Your views are facts and you are intellectual, My views are naive and I've been brainwashed! (The War Against Terrorism - Post Afghanistan)

Member Name: markw-d

Product:	The War Against Terrorism - Post Afghanistan
Date:	28/02/02 (718 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: We have to do something this time.

Disadvantages: War is never a good thing

There has been a huge amount of opinion on DooYoo following the chain of events in the wake of September the 11th in the USA.

I have to say that I have found some of it simply offensive, not because I am an American myself, I’m not. I’ve also never been a great admirer of much of American society which I find full of contradictions and superficial value. I’m certainly no admirer of the political system and am always dumbstruck by the circus which is the presidential campaign trail.

What made my sick to my heart however was that within hours of the greatest act of unprovoked civilian mass murder in history, certain groups of our own fair and equitable society were queuing up to offer a politically based opinion that the U.S had it coming to them.

The start of these ops was usually “I don’t support the horrific acts and my heart goes out to the victims……” before a full on diatribe against all things American.

Most ops also had fairly vicious digs at George Dubbya Bush, as he had been the President all year so was therefore responsible for all the evils of U.S foreign policy since the start of the 20th century. Why can’t these people just admit that if Dubbya invented a cure for HIV, invented a chemical which turned sand into water, and gave 2 billion dollars to the Dalai Llama they would still hate him simply because he is right wing, gets his words muddled up, has more than a few bob and is an American.

Another amazement to me therefore was when I discovered that to disagree with the anti US sentiments automatically meant that I was a Bush supporter!! What rubbish. I try to make a point of only talking about what I know something about and therefore I do not just swallow whole the anecdotal stories of Bush’s evil plotting which have now passed into folklore. I do however vehemently disagree with his stance on global climate change and his sabotage of the Kyo
to agreement, and boy I made my feelings known at the time. A Bush supporter?? I think not, but I’m sure that there are some people already reading this op and giving me labels which prove how clever and intellectual they are.

My amazement turned to despair when I realised that to agree with America’s action against Al Queda, meant that I somehow supported the death of Afghan civilians and valued their lives differently to American lives. I am a father of two young daughters, one of whom I nearly lost last year in a medical emergency. I have seen people die in a number of circumstances and I’ve experienced tragedy. How dare people judge my humanity simply because I don’t agree with their version of the facts.

And that brings me to the next part of my introduction. The facts! Why is it that when a newspaper, magazine, t.v station, “friend” or web link supports your view it is “informed fact”, yet when it supports my view it is state sponsored brainwashing of the masses?

I have a litmus test for many media reported facts, and that is, “does it make sense?”

There is one DooYooer who currently assaults every speakers corner op with his opinion that the RAF and USAF are bombing oil wells in Iraq. I think that he is well wide of the mark, however maybe he has some inside track which I don’t have, so I ask myself a question …”does it make sense for the RAF to bomb oil wells?” It doesn’t really does it?

There is no military gain, no commercial gain, and by now someone may just have noticed the massive environmental disaster which would be the result (remember Kuwait?)..

I conclude therefore on available evidence, and probability that he is wrong, and I base my argument from there. This however is not fashionable as it doesn’t take immediate sides or contain rhetoric. Its funny actually that most of the anti western opinions pu
rport to get their information from inside sources and sources other than the media, yet they all seem to use the same rhetoric and general language. Most of it comes from the UK broadsheets.

There is another DoYooer who asserts that the Bush administration and the CIA were behind the planes crashing into the twin towers and the Pentagon, in order to justify starting a war against Islam and to further oil interests. Very entertaining James Bond stuff but also highly improbable I suggest. Anyway if the CIA had been involved there is no way the planes would have hit their targets!

To be absolutely honest I don’t think that any of the world’s security services are actually competent enough to put such a scheme together or to carry it off. There is more chance of Luke Skywalkers X fighter being in a hanger in Area 51.

I have decided however after much soul searching to try and encapsulate my opinion regarding these tragic and world changing events, and to try and introduce some reason and balance to my op, not just dogmatically take a side and stick to it. I will try however to stick to areas which I feel that I know about and will not base my opinions on either side of the media.

The reason I’m doing this is because I have a long term interest in the subjects and didn’t only hear the name of Osama Bin Laden for the first time late last year. We need to debate this problem in order to solve it, however to simply debate from a position of political dogma puts us all into a complacent danger zone.

This is a fairly long and wide ranging opinion therefore so lets have some structure to start with! The op is broken down into the following subheadings for ease of reading.

