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Believe me, it’s torture, says Hitchens.
Which returns us to my starting point, about the distinction between training for something and training to resist it. One used to be told—and surely with truth—that the lethal fanatics of al-Qaeda were schooled to lie, and instructed to claim that they had been tortured and maltreated whether they had been tortured and maltreated or not. Did we notice what a frontier we had crossed when we admitted and even proclaimed that their stories might in fact be true? I had only a very slight encounter on that frontier, but I still wish that my experience were the only way in which the words “waterboard” and “American” could be mentioned in the same (gasping and sobbing) breath.
You may find this video distressing.
Shmuel Bar, who is director of studies at the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya, writes in the latest edition of Policy Review. The subject of his essay is what Israel has learned about deterring terrorists. It’s a good read, and he even manages to quote one Gerry Adams.
While it is true that the individual suicide bomber cannot be deterred, the main conclusion of this article is that deterrence towards terrorist organizations is possible. Israel has achieved temporary and fragile deterrence vis- à-vis Hezbollah and the Palestinians over the years. There is no doubt that some periods of relative quiet have derived from a desire not to provoke an Israeli reaction to a terrorist attack that would neutralize any benefit from such an attack. This occasional tactical deterrence has been achieved not by the threat of force or by an image of Israel ’s capability (after all, the terrorist organization is, by definition, struggling against a much stronger adversary), but by actual application of force and by inducing the fear that the force would be reapplied and even increased.
Deterrence of this type is difficult to distinguish from disruption or from operational considerations that dictate when and where to perform acts of terrorism — as opposed to deterrence that deals with whether or not to do it. Deterrence in such cases does not take effect immediately after force has been applied, but after a period of situation estimate, and after some time its effects begin to wear off. One may say that effective deterrence has an element of dramaturgy; a gun that fires in the first act is no longer relevant for dramatic purposes in the last act. The “audience” gets used to the shots and the deterrence is eroded. Hence, it is necessary from time to time to refresh the awareness of the terrorist leadership that the state will indeed employ force. To paraphrase a well-known expression of classic deterrence, the state that attempts to deter terrorism must “ speak loudly and periodically use a big stick.
Classic Stewart.
I have to say I am somewhat dismayed by the reaction of the US authorities to the suicide of three Guantanamo inmates:
Rear Adm Harris said he did not believe the men had killed themselves out of despair.
“They are smart. They are creative, they are committed,” he said, quoted by Reuters.
“They have no regard for life, either ours or their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.”
It’s very smart and creative alright. They really do have no regard for their lives? It was an act of asymmetrical warfare?
It actually reads like something from the Daily Show. Even if these guys were cold-blooded murderers, would they still commit suicide as a method of ‘asymmetrical warfare’? I could understand if they took some of the guards down with them, ala suicide bombing, but what purpose does it serve by simply taking your own life?
In fact, given that these men are incarcerated without trial, without due process, without recourse, and without the normal system open to murderers on US soil, why would they do such a thing.
I have to apply a form of Occam’s Razor (entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem)to this and ask, what is more likely the simplest reason? That they commited suicide as an act of war against the US, or that they were driven to it after 4 or 5 years of internment and extreme interrogation?
You decide.
CNN are showing a video of the airstrike that has apparently killed one of the most wanted men in the world, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Whether or not his death will affect the overall insurgency remains to be seen. It could be just as likely that his successor will carry on as ever, though without the same propaganda effect Zarqawi had, having evaded capture for so long.
Incidentally, the notorious US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, will be on Newsnight tonight, discussing the death of Zarqawi, and probably his recent run-ins over the comments of Mark Brown.
London shooting take two?
A passenger claiming to have a bomb on board an American Airlines plane in Miami has been shot and wounded by a US federal officer, officials have said.
The passenger, who has been arrested, was challenged by the air marshal after he seemed to reach into a bag. He tried to flee and was shot.
The incident is said to have occurred on the jetway between the plane and the airport terminal.
The plane had just arrived from Colombia, and was headed to Orlando.
As John speculated in a comment on here last week, the CIA are seeking information about the leak.
Notes the NY Times:
The Central Intelligence Agency has asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation to determine the source of a Washington Post article that said the agency had set up a covert prison network in Eastern Europe and other countries to hold important terrorism suspects, government officials said on Tuesday.
The C.I.A.’s request, known as a crimes report or criminal referral, means that the Justice Department will undertake a preliminary review to determine if circumstances justify a criminal inquiry into whether any government official unlawfully provided information to the newspaper. The possibility of this new investigation follows by less than two weeks the perjury and obstruction indictment of I. Lewis Libby Jr., then Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, in a leak case involving other news reporting about a national security issue.
