple comic book plotting that Dick Cheney seems to be obsessed by, but it is just more of a natural thing which has flowed over the years and has found expression in recent years in a certain shared sentiment for constructing the human bomb, suicide terrorism. The history of Baathist and radical Islamist collaboration on this sort of thing is long and well established and I don't think it is disputed by anybody, or ought not to be disputed by anybody.

It is important that we understand the nature of the enemy we are faced with. Talk Politics' long post on the general subject area is worth reading, although it disappoints somewhat with its initial snide tone (it describes "pro-war Left" commentary since 7/7, for instance, as a "welter of sophistry, rhetoric and shrill hysteria"). It sarcastically sums up the caricature, thus:

Terrorism is evil. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly evil it is. I mean, you may think that a mythical fallen angel with horns growing out his head and a nice line in fiery pitchforks is evil, but that's just peanuts to terrorism.

In fact its soooooo evil that anything we believe is good — us, democracy, illegally invading a sovereign nation on a false pretext and then lying about our motives — can have no possible connection, correlation or causative relationship with terrorism.

Therefore,

Anyone who suggests that the [sic] may be even the merest shred of a hint of a possibility of such a connection or who tries to formulate an explanation or understanding of terrorism is an 'apologist' and a fascist sympathiser.

To call the opening line insulting would be to accord it far more respect than it deserves; but, beyond the bile, there is a serious question as to how we propose to define the threat we are faced with. Leave aside the loaded comments about Iraq or the idea that everyone who opposed it must be a terrorist appeaser (nonsense); let's consider the "causative relationship with terrorism" which that war and our foreign policy has supposedly engendered. George Galloway has recently demonstrated the omnipresence of just such a logical fallacy (the war happened; the London bombings came after it; therefore the war caused the bombings — a classic case of affirming the consequent). But what does Talk Politics say? Well,

The 'position' of the pro-war Left on terrorism is based on two central premises;

a) the characterisation of underlying 'ideology' of al-Qaeda and its supporters as 'fanatical, fundamentalist belief system which teaches hatred', and;

b) the contention that terrorists are possessed of 'moral agency', i.e. they possess the capacity to make rational, self-interested moral judgements and take actions which are in accordance with morality — this is really little more than a high-falutin' way of saying 'they [should] know the difference between right and wrong' — and as moral agents it is the terrorists themselves who are morally and personally responsible for their actions.

For all this might seem a perfectly reasonable and even laudable position on terrorism, the reality is that its bullshit – in fact not only is it bullshit but its ignorant bullshit.

Citing Sun Tzu, the post says that the position of the pro-war Left (no scare quotes for me, thank you; it's my position and I'd appreciate it if it wasn't mocked so) is fallacious because

It portrays the terrorist as being intrinsically evil, elevating them to the status of a supernatural bogeyman who belongs more to the realms of the Gothic horror story or Norwegian 'death metal' album than to the real world. For fucks sake, you might as tell the world they all wear ice hockey masks and are called 'Jason' for all that makes any rational sense or contributes anything of substance to our efforts to rid the world of terrorism.

None of which, may I say, is what I or indeed anyone else I have read is doing.

There is a very good reason why we should, indeed we must, try to understand and explain terrorism. Why we cannot ignore the complex chains of cause and effect upon which it feeds and from which it draws both its ideological and material sustenance ... You cannot defeat terrorism through ignorance of its drives, motives and objectives, by dehumanising the terrorist and turning them into a bogeyman, or by denying even the possibility, let alone reality, that own own actions have, in a multiplicity of ways, contributed to and, in some instances, created the context in which terrorism exists.

The problem with this argument, and indeed many others that I have read recently, is that it fails to make the distinction between those who pull the strings from the badlands of remote Pakistan and Afghanistan and their allies among the extremist clerics, and those such as the London bombers on 7/7 who walked onto the Tube and onto a bus to unleash death. We have no need to "dehumanise" the terrorist. He has already dehumanised himself by submitting to the cult of death of which he is a part. No amount of altering of foreign policy, no withdrawal of troops, no settlement for the Palestinians can change the fact that there are individuals who, in the words of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, love death as much as we love life; who would beat a man in the street because his wife dared to step outdoors wearing white shoes; who would ban music and theatre; who would sit at the cockpit of a plane and guide it into a skyscraper. Yes, this is a "fanatical, fundamentalist belief system which teaches hatred"; by God, what more proof does one need? When Osama bin Laden declares that it is the religious duty of every Muslim to kill Christians and Jews, how is that not teaching hatred? When young men attend madrassas and come out supposedly pious but in reality murderous, are they not brainwashed? Is any of this a product of society? Is it not rather a societal cancer?