1. Terrorism – A definition and analysis
2. US Action in Afghanistan – Appropriateness, value and outcomes
3. Axis of Evil – What next and why?
4. Oil and war – What is the truth?

5. Where do we go from here?

1. Terrorism – A definition and analysis

I was once accused on DooYoo of not being interested in a definition of Terrorism. The point which I had actually made was that if we waited for the fat politicians of the world to agree on a formal definition of the genre’ before acting against it, we would never be in a position to tackle it.

I’m happy however to define here my own understanding of terrorism.

“It is the use of sudden and unexpected violence against such targets, and in such a way, as to spread irrational fear (terror) amongst a civilian population in order to get them to force their government to change a policy or affect an action which they were hitherto unwilling to do”.

A number of things emerge from that definition. The first one is a question. Can terrorism exist in formal declared war? If so then most of the world’s countries have at some time used terrorism as a tactical weapon, however if your very survival in time of war is at stake, can it be legitimate to use whatever means to prevail?

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are often referred to as acts of terror, and on the face of it my definition would classify them as such. I do however think that we forget that at the time they were untried weapons, and no-one had the vision that we now have with hindsight of their sheer destructive power and long term effects. The aim however was very simply and basically to force the government of Japan to surrender and end the years of slaughter and inhumanity which they had started.

Now the black and white starts to blur doesn’t it? Hundreds of thousands died in those two cities but all informed estimates indicate that ending the war at that point probably saved two million people on both sides. The act horrific, the result……well you be the judge but many would think that the world had suffered e
nough at the hands of the Japanese and their allies in that period.

If we look back at the brutality and inhuman treatment meted out to their captives (both civilian and military) many survivors of that period would be glad of an early end to their personal terror. Lets not look at it from our cosy environment today. Lets look at it from the position of a world which had been ravaged by a savage war for 5 years, where millions had died, and millions more were being brutally tortured and persecuted, and another generation of young men were about to die in order to bring the war to an end. The chance of doing that with one or two bombs would have looked very attractive at that point.

The counter view is that the U.S and its allies (by then the UK was pretty much bankrupt and impotent) wanted to beat the Russians to a weapon of mass destruction. It’s certainly true that ending the war when they did, stopped the Russians from domination of south East Asia and the Pac rim. It also demonstrated that the west could stop them should they decide to continue west through Europe, as it looked likely that they would do.

So there was maybe a political motive too. An interesting question however is that just because there is a political motive, does that invalidate the other more reasonable motive. I would say not.

Another subject then emerges. This is the old debate about one mans terrorist being another’s freedom fighter, closely followed by Nelson Mandela’s name being trotted out as a modern day saint. Lets be clear about this, a terrorist is always a terrorist if they have committed an act of terror. They can be a reformed terrorist but if an act of terror has been committed then that is not eradicated and cannot be sanitised just because the perpetrator becomes a law abiding citizen at a later date.

Having said that lets have a look at Mandela. Having done a bit of research, including visiting his prison cel
l on Robben Island and speaking to one of his fellow prisoners, I conclude that he is an intelligent, reasonable and generally inspiring man who was targeted by the authorities more for his powers of oratory than his actual acts against the state. His actual crimes never targeted people, and were quite small acts of sabotage against infrastructure (electricity sub stations).

I conclude that he was not a terrorist according to my definition, however the organisation of which he was a member almost certainly was, and the proven activities of his ex-wife defy belief and human decency.

Lets now look at Arafat, the man who most young westerners see as an amiable old man, who is oppressed by the evil Israelis. Arafat is now a legitimate politician and the voice of Palestinian moderacy, however he was not always that way. He carried out, supported, and ordered acts of terror which left blood on his hands, in the same way that many senior Israelis have blood on their hands from when they fought the British in Palestine in the 40’s and since. Arafat embraced diplomacy and political debate when he realised that terrorism would not force the Israeli’s to surrender.

He is now a force for good, and a force for moderacy, but he will always have the blood of his victims on his hands, as will many of his opponents in the Israeli government.

I read an interesting op the other day which looked at the role of the French resistance in World War 2. Freedom fighters or terrorists?

My conclusion is generally freedom fighters as they were resisting a foreign army which had defeated their army in battle, divided their country in two, occupied one half (the north), and put in a puppet government in the south (Vichy).