Hardly surprising but doesn’t help much:
The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.
The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.
Rory Carroll missing in Baghdad? I hope he will be ok.
A very curious letter, if it proves to be authentic.
In the missive, Zawahiri apparently warns tactics such as the killing of hostages and bombings of mosques may alienate the “Muslim masses,” Mr Whitman said.
“In this letter, he talks about believing that the eventual governance of Iraq must include the Muslim masses, and that they are at risk of alienating those,” he told reporters.
The letter was also said to detail the strategy of Muslim extremists to create an Islamic state centred on Iraq that could expand into neighbouring countries.
Zawahiri included a plea for financial support, Reuters news agency quoted Mr Whitman as saying.
The New York Times quoted a senior official as saying that the 6,000-word letter was dated early in July, and was obtained by US forces involved in counterterrorism operations in Iraq.
The letter also noted that they were losing in Afghanistan and they had lost many of their key leaders. Zawahiri is also badly in need of money apparently.
Tongue in cheek el Reg reports on news that Islamic websites are advertising for jobs:
According to Reuters, the fun-loving organisation has published web adverts “asking for supporters to help put together its Web statements and video montages”, or more precisely, it has “vacant positions for video production and editing statements, footage and international media coverage about militants in Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Chechnya and other conflict zones where militants are active.”
The advert was spotted by London-based Arabic publication Asharq al-Awsat which notes that al-Qaeda-linked web presence the Global Islamic Media Front promises to “follow up with members interested in joining and contact them via email”. It does not, though, specify how wannabes should make their applications, nor does it state a salary.
With regard to the latter, Asharq al-Awsat notes: “Every Muslim knows his life is not his, since it belongs to this violated Islamic nation whose blood is being spilt. Nothing should take precedence over this.” We take this to mean that successful applicants should not expect a six-figure salary, 28 days paid leave, a company car or health insurance, although you probably get a company AK-47 thrown in as part of the package.
Gitmo, as it has become known, still remains in a sort legal limbo. I had wondered what had happened since the Supreme Court ruling in June last year, the Economist clarifies:
Earlier this summer, there was talk of Guantánamo being shut down. Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, called it a “national disgrace? and “the primary recruiting tool for our enemies?. George Bush also seemed to wobble on the issue. But Mr Rumsfeld, who has just spent $100m refurbishing the camp, has never wavered from the idea that America needs a place to hold people indefinitely. If you want to create a “legal black hole?, to use the words of a British law lord, it is certainly a lot easier to do so outside the American mainland.
But what about the Supreme Court’s ruling in June last year giving Guantánamo detainees the right to challenge their detention in American courts? The justices, alas, did not give any details as to how this could happen. The administration promptly set up review panels to determine whether detainees had been rightly designated as “enemy combatants?; all but 38 of the 558 detainees had their status confirmed. Banned from attending the proceedings, their lawyers have dismissed them as a sham.
Dozens of habeas corpus lawsuits are working their way up through the federal courts. In January this year, a Washington, DC, district court judge ruled that the detainees were entitled to challenge their detention in normal courts. But a few days later, another district court judge issued a contradictory ruling. Both sides have appealed (oral arguments were heard by the DC appeals court this month), but the issue will surely go to the Supreme Court.
What appears to have gone largely unreported is that many of the current ‘prisoners’ are on hunger strike.
Over the past month, more than 100 detainees have been on hunger strike in protest against their indefinite detention without charge. Many have been held for nearly four years. A military spokesman said this week that 85 were still refusing food, including 15 hardliners who were undergoing “involuntary feeding? in hospital. Preventing prisoners from harming themselves was part of “standard operating procedures? in both American civilian and military prisons, he said.
Although not specifically banned under international law, force-feeding of prisoners is prohibited under the World Medical Association’s 1975 Declaration of Tokyo, which has been endorsed by the American Medical Association. The International Committee of the Red Cross also strongly advises against it. Its use in Guantánamo is likely to further enflame anti-American sentiment among Muslims; on the other hand, it may be preferable to a succession of deaths in Guantánamo.
I tend to agree with comments Ann-Marie Slaughter made at the Terrorism and Security Conference in Washington earlier this month - Gitmo is essentially America shooting itself in the foot, do as we say but not as we do.
I am at the Hilton in Washington now, and hope to live blog at least some of this event. It is also being webcast for those of you interested in watching it. It is also available on C-Span.