There will always be those who can only be dealt with by force; that no amount of political progress will satisfy, because their aim is not political. This is why Talk Politics is wrong to declare that terrorism is nothing new. Indeed not; but this type of terror is unique, in that it has no political aim. For all their abhorrent methods, the IRA, ETA or Kurdish separatist campaigns at least have end points they wish to reach. But this fundamentalist terror dresses up its love of death in geopolitical excuses: Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Palestine, East Timor, the Crusades, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The declared aim of the terrorists is to create a world wide Taliban-era Afghanistan: a caliphate under the most extreme Sharia law, devoid of light and laughter and life. This is not demonisation. This is fact, from bin Laden's own lips. And this campaign cares nothing for the lives of Iraqis, or Palestinians, or any person in the Arab world or elsewhere. As the atrocities mount, I do not know what more evidence is needed of this bloody fact.

The linguistic atrocities, meanwhile, double up in Talk Politics' post:

You see it doesn't matter a flying fuck whether the pro-war Left want to believe in a causal relationship between our taking part in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the recent attack on London or not — what matter is that the guy with the fucking bomb believes it.

Unfortunately, it does matter. Simply because a homicidal man with a bomb believes that a wrong has been committed does not compel us to alter our policy, any more than we would alter our policy if a hostage was being taken. In a way, that is exactly what is happening; London is being held hostage, and the worst kind of reaction would be to alter policies which have no bearing on the real terrorists' motivations in the first place.

Yes, it is correct that there are young men who are susceptible to the "teachings" of those radicals who should not be allowed to incite the hatred which they are inciting, and it is here that the war on terrorism is best fought. At heart, it is a battle of ideas — nihilism versus democracy — and for democracy to win, it must engage the disenfranchised group in our society which is vulnerable to insidious persuasion. But we must bear something else in mind here, and it is this: there is a world of difference between being angry that Britain undertook the war in Iraq in the face of protests, and strapping a bomb to oneself with the intent to kill. This is the distinction which Jenny Tonge failed to recognise and it is the one which instructs us that, all other things being equal, the men who killed on 7/7 and attempted to on 21/7 are criminals. Pure and simple.

The most offensive aspect of the Talk Politics article is this comment on the term "Islamofascism":

Probably the first thing to note here is the inherent semantic hypocrisy of the term itself when used by those who go to great and often excruciating lengths to promote themselves as being unequivocally committed to equality and opposed to racism in all its many forms ... Let's face it here, a portmanteau term which juxtaposes the concept of 'brown-skinned guy with prayer mat and natty line in headgear' with that of '20th century's most famous facist pantomime villain and daddy of all genocidal maniacs” may not be anywhere near as direct or in your face as 'paki' or 'nigger' but its a pretty racist metaphor nonetheless.

This disgraceful slur is beyond contemptible. Let me reaffirm this truth about my politics: yes, I am "unequivocally committed to equality and opposed to racism in all its many forms"; I am opposed, too, to sexism, ageism, homophobia and discrimination against disabled people. These are concerns which Saddam Hussein was never concerned about, nor the Taliban/al-Qaeda alliance that ran Afghanistan. I want to see democracy for people across the world, including those who are suffering in Arab countries by virtue of who they are, not by virtue of the colour of their skin or their ethnicity but because they are human beings. And the same value, that all men are created equal, motivates me to both be on the Left and condemn al-Qaeda and Baathist fascism for the oppressive ideologies they are.

I reject the reprehensible notion that terrorism in Tel Aviv and terrorism in New York are "not quite the same", as Talk Politics would have it. I reject the idea that it is impossible to be on the Left and support the war on terrorism. And I support the real voices of the people of Iraq and Afghanistan — their democratically elected presidents — one of whom carries the torch for freedom better than anyone on any blog could:

For so many years before September 11 we have had our children maimed, our children killed, our vineyards destroyed, burnt, our mosques blown up, our holy books burnt.  It struck you a few days ago and we share the immense suffering that comes with that to families and societies.

So the fight against the perpetrators, the terrorists who have proven in Afghanistan that they are simply in the business of killing, regardless of where that killing may be, regardless of where they may find an opportunity to kill.

In Afghanistan today, as I speak to you, within the past month they have killed clerics, Muslim clerics, respected, elderly, traditional clerics of the country. They have blown up a mosque in the middle of Kandahar killing 20 innocent people. They blew up a mosque in a village north of Kandahar, in a place called Milnashin (phon), they have dynamited the mosque, they placed mines in the mosque hoping that somebody would go there and then they would blow it up. They killed a cleric in Paktika Province with his wife at night, with a lady, they stabbed the lady to death. 