Sounds a lot like Ireland doesn’t it? But here is the difference. The French resistance fought the German forces. They blew up infrastructure, they assassinated traitors who were working with the Germans i
n government . They waged war but didn’t kill or target civilians. In Ireland the terror groups of both sides of the sectarian divide have targeted and killed many more civilians than ever they have made an impact on the military presence. The reason quite simply is the tactics of terror. If you make people scared to go shopping or out for a drink, then they will put pressure on the politicians to make the problem go away by giving in.

There was another important facet of French resistance, and that is that the overwhelming majority of the people of France were not only sympathetic to the general cause but were in some small or large way involved in it. The same cannot be said of most modern terror organisations, particularly those which exist within democracies. They usually represent a minority and generally unpopular viewpoint.

So does terrorism work? Well quite simply no it doesn’t. This is why the smart terrorists like Arafat and Adams re-invent themselves as politicians, because they get the plot. If you bomb civilians you not only make them scared, but you also make them angry and determined. You also put the politicians into a corner where they can do nothing else than dig their heels in and fight you harder as they cannot be seen to back down or give in to terror.

Therefore the smart ones have realised that if you really really want something to change, terrorism actually prevents it rather than help it.

So lets get up to date and look at the terrorism behind today’s headlines.

September 11th last year saw 19 fanatical terrorists perform an unequalled act of atrocity, on the face of it in the name of their religion. This had a number of devastating effects including the almost simultaneous deaths of 4000 innocent international civilians. The interesting thing however is what the terrorists intended to achieve. Without a doubt there is a difference between what the 19 hijackers thought their pu
rpose was, and what was really behind it.

On the face of it the attack took out two enduring symbols of U.S economic power and capitalism, and in the Islamic world where symbolism and gesture are important this would clearly be seen as a greater blow than it actually was in itself to westerners. It also struck at the great Satan in his own back yard, showing his vulnerability, and the attacks themselves used the products of Americas own technology against them. I’m sure that the economic impact was also factored in, knowing that a weakened U.S economy would shake the world, which it did.

These were not however the strategic reasons and aims behind the attacks. The real aim was much more simple yet more dangerous.

The people who planned this attack know that they can never win a military campaign against the west, wherever or however they fight them. They are driven however by a deeply held belief that the west is the natural sworn enemy of their religion, culture and way of life. They have embraced an extremist indoctrination which gives them a belief that their religious beliefs transcend national boundaries or regions and that the only worthwhile cause is a crusade in reverse where the unbelievers are wiped out.

The plight of the Palestinians and similarly oppressed people give a tag line to their “cause”, but to the core leadership of this movement the struggle of people to establish an independent state is irrelevant. There is a bigger game afoot.

Quite simply the aim of the people who did this was to polarise the world along religious lines and bring Islam into overt conflict with Christianity and Judaism. Witness the anti U.S rhetoric which has resulted all over the world claiming that the U.S action is “anti Islamic”, or an “attack on Islam”. Listen to all of the calls for Muslims the world over to rise up, and we see the real purpose of September the 11th.

T
his was a calculated attempt to start a war which on the face of it AlQueada etc couldn’t ever win militarily. They wanted to put the US government in a corner from which it could only ever emerge fighting, and lo and behold they would be fighting Muslims thereby giving a rallying cry to the Islamic world to rise against them.

Right now however they have miscalculated, as the majority of Islam worldwide does not support their fanatical cause and co-exists happily with other religious groups, takes a moderate line and preaches peace. I hope that I am wrong but I think that having failed to ignite the fire this time around the next atrocity will be even worse.

The U.S reaction has been too strong for many DooYooers, however it is much more restrained than the terrorists hoped. The language used by Bush has always made it clear that he is fighting terrorism, not Muslims. Apart of course from his gaffe when he used the word crusade in its literal sense and all of the chattering intellectual classes jumped on it. Who really believes that Bush actually knows anything about the Crusades, never mind meant it in that way?

My point? We need to help sort the injustices around Palestine out, we need to put pressure on the Israelis to behave in a less warlike way, we need to tackle poverty and injustice, but don’t think for a minute that any of this will stop the kind of terrorism that is propagated by AlQueda or Hamas. They have a much bigger agenda.

The scary thing is however that YOU are the target. You see governments only ever get terrified by elections, the military only get terrified by budget cuts, its ordinary non political civilian people who get terrified by the prospect of getting blown up at work or on a holiday flight, so its you that the terrorists want to kill and maim.