Oh I just spotted Philip Bobbitt! Am I the only one who looks at professors and thinks of them as celebrities?
It looks like an unsuccessful attack, but interesting in that in this region it was unexpected.
The ships were in port so sailors could train with regional partners, U.S. Navy Commander Jeff Breslau told CNN. “It’s very unusual for U.S. ships to be under attack in this part of the region.”
Apparently some high up militants were killed in Saudi:
Saleh Mohammed al-Aoofi was among six al-Qaeda linked militants said to be killed during police raids on several locations in two Saudi cities, Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour al-Turki told The Associated Press.
…al-Aoofi reportedly fought in Chechnya and travelled to Afghanistan where he joined al-Qaeda shortly before the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
I was thinking today that an attack on the UAE is now not out of the question given the breaking of the ‘covenent of security’ in the UK. And there are many high profile Western targets in Dubai.
Watching the last in the series, fascinating documentary.
The Times had a reporter inside a group calling itself the ‘Saviour Sect’…The full piece can be read here.
A Sunday Times reporter spent two months as a recruit inside the Saviour Sect to reveal for the first time how the extremist group promotes hatred of “non-believers? and encourages its followers to commit acts of violence including suicide bombings.
The reporter witnessed one of the sect’s leading figures, Sheikh Omar Brooks, telling a young audience, including children, that it was the duty of Muslims to be terrorists and boasting, just days before the July 7 attacks, that he wanted to die as a suicide bomber.
After the attacks that claimed 52 lives, another key figure, Zachariah, justified them by saying that the victims were not “innocent? people because they did not abide by strict Islamic laws. In the immediate aftermath the sect’s leader, Omar Bakri Mohammed, said: “For the past 48 hours I’m very happy.? Two weeks later he referred to the bombers as the “fantastic four?.
Sickos. A bit like the blokes on Newsnight last week.
MSNBC/Newsweek have quotes from the latest authour of ‘ex-CIA staffer tell-all’ story..
…in a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency’s Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora—intelligence operatives had tracked him—and could have been caught. “He was there,” Berntsen tells NEWSWEEK. Asked to comment on Berntsen’s remarks, National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones passed on 2004 statements from former CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks. “We don’t know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001,” Franks wrote in an Oct. 19 New York Times op-ed. “Bin Laden was never within our grasp.” Berntsen says Franks is “a great American. But he was not on the ground out there. I was.”
This idea was oft cited by Kerry during the election campaign last year, what agenda Bersten has remains to be seen - but on the face of it, I am inclined to believe him rather than Rumsfeld.
This has been the big story of the day. According to my own sources he was wearing a bomb belt, and according to one witness he was:
Another passenger on the train, Anthony Larkin, told BBC News the man appeared to be wearing a “bomb belt with wires coming out”.
We shall have to wait for confirmation.
It looks like some of the devices failed to explode, the detonators may have.
I really don’t know what to make of Ronan Mullen’s remarks today. Has anyone any thoughts on this?
We have grounds for humility. It took Western Christianity centuries to arrive at the insight that human dignity called for freedom of religion, equal opportunities between the sexes and so on. But Islam’s problem is that it’s not there yet. It does not have the centralisation of religious authority which can both unify people around a coherent set of values and prevent the emergence of extremes. That is a real problem which cannot be explained by American preoccupation with oil, Israeli oppression of the Palestinians or the invasion of Iraq.
I really am stumped. Where do I start?
It sounds like what he is really getting at is Islam - not to mention fundamentalist Islam - is an inferior religion to Christianity. He also seems to suggest there there are not as many extremes in Christianity. Does this strike anyone as just a little ethnocentric?
To follow logically what he is saying -
Christianity (the West) is centuries ahead of Islam (Near East, Middle East) on the human rights front. Islam needs to be more like Christianity, because Christianity is centuries ahead of it. The centralisation of power in Christianity unifies people (surely he means Catholicism, unless he means the Great Schism, Reformation, Counter-Reformation), and prevents the emergence of extremism (can you count the number of extreme Christian movements?).
What this does reek of is cultural and religious superiority. And given Mullen’s track record it is not Christianity he refers to, it is that special flavour (or extreme, depending on your view) called ‘Catholicism’.
Services are gradually returning to normal, though on many lines the passenger numbers have been reduced by a factor of 10. I have heard stories of passenger numbers in places like White City and Bond Street. Where on a normal Friday 50 people might get on at White City, 2 got on today. At Bond Street where there would normally be 100 people getting on, 4 people got on. There are large numbers of police in the underground, sniffer dogs, CSO’s, on trains, in stations, everywhere.