Who was that lady? Was that lady the President of Afghanistan?  Was that lady the Prime Minister of another country? Was she a rich person? Was she a non-Muslim if they are targeting non-Muslims? Was she a General, did she possess tanks? These people — the terrorists — are only after a human life, they feel happy when they cause suffering, when they cause suffering in Afghanistan, when they cause suffering in Britain, when they cause suffering elsewhere. [...]

I come from a country where extremists were the Government, I come from a country where terrorism was ruling us, we were slaves to them before the world came and freed us. When they were in power they were killing people that only said we need a bit more freedom, they were killing people that wanted their young daughter to go to school, they were beating a man on the street, in front of his wife, in front of the public in a bazaar place, because his wife happened to have white shoes. There was no press, there was no radio, there was no television, there was no speech, they were suffocating life. [...]

So they don't have a place in Muslim societies, they are working against Muslim societies, that has to be understood in the western media. I don't see that recognition here.

I do not see it yet either. But for this conflict to be won — for the sake of the young, disenfranchised men ready to be corrupted by psychopaths — that recognition must come first.

Comments

[Neil Harding]

I've never viewed the Iraq war as illegal, I always thought that was the wrong line of criticism. I mean what does it matter that France and Russia didn't support the war, when all they cared about was getting a 'good deal' on repayment of their loans to Saddam. If the UN had backed the war, I still wouldn't have liked it.

You go on about 'protecting' democracy in the Middle East by defending Saudi Arabia and Kuwait from Saddam Hussain. Do you recognise how un-democratic these countries are, and they have remained un-democratic because of our government's backing. This is what breeds terrorists, this is where Osama Bin Laden is from and the 9/11 bombers were mostly recruited.

The 'demonising' of terrorists is irrelevant, the problem is the 'demonising' of millions of reasonable Muslims, whose support we must win, if we are to cut the terrorists supply line.

We are not going to win their support by dismissing their totally justified concerns about our actions in the Middle East and the obvious injustices that are going on there.

Like I have said before, I don't believe anyone who says that our involvement in the Iraq war didn't make us more of a target. You are in massive denial if you believe that. Even John Major has accepted that our Iraq War decision brought forward the London bombings.

Your point about Saudi troop withdrawl is inconsequential, when they only had to move a few hundred miles over the border into Iraq (another country with sacred Muslim sites).

We can't go on pretending our countries have done nothing wrong in this. We have created this problem for ourselves, just like we created the problems in Northern Ireland. Injustice breeds injustice.

[Rob]

Neil, I can only suggest that you go back, clear your mind and read my post again, but slower.

And not once do I mention defending "democracy" in Saudi or Kuwait — I simply mention defending (and in the latter case, liberating) those nations and, incidentally, their people. Let's not forget that as Iraqi troops retreated from Kuwait, they lit oil wells and carried out a 'scorched earth' policy. They also took several hundred Kuwaitis as POWs, who have never been heard from again. Worth bearing in mind when we discuss the character of the deposed Iraqi regime, despite the inadequacies of Kuwaiti and Saudi democracy.

I would strongly support democratic reforms in these countries. The spread of democracy and human rights and inclusivity in society is the best defence against terror, here and abroad. But those reforms can only address those who the extremists corrupt. No amount of political progress on any issue will satisfy the psychopaths who direct al-Qaeda — which was the main point of my post, and which you entirely overlook in your rush to ascribe blame for mass murder to our own foreign policy.

[Neil Harding]

It's a pity when we were defending and 'liberating' these countries we didn't insist on them becoming democracies.

I'm glad you agree with me on this, sorry if I misinterpreted 'defending nations' as 'defending democracies'.

Have you ever asked yourself why, despite our leaders great speechs on the values of freedom and democracy, that we don't give a stuff about democracy in the Middle East?

If you look at US history (with UK support) and the hundreds of countries they have invaded and even more where they have meddled in their elections, not once will you find democracy a concern. Let's stop pretending that our political establishment are interested in anything but their own economic gain and political power.

History shows us our establishment actually prefer dictatorships, because they are easier to deal with than democracies, that is why they prop them up so many times, in every corner of the world.

Democracy has to be fought for, we have suppressed these people so much that its not surprising that some have been driven so insane as to resort to suicide bombing. We gave them little option. And if you think Islamist terrorists are unique in dying for their cause, I have two words for you, Bobby Sands!

[Rob]

Except that once again, you fall into the trap of equating Irish republican terrorism with al-Qaeda-style terrorism. The IRA had a political aim, despite the abhorrence of their methods; they did not kill simply for the sake of it. Al-Qaeda's aim is simply death, and is of a whole different order — a fact some people are failing to grasp.

[Neil Harding]

I don't think they are that different. 20 years ago I would have been called an apologist for suggesting that negotiation with the IRA was the way to stop the violence.