Also don’t forget that the terrorist doesn’t care where your sympathies lie. I remember hearing the explosions of the Bi
rmingham pub bombs in the 70’s where dozens of young people out for a drink were killed and maimed by the IRA. When that lunatic put a bomb under the table and left, he didn’t stop to ask who supported his cause, and who was a Brit supporter. He didn’t ask who was a Catholic and who wasn’t. They were just legitimate targets in terror.

2. U.S action in Afghanistan – Appropriateness, value and outcome

September 11th was a devastating blow that’s for sure. The president certainly got caught on the wrong foot, and took most of day one to figure out how to react and where to be, however lets not be too harsh on that as the standing procedure for any president in time of an attack like that is to stay in Air Force One in the air. Also we may never know just what else was about to be hit.

What did happen however over the next few weeks was remarkable restraint and a fortitude amongst the American people which frankly surprised me. The B52’s remained on the ground, the Cruise missiles in their hangers, and the Military in their bases.

Bush made speeches which left no-one in any doubt that the retribution would be terrible, but they never descended into tirade or even Churchillian prose. Maybe that’s what frightened people. There just came across a determination to hit back.

He made some gaffes however, not least of which was the use of the word “crusade”, and the declaration of war on an adjective (I thank Billy Bragg for that one).

It was after the 11th when I was in New York for a week that my generalised opinion of Americans changed, as the people I met were reasonable, stoical, determined, rational and brave. I was surprised. There was no hysteria, not bigotry towards any race or creed. In fact it struck me that the terrorists could not have chosen a worse city to attack as New York has to be the most multi racial and integrated place I have ever been. <
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To those of us who had studied terrorism however the emergence of Bin Laden as the number one suspect was no great surprise as he had been winding his organisation up to something like this for years. Lets just spend a few moments dispelling some myths about this guy.

Everyone knows by now that OBL was the son of a Yemeni born Saudi millionaire who discovered radical Islam in his 20’s and went, as many other Arabs did, to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. Despite the mythology which has now grown up around him he was never a great Mujahedin leader, but was a competent and by all accounts brave local commander.

To read the press and current crop of books you would draw the conclusion that he was personally feted and trained by a squad of CIA, Delta, and SAS personnel. He wasn’t. His guerrilla group received stinger missiles and basic training from western advisors, however he was never part of the elite strategic muhjaheddin command structure who came to Scotland to be trained by the SAS and CIA. He was quite simply too junior.

But “The CIA created Bin Laden” is too good a headline to miss, isn’t it?

It was during the war against the soviets however that OBL became obsessed with fundamentalism. This was probably partly to do with post traumatic stress disorder as this conflict was particularly brutal.

Whatever the reason however, OBL saw the conflict increasingly in terms of Islam against global Judaism and Christianity rather than a struggle against Soviet occupation of an Islamic state.

This still didn’t manifest itself in a hatred of the west until the gulf war in 1990, when the U.S built up a huge military force in Saudi Arabia. Bin Ladens objection to this was, and still is the presence of Infidel troops in the country which is home to Islam’s two most holy sites, Mecca and Medina. At this point OBL had no sympathy with Iraq, which as another DooYooer re
minded me the other day was a pretty successful secular state, which is an anathama to OBL.

This, more than anything drives OBL’s current hatred of the west. He is now a fundamental purist, and this is why he associated so completely with the Taliban, and why the Taliban were prepared to lose everything to stand by his side.

So once OBL was in the frame the U.S attacked didn’t they? Well actually no they didn’t.

They gathered evidence, and presented it to the international community, including the friends of the Taliban. Then they asked the Taliban to hand him over. They even got Pakistan to ask the Taliban to hand him over. This went on for several weeks with the Taliban agreeing then withdrawing their agreement and so on. Eventually the U.S had to act.

Time for a litmus test question. “would the Taliban have ever handed OBL over, or stopped the use of AlQueada camps for training terrorists in Afghanistan?”

My contention is no, they wouldn’t. The reasons are not complex. The Taliban were an oppressive regime who did some horrific things, however they never acted with evil intent against their people. They simply believed in a form of pure fundamental Islamic sharia law which belonged in the middle ages and actually was pretty terrible in its execution, but not its intent.

It was this fundamental purism which bonded them to OBL and his cause. They were one and the same. To have ever betrayed OBL would have been the highest form of treachery in the eyes of the Taliban and I don’t believe that it would or could ever have happened. Even now the biggest challenge the west has is to get someone close to OBL to betray him, but no-one ever has.