As for King’s Cross, the tunnel is apparently in very bad shape - near collapse. There are still a large number of bodies, possibly up to 30 in the wreakage and the tunnel. Supports will likely be needed to make the tunnel safe first, so expect the number of victims to rise from the current 50 or so to closer the 70 or 80 mark, perhaps even more. The Irish Times reports:
Andy Hayman of the city’s specialist operations branch said police had yet to reach one of the London underground train carriages where a bomb went off at rush hour yesterday.
“When I describe the scene in Russell Square, it has yet to be the case for us to get near the carriage,” he told a press conference. “There is the threat of the tunnel being unsafe.”
The blast on the underground train between King’s Cross and Russell Square stations killed at least 21 people.
“The complexity of getting to the carriage is one of safety,” Mr Hayman said. “Just imagine an explosion that far into a tunnel in that number of the carriage, I think we can all respect the sort of things our people are actually confronting,” he added.
“I think out of respect for others that’s probably the most detail I’d want to go into.”
Search parties have been able to get near the carriage, and have accessed the situation. The diplomatic speak is probably the best thing right now, one can only imagine the scene.
The driver of the Picadilly train that was going between Russell Square and King’s Cross survived the attack. The bomb exploded in either the 2nd or 3rd carriage of the train. The train was packed, but casualty figures may be lighter than expected, perhaps down to just how packed the train was. We will have to wait and see.
Both drivers involved in the Edgware road bomb are safe, both taken to hospital with shock, with no reports as yet of injuries to Underground staff.
My thoughts are with the familes of the victims, and all those affected.
This is a terrorist attack.
The BBC are reporting the explosions as the fault of power surges, but according to my own sources in London Underground, this is highly unlikely. And power surges don’t happen on buses either. I am trying to contact other friends and sources in London, but every phone is not acccessible. The explosions are in Liverpool Street, Aldgate, Edgware Road, Old Street and Russell Square. A bus in Tavistock has definately been blown up.
From my own sources in London:
the major lines are affected are the Hammersmith and City, Circle, Central and Metropolitan Lines.
2 bags found under seats
body parts seen in underground
the entire underground has been shut down
all intercity services have been halted.
100 people per carriage at peak times, 800 people per train, or thereabouts at the times involved.
More as I get it.
Update: 10.55am
All other trains on the underground have been evacuated, there are no reports of trains stuck between stations.
Mobile phones are not working for large parts of London, probably due to loads ton the network.
Update: 11.10am
Having watched the pictures of the bus explosion on Tavistock Square, the entire top half of the bus appears to have been blown off, one could speculate that this is a Madrid-style attack. All bus services in London have stopped. Casualties have been numbered at 20, but I think the figure is likely to be alot higher. The BBC London website, and the Guardian websites are getting huge loads.
Update 11.23:
Tony Blair to make statement at midday.
Update 12.54
Charles Clarke due to make statement at 1.15pm. I guess the one advantage London has in tracking down terrorists is that there are cameras literally everywhere in London, either for security or the congestion charge. Reports from Washington DC suggest that public transport systems are being actively searched.
Update 13.08
According to my London Underground sources there are people trapped on the Picadilly Line between Russell Square and King’s Cross. The problem facing emergency services is the depth, at that point the tunnel, is between 150 and 200 feet down. People who have visited London may know these stations for their very long escalators.
The tunnels themselves are also quite narrow, which could mean the tunnels themselves may have been affected by the blast. The emergency services are moving extractors down to take out smoke in the tunnels.
This particular line is extremely congested, and was so at the time of the explosion. Becase the line is so deep, the casualty figures will likely remain low for some time, but then dramatically rise. If two trains were involved it could mean as much as 1600 people on board, with unknown figures for people who managed to escape.
Update 13.48
Check out the UK blogs aggregator for reaction and stories about the events.
Caoimhe points to Chris who has a tranlsation of a claim of responsibility from an Islamist website, bare in mind this is just one of many claims that will come:
Announcement on London’s Operation 7/7/2005
Jamaat al-Tandheem Al-Sierri (secret organization group)
Organization of Qaeda’t al-Jihad in EuropeIn the name of God the most merciful…
Rejoice the nation of Islam, rejoice nation of Arabs, the time of revenge has come for the crusaders’ Zionist British government.
As retaliation for the massacres which the British commit in Iraq and Afghanistan, the mujahideen have successfully done it this time in London.
And this is Britain now burning from fear and panic from the north to the south, from the east to the west.