If al-Qaeda start hitting expensive buildings and the political establishment instead of innocent civilians then see how quickly bin Laden is around the table and the history books are re-written about al-Qaeda, as they have been re-written about the IRA.

[Rob]

I'm sorry, but any comparison between the IRA and al-Qaeda is fallacious at best and dangerous at worst.

As I've said before, the IRA had a goal which was and is within the realm of political discussion: withdrawal of British troops from the Province, and the establishment of a United Ireland. But al-Qaeda's goal is not within the realm of political discussion, and as such we can never sit down around a table with it (incidentally, is the World Trade Centre not an expensive enough building for you?). Al-Qaeda desires the establishment of a world-wide caliphate and the abolition of liberal democracy. This isn't a goal which can be appeased or negotiated. To see what kind of state we would be living in we only need to look at Taliban-era Afghanistan and all the horrors that entailed for the Afghan people.

There is a qualitative difference between the goals of the IRA and the goals of al-Qaeda. I should state that I find the fact that the present calm in Northern Ireland has been brought about in part due to the early release of convicted terrorists quite distasteful, and that I hold all terrorists in equal contempt. I have yet to read one piece of history which makes excuses for the IRA and I would loudly condemn any text that did — none of which means that this new kind of fundamentalism does not represent a threat of a whole different kind to our very political and social order, the magnitude of which you fail to appreciate.

[Neil Harding]

The expensive buildings analogy was not a good one I admit, so I give you that one!

The point is, was it wrong to negotiate with the IRA?

Did the IRA get all that it asked for in return for laying down its arms?

A united Ireland and complete withdrawal of British troops have still not occurred.

It was once considered beyond the pale to negotiate with the IRA, what changed?

The IRA had massive support amongst the Catholic community of Northern Ireland and the US, and continued their campaign long enough for the British establishment to change its tactics (they also started to target the political establishment (Brighton Bomb).

The IRA had martyrs willing to die for its cause and there was a political and religious grounding to its beliefs.

OK the jihadists seem more extreme in both their demands and their religious intensity, but can you not see the similarities?

I am not saying negotiation with terrorists is a good idea, but if this campaign continues we will have to consider whether we can solve the terrorist problem by security measures alone.

The jihadists want a muslim state under sharia law. They also want the removal of Israel from the face of the Earth. They have massive support amongst the muslim community. It is this support we need to target, if we are to defeat the terrorists.

How do we do it?

Well we don't win their support by telling them that nothing is wrong in invading Iraq and nothing can be done for the Palestinians. These are the main reasons they have sympathies with extreme groups that also want a Caliphate and sharia law.

There is of course, a deeper problem we have to address. How compatible are the average muslim views on sharia law and the concept of democracy? For our answer we need to look, surprisingly to Iran!

Which country is a hotbed of fundamentalism would you think?

A secular country like Pakistan or a state religion dominated country like Iran?

The women of Iran are slowly showing how democracy can take hold in the face of the severe misogyny all around them. By fostering this, we will defeat irrational ideas. We will not foster this by invading Iran, as the neo-cons would do if resources and public opinion enabled them to.

The massive majority of Muslims can be won over by solving the Palestinian problem and fostering proper democracy in the Muslim countries including Saudi and Pakistan, without the majority of muslims, support for the terrorists will wither and die.

If this doesn't sound plausible, whats your solution?

[Rob]

I hate to burst your bubble about Iran, Neil, but the situation there is not becoming as rosy as you think. Democracy is not "taking hold" in that country. The strict interpretation of sharia law to which you refer is resulting in nothing less than execution for gay people (one incidence of which is linked to in the main article above), and countless other oppressions of freedom of expression - see http://regimechangeiran.blogspot.com/2005/06/lack-of-human-rights-in-iran.html

While I wouldn't go along with "the neo-cons" (that catch-all phrase) in saying that regime change in Iran must be brought about by force, it's certainly the case that in any comparison between Iran and Pakistan, Iran doesn't have any claim to any moral high ground.

The solution to the problems we're facing is the increase in practice as well as in theory of the franchise to those who feel that our democracy holds nothing for them — but again, it is critical that we recognise that there is a whole different dimension to this new breed of terror, in that it worships death and will not be satisfied by any political or social development. There will always be some dedicated to our death whom we can never reach.

[Neil Harding]

Yeah, I saw the picture posted from Iran, frightening! I deplore the political establishment there! What I was trying to get at was the groundswell of support developing there (particularly amongst women) for democracy and challenging the old order.

It seems that under Sharia Law this can still develop, indeed when you look at Pakistan, it shows how a supposedly secular establishment can have the opposite effect on the population pushing them towards fundamentalism. I hope I've explained myself!