OBL and the Taliban both wanted the same thing. Pure fundamental sharia, world-wide and the liberation of the holy sites from infidel impurity. It’s as simple as that. Although the actions of OBL and the Taliban are undoub
tedly evil, it is my contention that their conception in the minds of the plotters comes from pure religious fanaticism and not any political or financial motive. This makes them more dangerous than the normal average terrorist, as they really do believe that they have god on their side.

So was the U.S action appropriate? I don’t see what else they could do. They had a good idea who was responsible for the 11th, they knew where he was, and who was harbouring him, and where the suicide bombers of tomorrow were being trained. I don’t think that there is much doubt anywhere now that they had that lot right.

Even Iran, Libya and Pakistan accepted the evidence, and none of those three have ever been shy of standing up to the U.S.

The choices were:

a) Do nothing, and wait for the next attack on U.S citizens.
b) Put in ground troops and risk another Vietnam, or even worse the soviet scenario
c) A relatively short targeted bombing campaign backed up with special forces.
d) Fix the worlds wrongs and give the terrorists what they want

To my mind a) is a non starter. You have just suffered the worst atrocity in history and you know who did it and where his gang hang out. Only an idiot would turn the other cheek and wait for the slap.

b) is madness. There is nothing that Afghans hate more than foreign troops on their soil (as I predicted some months back the British peacekeeping involvement is already going sour). There would have been huge casualties and a keystone cops scenario of troops trying to take ground whilst the enemy made monkeys of them. Exactly what happened to the Russians.

Again though I have corresponded with someone who felt that ground action was preferable, as it would have minimised civilian casualties, which is a fair point of view. As a military commander however my first responsibility would be for the safety and security of my forces, and in any case ground forces wou
ld inevitably need air intervention to support them once they got into trouble, as they surely would have done.

The one thing which is an absolute pre requisite for ground force action however is good quality human intelligence on the ground and in this campaign it has been virtually zero. Quite simply the conditions and aims of the campaign never allowed the use of conventional ground troops.

c) Preffered option, as it should have been quick and effective. Of course it wasn’t particularly quick or completely effective, and of course there were terrible civilian casualties when bombs intended for military targets missed.

Here is another emotive and contentious point. The number of civilian casualties. Last month the red cross said 4000 people had died, and at the same time the new Afghan government said 400 had died due to U.S bombs. Huge difference. It has to be said however that the Red Cross has always opposed any military action anywhere and is quite reactionary, and at the other end of the scale the Afghan government will not want to upset the U.S until the dollars are in the bank.

Then last week the Gaurdian quoted a figure between 2000 and 8000 which is quite a big range isn’t it?

The fact is that none of us know the truth, however one single innocent civilian casualty is one too many, whatever their nationality. The problem is that in any and all wars civilians get killed by armaments which are intended to kill people in uniform. That has never been any different and never will be. Unfortunately the video game which was the gulf war has convinced a whole generation that it is possible to deliver a bomb or missile so accurately that you could pop it through a toilet window without even rattling the curtains next door!

The fact however is that except in exceptional circumstances this doesn’t happen and mistakes are also tragically made.

The difference is in intent. When a s
uicide bomber flies a plane full of men women and children into a civilian building full of men women and some children, his intent is to kill men women and children. When a B52 pilot drops a bomb onto an AlQueada military position but poor targeting information, weather, or other unforeseen factor delivers that bomb into a civilian area his intent is not to kill civilians.

Its time for a litmus test question again…..If you were a U.S commander would you deliberately target civilians with air strikes?

It would be a waste of expensive munitions, it would serve no military purpose, it would risk a very expensive plane and crew for nothing, it would be media and political suicide. So why would you do it? Quite simply you wouldn’t. It happens by tragic accident and inaccuracy as in all wars, past present and future.

“What about Mi Lai” in Vietnam?” will cry the opponents of everything American. Yes 30 years ago parts, not all, of the U.S military did some awful things in south east Asia, and they were caught out. This led to 20 years of soul searching and political wilderness for the U.S military and they learned a lot of lessons, not least about the need to be cleaner than clean in terms of their behaviour with civilians.

If you are saying that wars should never be fought and we should have no armed forces whatsoever that is a very different argument, but we have to understand that as long as you have military forces and are prepared to use them, at some point non combatants will get killed. It doesn’t make it any less tragic, but it is a consequence of having a military force and being put into the position of having to use it.