We have warned the brutish governments and British nation many times.
And here we are, we have done what we have promised. We have done a military operation after heavy work and planning, which the mujahideen have done, and it has taken a long time to ensure the success of this operation.
And we still warn the government of Denmark and Italy, all the crusader governments, that they will have the same punishment if they do not pull their forces out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
So beware.
Thursday 7/7/2005
Jamaat al-Tandheem Al-Sierri (secret organization group)
Organization of al Qaeda’t al-Jihad in Europe.
Update: 14.42
Flickr have a pool for photos from London
Technorati is filling up with posts.
The bus has been identified: A Transport for London spokeswoman says the bus hit by the explosion was a number 30, travelling from Hackney to Marble Arch.
Update: 14:48
Moblog photos have started appearing.
The Guardian’s newsblog is one of the best sources for those of you not watching TV
Update: 15:46
The BBC have pulled out all the stops to stream TV over the net, works better than even on normal news days.
Update: 15:48
Terminal 3 in Heathrow is being evacuated
Sounds omninous. The fact that one of the guys was already on a no-fly list seems strange, especially since he is living in the US.
Worrying news indeed from Qatar. This would appear to be work of al-Qaeda, and if it is, is the first attack (outside of Iraq) for quite a while. As the Observer piece notes:
Al-Qaeda militants have staged attacks in neighbouring Saudi Arabia and Kuwait but Qatar, a key US ally, has seen no Islamist violence and prides itself on its security. Qatar hosts the US military’s Central Command, and two years ago was a launch pad for the US-led invasion of Iraq.
Most of the theatre’s members are from the UK, although other nationalities are represented, according to the Doha Players’ website.
What makes this more worrying is that Qatar is indeed the base for US military operation in the region. That the attack happened to a civilan target, on Western interests in the region, and in the country of US bases, and was a car bomb, seems to show that it was a planned al-Qaeda operation, and not the work of a lone bomber. This means that there is at least one active al-Qaeda cell in the country. I guess one of the results of the invasion of Iraq is that terrorists there are perfecting their bomb-making skills, and may be exporting this intellectual capital to other cells.
How long before an attack on my oft-visited city, Dubai? I can only guess, but Dubai has long served as a hub for al-Qaeda, so I would wonder if an attack there would be counter-productive. That said the Emirates are a target just like any other, with plenty of Western interests there extremely vulnerable to an attack such as this. The BBC has more.
The Italians are now contradicting the US version of events in relation to the killing of Nicola Calipari. The other agent in the car has said that the car did come to a halt, but the car was fired on anyway. The investigation into the incident could take up to 4 weeks.
Europeans did do as requested in relation to Hamas, but now the US is demanding the same treatment for Hezbollah. The European argument for not listing Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation:
…some European countries are questioning whether Hamas should remain listed now that some of its members have won elections in Gaza.
This argument, pressed by Britain and others, is that the best way to lure Hamas leaders into the political process and have them abandon their militancy and their policy of trying to eradicate Israel is to offer the carrot of removal from lists as terrorist organizations.
The Bush administration strenuously opposes any such action. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was said by U.S. and European officials to have pressed for listing Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in practically every stop in Europe last week.
The Europeans are fearful about the affect it might have on negotiations with Iran on nuclear energy/weapons. The report continues:
The United States has rebuffed European appeals to become more directly involved in discussions with Iran over its suspected nuclear program.
The Hezbollah dispute now gets added to a long list of matters that divide Europe and the United States despite the new campaign that they share broad values of freedom and liberty.
The other issues that should come to the fore on Bush’s visit are the negotiations with Iran over its suspected nuclear program and American opposition to Europe’s determination to lift an arms embargo imposed in 1989 on China.
Also dividing Europe and the United States is the the issue of European support for the Kyoto treaty on global warming and the International Criminal Court, both opposed by the United States, and American opposition to another term for Mohamed ElBaradei as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The ElBaradei case, like Hezbollah, is related to the situation in Iran, because European diplomats are arguing that ElBaradei, a Muslim, is best suited to press the Iranians to cooperate with steps to dismantle its disputed uranium enrichment and plutonium reactor programs.
Is this another urban myth?
At the political level, a U.S. Senate subcommittee on Palestinian education and the Political Committee of the European Parliament have both held hearings on the matter. No country’s textbooks have been subjected to as much close scrutiny as the Palestinian.
The findings? It turns out that the original allegations were based on Egyptian or Jordanian textbooks and incorrect translations. Time and again, independently of each other, researchers find no incitement to hatred in the Palestinian textbooks.
The European Union has issued a statement that the new textbooks are free of inciting content and the allegations were unfounded. The IPCRI 2003 report states that the overall orientation of the curriculum is peaceful and does not incite to hatred or violence against Israel and the Jews, and the 2004 report states that there are no signs of promoting hatred toward Israel, Judaism or Zionism, nor toward the Western Judeo-Christian tradition or values.
Yet Sharon now claims that the Palestinian textbooks are a greater threat than terrorism. If that is so, education for peace and conflict resolution has become the greatest threat to Israel. Maybe it is: What little independent research has been done on Israeli textbooks, together with the recent New Profile report on the militarization of the Israeli education system, gives grounds for serious concern about what is happening to future generations on that side of the wall. Peace might feel threatening to a war-ingrained identity.
If, as part of its policy of reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq, the White House is looking for a modern education founded in positive Islamic values and which promotes peace and conflict resolution, it should look at Palestinian textbooks for a model.
The first editions are not perfect: There are gaps in the presentation of both Palestinian and Israeli history, but they are a good starting point nonetheless.
As usual in national curriculum processes, criticism from extremists on either side is a sign that the process is probably on the right track. The biggest constraint, in the words of a Palestinian parent, is that Israeli tanks and soldiers are shooting in the streets outside while teachers are trying to promote peace in the classroom.
Shooting mortars into Israeli towns and suicide bombings are also not good models for children who are to learn in school that conflicts can and should be resolved through dialogue. That is a lesson which will only have meaning when both sides can live in freedom and peace.
PARIS Tony Blair gave a major talk last Friday on terrorism and the intervention in Iraq that was a strange combination of apocalyptic warning and anodyne remedy, very different from what has been said on the same subjects by the George W. Bush administration in Washington.
The British prime minister declared that Islamic extremism constitutes a threat that could “engulf” the world. The scale of this threat, according to Blair, requires abandoning the framework of international law and interstate relations that has served society for the last three and a half centuries.
Blair told his parliamentary constituents in northern England that Islamic extremist collaboration with rogue states to obtain weapons of mass destruction warrants an aggressive new international legal standard justifying international or state intervention in other countries, overriding their sovereignty.
This superficially resembles the claim made by the Bush administration’s national security strategy statement of September 2002, that when circumstances make it seem necessary, Washington intends to take pre-emptive action “to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack.”
Blair placed his argument concerning weapons of mass destruction in the context of “humanitarian” interventions into the affairs of other countries to remove despotic regimes, an idea that has been making its way since the Yugoslav wars of secession and the Rwanda genocide.
His references were all to Iraq and to radical Islam, however, and the purpose of his talk was to justify his decision to take Britain into the war in Iraq - where, unfortunately for his argument, there were no weapons of mass destruction, and until after the occupation began, there were no Islamic terrorists.
The difference between the British and American positions lies in the robust nationalism of the American statement. It concerns threats to U.S. security. It says that it was possible in the past for the United States to rely on deterrence based on the threat of retaliation. Nuclear weapons were then mutually “considered weapons of last resort” that risked the survival of those who used them.
Today, the statement went on, weapons of mass destruction are seen by America’s enemies “as weapons of choice” for aggression or to intimidate neighbors, and are considered usable in order to blackmail the United States and its allies so that they do not attack rogue regimes.
Established international law concerning pre-emptive defense must be modified, it said, to allow “anticipatory action,” to disarm threats to the United States. References to allies and global interests in the security statement were infrequent and perfunctory.
The American position was challenged for just that reason. Its claim to a right of unilateral American pre-emption in the national interest, against a unilaterally determined threat, was criticized internationally in the historical context of powerful or dominant nations who do what they please. The United States was accused of merely rationalizing its own self-interested conduct.
Blair, making his argument in terms of the common international interest, failed to suggest a standard of evidence or a forum for international decision that an armed “humanitarian” intervention is justified.
Who decides? The prime minister says of the United Nations that even now “it is strange that the United Nations is so reluctant” to enforce its own Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
But as the United Nations acts in such a matter only when it is told to act by the Security Council, of which Britain is a permanent member, this would seem a reproach to Britain itself.
Blair says that the United Nations should be reformed, adding that “poverty in Africa” and “justice in Palestine” should also be addressed, and “our duty” should be acknowledged “to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan as stable and democratic nations.” This does not lend much weight to his case. Iraq and Afghanistan have yet to become conclusive arguments for the humanitarian benefits of overthrowing tyrannical regimes, with or without weapons of mass destruction.