Lets talk about munitions as there are many “experts” on military hardware on DooYoo who will happily talk about Daisy Cutter bombs and cluster bombs etc.

We all know about cluster bombs don’t we. These are what are described as area de
nial weapons, in other words they split into hundreds of tiny bomblets, some of which lie unexploded around the area until you stand on them. A bit like a land mine.

The reason that they are termed area denial weapons is because they do just that, they make it highly dangerous to operate in an area which has been cluster bombed. For this reason they are highly effective when used against airfields, army barracks, and fortifications. You do not use them where your own or your allies forces may be operating on the ground, because they would be as much in danger as the enemy.

Therefore on the evidence, and an understanding of the technology I conclude that cluster bombs would not have been used in civilian areas. Makes a good evocative anti US headline though doesn’t it?

Now Daisy Cutters. If you believed the press you would think that this is the domesday weapon……a cross between a nuclear weapon and the Death Star from Star Wars.

All it is I’m afraid is a very crude and very big blast bomb which quite simply explodes with such concentrated force it is very good for blowing people out of caves and bunkers with shock waves. Quite boring and again not likely to be employed in civilian areas.

It sounds horrific though doesn’t it? Daisy Cutter!!

Of course having said all of that all of these weapons of war are barabaric and horrific in their very exisitence, however if you are arguing for the disbanding of all military forces it’s a different argument. If you do agree with having a military force but don’t think that the murder of 4000 people in one morning is enough justification to use it, I’m struggling to see the point of having one.

Onto point d) then. Well simply put there is no existing chain of events which would give the terrorists what they want, and that aside OBLs aims are now much higher than anything which we could deliver.

The have proven
themselves impossible to negotiate with, and in any case there is some merit to the argument that if you give in to such horror you invite more, from more sources.

In terms of fixing the worlds problems, of course we should however with the best international will and a smooth ride that is going to take years. We need to neutralise todays fanatics whilst we take away the excuses and reasons of tomorrows. These events can happen in parallel.

Lets us not forget who we are dealing with. They are “religious” men who can cut women up with carpet knives in front of terrified airline passengers. They can look a child in the eye as they kill it.

They can murder a journalist as he talks to his family via a video camera, by slitting his throat from behind and then cutting and hacking his head off with the knife on camera so that his family have a nice record of his death for their cause.

Do you really think that we can negotiate with these people?

So what did the U.S achieve? Well they didn’t get OBL, so that was a failure, and they didn’t get Mullah Omar, but he was never really the point anyway. A lot of afghans died but lets not forget they were fighting a civil war anyway which was killing thousands.

What they did achieve however was the destruction of Al Queda’s infrastructure, training facilities, support mechanisms, comms, and a good deal of its volunteer martyrs. This of course will not prevent further atrocities, but will hamper the ability of the terrorists to strike on a grand or well organised scale for a long time. A good tactical result.

The future of Afghanistan? My prediction is that it’s bleak. This region has never been a country in its entire history. The only times they have ever stopped killing each other have been when they have got together to fight an invader (British / Soviets). As soon as that is over they start killing each other again…..
its what they do!

The international community will rightly pour aid and money into the country and most of both will end up in the wrong hands, and the place will collapse back into chaos. In the middle of all of this will be the British Parachute regiment performing a peacekeeping role which is completely out of step with its “airborne shock troops” training and we will end up with blood on our hands and egg on our faces. In fact it has already started.


3. Axis of Evil

The U.N keeps a list of countries which sponsor terrorism. Its not a massive list but it certainly runs into double figures, so why did the U.S (not Bush…he is just the spokesman) only name three?

Quite simply it is a diplomatic game between the U.S and the countries mentioned.

Iraq will always be the bad guy of choice, because just like a naughty school boy Sadaam and his gang just will not get into step with the international community.

Why should he? Surely Iraq as a sovereign nation shouldn’t have to get in step. Its up to them what they do. This would be a reasonable assumption except that what Iraq does or doesn’t do affects all of the rest of the world. Its not like Albania, where no-one gave a fig what they got up to behind their closed borders, Iraq matters.

Its not just the Iraqi oil either, as the world can manage without that. Its Iraqs de-stabilising effect on the rest of that region, which is currently very very important to the fabric of western society. I will expand on the value of oil later in the op.

Iraq will be a target, however I am struggling to see how it will happen. Air attacks alone cannot defeat a country, that has been proven many times in the last 100 years, and I don’t see how ground forces could be built up and deployed easily this time around. We will have to wait and see.