Blair actually abandons his argument at just the point where it becomes interesting. Interventions to seize weapons of mass destruction and interventions meant to impose humanitarian standards of government are quite different things. Are we talking about North Korea, or Zimbabwe and Haiti?
Blair and Bush ultimately build their case on their personal intuitions, provoked by the Sept. 11 attacks, that something new had appeared in the world. They both concluded, as Bush was to put it, that they had to “rid the world of evil.” But their argument that Islamic extremism is a “global threat” is indefensible. The Islamists can make spectacular attacks on Britain or the United States, but neither country, nor any of the other democracies, is in the slightest danger of being “engulfed” by terrorism, or shaken from its democratic foundations.
The Islamists are a challenge to Islamic society itself, but a limited one. Their doctrine will run its course, and eventually be rejected by Muslims as a futile strategy for dealing with the modern world.
Yglesias continued the discussion here after mentioning Andrew Sulliva’ns views. I think Pfaff is right - they are a limited threat to both Islamic society and Western society.
This marks a new tactic by the insurge… terrorist murderers.
Insurgents lured Iraqi policemen to a house in west Baghdad and set off a huge amount of explosives, killing at least 29 people, seven of them police.
It’s estimated that 1 tonne of explosives were wired to the building. It does seem like alot of effort for the relatively small amount of casualties, especially since most of those killed were civilians. Are Iraqis not getting pissed off with this?
What now for the detainess in ‘Britains Guantanamo’? These look like some pretty dangerous individuals, but is it really necessary to have this level of security?
Will Europe see more Madrid and Istanbul style attacks? Many analysts are saying that Europe is at greater risk than the US.
Ursula Mueller, a German diplomat with terror expertise, said that European-based terrorists were under pressure; terror operations have been averted in London, Paris and Madrid. “But they continue to focus on catastrophic attacks,” she said.
“There are indications,” Mueller said, “that Europe is at greater risk for terrorist attack than is the U.S.” - particularly U.S. allies with troops in Iraq, but also Germany, which has 2,200 troops in Afghanistan.
“The situation may become much more precarious,” said Greg Mascolo, Der Spiegel’s Washington bureau chief and author of “Inside 9-11.”
“Europe’s threat is growing from the inside,” Mascolo said.
Krugman’s pre-election thoughts on the lost munitions at al-Qaqaa, and provides yet more food for thought:
The story of the looted explosives has overshadowed another report that Bush officials tried to suppress - this one about how the Bush administration let Abu Musab al-Zarqawi get away. An article in Monday’s Wall Street Journal confirmed and expanded on an “NBC Nightly News” report from March that asserted that before the Iraq war, administration officials called off a planned attack that might have killed Zarqawi, the terrorist now blamed for much of the mayhem in that country, in his camp.
Citing “military officials,” the original NBC report explained that the failure to go after Zarqawi was based on domestic politics: “The administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq” - a part of Iraq not controlled by Saddam Hussein - “could undermine its case for war against Saddam.” The Journal doesn’t comment on this explanation, but it does say that when NBC reported, correctly, that Zarqawi had been targeted before the war, administration officials denied it.
What other mistakes did the administration make? If partisan appointees like Goss continue to control the intelligence agencies, we may never know.
This isn’t speculation: Goss is already involved in a new cover-up. Last week Robert Scheer of The Los Angeles Times revealed the existence of a devastating but suppressed report by the CIA’s inspector general on 9/11 intelligence failures. Newsweek has now confirmed the gist of Scheer’s column.
The report, the magazine says, “identifies a host of current and former officials who could be candidates for possible disciplinary procedures.” But although the report was completed in June, Goss has refused to release it to Congress. “Everyone feels it will be better if this hits the fan after the election,” an official told the magazine. Better for whom?
What really happened on 9/11, or in Iraq? Next week’s election may determine whether we ever find out
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Don Rumsfeld with something surprising today:
The actual words Mr Rumsfeld used in his comments on Monday to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York were: “To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two.”
He also said he had seen the intelligence “migrate in amazing ways”, without explaining what that meant.
His statement was in marked contrast to what he said in September 2002 when he described the evidence of a link as “bullet-proof.”
This comes at the same time as Paul Bremer saying that there were not enough troops on the ground after the invasion. Rummy seems to be getting tongue tied here, he was so certain 2 years ago, he stated as “fact”. His words. Now he is not sure. Does all this constitute a lie?
Came across this website on Blogs of War also, please go and donate -
While everyone who knew Jack grieves at such a senseless loss of life, it is with his daughter Sara our thoughts reside. The loss of a father can never truly be healed, but it is possible to help make sure her academic future is secure.