North Korea is not a target. This is a dogmatic regime which has
been left behind by the modern world and is on the point of collapse from within. Their inclusion in the Axis of Evil will only focus internal pressure to get into the 21st century and to start to modernise their country rather than pay billions to sponsor terror against global capitalism.

Similarly Iran. After years of being Americas principle, and powerful, enemy most commentators predict that Iran would dearly love to rejoin the international community. Tehran is actually returning to western business, social and dress standards. Again the Axis speech is giving them the opportunity to expunge the terror and fundamentalist elements from their midst.

This is why Pakistan is not on the list, whereas 6 month ago it would have been. Quite simply Pakistan has been the bad boy of the sub continent for 30 years and has now seen an opportunity to be the good guys, and they are rounding terrorists up with a passion.

Even Gadaffi duck is taking the U.S side and pledging his support. The world is changing.

A question often asked is why the US itself is not listed for supporting the IRA. In fact I actually asked the question myself last time I was in a bar full of Americans in New York. Its funny though Non of the people I spoke to had ever supported the IRA!!!

I guess the difference is one of finance and succour. In the case of the Irish American population (mainly the one on Boston) this was a case of individuals financing terror, not the government.

As a footnote - many people were shocked at the pictures of people in Palestine celebrating the collapse of the towers, however I remember news reel pictures not so many years ago which showed Americans in a bar in Boston celebrating one of the IRA bombs in London which had killed some people, and handing around a collection which was labelled “spend a dollar, kill a Brit”. I hated them for that.

4. Oil and War

Some people often look at c
onflicts, particularly those in the Middle east and Africa, but also the one in the Falklands and in other far flung places and smugly assert that the war was not about its stated public aims, BUT ABOUT OIL!!!….as if this somehow makes it an unjust war, or that people died just so that you could tootle down the shops in your Honda Civic.

As with everything else the truth here is not black or white, but several shades of grey.

Lets look briefly at Kuwait and the Gulf War. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was brutal, violent and wrong. The public view of the response, as generally supported by the news media was that the allied military response was driven by an international desire to liberate a sovereign nation which was being oppressed by an evil neighbour.

The voice of the anti war lobby shouted that it was about oil and that oil wasn’t worth killing people for!

The truth was in that both versions were true, although without the oil reason it is doubtful that anyone would have had the political will to intervene militarily.

So what did the invasion of Kuwait mean in terms of world oil that was so bad? Well in actual fact the loss of Kuwaiti production whilst serious was not catastrophic, and in any case Saddam would have continued to trade it. The real threat was of further Iraqi expansion into Saudi Arabia, and that would have been catastrophic for the West as it would have cornered our main vital oil supplies.

You see like it or not, oil is the basis and foundation of our society and economic structure. Frankly without an affordable and robust supply of the stuff our society (yes that even includes you public school anarchists and champagne socialists) collapses faster than Enrons share price.

Look around you now. The first thing you should see is a computer. This is made of plastic (major manufacturing component is oil). It contains a fair amount of silicon (oil based). It was made in the
far east and was transported to the UK (loads of oil this time), and distributed to a shop (oil to power the lorry). The shop has power and heating from electricity suppliers (oil), and you probably used a car, bus, or train to get to and from the shop to buy it (more oil).

That is just one item, which if you are on DooYoo at this time of the day is probably pretty important to you, which without oil you couldn’t have, and with more expensive oil you probably couldn’t afford.

The same applies to your radio, cd player, t.v etc. What about your clothes? Probably man made textiles containing a healthy dose of oil in their manufacture, retail and distribution.

Now look at your fridge and cupboards which are full of nice healthy food. How did that food get produced? Did it need farm machinery (oil)? Did it need power to freeze or preserve it (oil)? How did it get to the shops (oil)? How did you get to the shops to buy it (oil)? And how did you pay for it? Was it with the wages from the job which relies on some kind of transaction involving vehicles, power, lighting and communications at some point (plenty of oil there).

But hey no…you are a free thinking backpacking traveller who knits your own clothes from the wool of your pet sheep, you only eat nutritious herbs from the roadside, and you spurn music or entertainment. Unfortunately you can only backpack as far as the channel as to get any further you will need to get on a ship or an aeroplane, or a train. MORE OIL!!

The evil black stuff is part of everything in our society and until we change our underpinning energy sources, which is far from an overnight job, we are dependant on it to the extent that it is actually very important to all of us that we are prepared to go to war to protect our supply.

We have North Sea oil, but apart from being so badly drilled that much of the potential is now inaccessible, it is oddly of such a high grade that it
is too specialist for most usage. Added to that it is also double the cost of most other regions to extract.

The point being that when people declare that oil is not worth dying for, my contention is that if it isn’t, what is? The fact is that nothing could collapse our society faster than a cut in the supply of oil or someone cornering the market.

Many on DooYoo I’m sure would say “hey yeah that’s great…collapse this evil western capitalist society” but I don’t think that would suit the majority of the population, and I wonder how millions of domestic deaths of the old helpless and infirm would sit on your consciences once we lost the ability to run power to our hospitals and to get food to our people etc.

Extreme? Maybe but lets look back less than a year to the farmers blockades of fuel depots. This was a haphazard, and half hearted blip in the supply of fuel to petrol stations that’s all. It didn’t affect emergency supply, or much of heavy industry and commerce which had alternative stocks.

Within two weeks the country was in a state of emergency. Firms were shutting their doors and laying people off because workers couldn’t get in to work. I personally live in a village and once my car had just enough petrol left to get to the nearest hospital in case of my kids having an emergency, I took it off the road and resigned myself to not going in to work again for the foreseeable future. Great, but we also couldn’t get to a supermarket, no coal or logs for our only source of heating, and our only source of provisions within a 7 mile radius were the little village shops which by now had empty shelves because there were no deliveries.

And this was just a temporary farmers protest which affected a small part of our petrol supply!

So the conclusion if you have to use military force for your very survival as a society, then oil is worth fighting
for. Its not just about fat industrialists getting fatter, or politicians getting oil votes, it affects us all.

Some op writers talk about the Afghanistan action being about oil. Having worked quite closely with the global oil industry for the last couple of years I have to say that I think that this is complete fantasy.

It is true that there is huge potential oil reserves in that region, as there are are in many parts of the world, but no oil company would be able to carry the cost of exploration, extraction and transportation from Afghanistan to the west.

It quite simply could never be made economical or secure, the two major factors in sustainable oil supply. The Russians could feasibly do slightly better from it but even they have shied away.

Afghanistan was about planes crashing into buildings in New York and OBL. Period.

5. Where do we go from here?

I’m not going to pretend to have an answer to this, because we are now on a roller coaster ride and things will adapt and change as we go along.

Where do I think the next US action will be? Somalia is my bet as they have a score to settle with Aidid and his cronies, who have always been thought to have been in league with AlQueada. Yemen will stay safe because like Pakistan they are being seen to be rooting out the terrorists, Sudan stands a chance because of past links with OBL and a history of supporting terror.

I do firmly believe that in conjuction with action against terrorists and fanatics we need to deal with the injustices of the world so that future terrorists have no label to stick on their fanatacism, and no support structure from people who think that they are being represented by them. Lets all work and lobby to eliminate world poverty and inequality.

Lets also stop justification of terror by referring back to past injustices. How many people on both sides of the sectarian divide in Ireland have been killed bec
ause sad old men cannot stop living in the past and talking / singing about things which happened hundreds of years ago?

Lets judge every action from here on its merits and application of the “does the theory or interpretation make sense”, and not because we believe that everything American or opposite to our personal politics is automatically wrong.

Lets also remember that idealism is wonderful, and at some point in our lives we should all be an idealist, but that pragmatism is what actually keeps the wheels turning.

And also remember that just because you read something which supports your view, doesn’t mean that it is automatically free from propaganda and is any more true than something which contradicts your view.

Finally before you condemn the actions of our governments, have a debateable alternative strategy which delivers potential results for us all.

At the end of the day, none of us have the full picture.

Now before the insults and intellectual sneers start to arrive, let me re-cap:

Ø I’m not American – I was born in Birmingham and live in Staffordshire.
Ø I’m not a Bush supporter – I think that most if not all U.S Presidents have been odd and corrupt. They are the best reason I can think of to keep a monarch as head of state!
Ø I value all life equally – But my instinct is to protect my children, wife, myself,and my society, in that order.
Ø I do not read the Sun – If I’m on the train I read the free copy if the Times, my office gets the Guardian, I use the FT when I’m on a business call and there is a copy of the Independent on my desk next to this P.C, which I picked up as it had a good in depth article about the plight of some Muslims in the U.S. I also sometimes buy Viz for the letters page.

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