If you would like to give to the Sara Hensley Trust you can mail a check to the following address:
Sara Hensley Trust
C/O First Citizens Bank
2880 Hwy 160 West
Fort Mill, SC 29708
The video (WMV) of Eugene Armstrong has been posted. If you wish to see the video I urge extreme caution, while I have not watched it myself, it contains graphic and horrific scenes. Do not go to ogrish.com, if you do not wish to see it.
The ins and outs of publishing this type of information have been argued before, but I still believe people have a right to choose, should they wish to watch these videos. And the demand out there is enormous.
Update:
The vast majority of people leaving comments are expressing their heartfealt horror, and sympathy, with those who are being murdered. I wholeheartedly agree. Some readers have previously expressed opinions on the issue of whether linking to a site that holds a copy of the video is in fact aiding the murderers aims, and promoting their ideas. The discussions can be found below. Previous criticism has come from regular readers. The discussion continued here. It again arose in relation to the the Paul Johnson murder. And here too.
It should also be noted that several of the bigger blogs on the Internet do link to blogs linking to sites that show the video, or link directly to sites that show the video. For example, Blogs of War.
Many people have expressed to me that they want to see exactly what is happening.
I watched the Nick Berg video with disgust - and will never again watch one of these videos. The release today of “Dr. Germ” may just quell al-Zaraqawi, and hopefully we will see the release of the British hostage.
As many other bloggers have noted - I am horrified by these events and condemn them without question. My sincere sympathies go to the families of these men, along with the sympathies of most people commenting below.
For a very lengthy debate, and dozens of links to debate about the issue of linking please read Jay Rosen and Jeff Marshall. Jay Rosen is a Professor at NYU.
If anyone wants to express their views in a non public space then please email - gavin at gavinsblog dot com.
Update: Relatives of Jack Hensley, also killed in Iraq, have posted a page where you can donate money to his family. Money can be sent in a number of ways. Almost all of the people leaving comments are expressing profound sympathy - do something practical and go here.
An Islamist website claiming to be linked to the group holding Ken Bigley and two Americans says one of the Americans has been killed.
The website carries a nine-minute video purporting to show the man being beheaded.
Earlier, Tony Blair said Britain would not give in to the hostage takers.
The Reuters news agency reports a US official has confirmed the body of one of the American hostages has been recovered.
A statement on the website said: “The group will next behead the others”.
He is at it again. Reading the latest article I have one question to ask that seems to stand out in his line of reasoning. Well actually I have a few questions.
Overall, this latest article is about Islam, and Islamo-fascism. He believes that the war on terror is in essence, not a war on a tactic, but a war on, essentially, a people. For instance:
As I’ve said here before, by 2030 Europe will be Eurabia — at least semi-Islamified, with Muslim lobby groups transformed into Muslim political parties, with their own representatives serving in coalitions with bewildered Continental multiculturalists. (The recent by-elections in the Midlands, with the Friends of al-Aqsa Committee summoning the candidates to a tribunal in order to see who could outpander the others, is only an interim phase.) In the last three decades, Europe has taken in (officially) some 20 million Muslims (officially) — or the equivalent of the populations of three EU countries (Ireland, Belgium, Denmark). Once you look at it like that, why should they have less say in the corridors of Euro-power than Ben Bot or Bertie Ahern? Imagine France with a 20 per cent Muslim bloc and then consider the likelihood of French forces fighting alongside the US ever again.
And he is probably right, When Turkey join the European Union we will see a huge increase in the percentage of Muslims in Europe. But what has this got to do with Islamic terrorism exactly? He uses Holland as an example:
Last year a senior Dutch cabinet minister talked me through some very interesting findings apropos his own country’s Islamic population. The grandchildren of Muslims who arrived in Holland in the Seventies are often more militantly Islamist and unassimilated than their grandparents.
So his point seems to be, correct me if I am wrong here, that more Muslims in Europe equals more terrorists? One could also point out that the UK and Germany both seen massive influxes of Muslims into their countries, and this has not really led to any “Ukabia” or “Gerabia”. And why does he mix the words Europe with Arab anyway?
Furthermore he says:
Three years after September 11, the Islamist death cult is the love whose name no one dare speak. And, if you can’t even bring yourself to identify your enemy, are you likely to defeat him? Can you even know him? He seems to know us pretty well.
Islamist death cult? He seems to keep getting mixed up between Muslims, the vast majority of whom are pretty nice people, who happen to believe in a non-Christian viewpoint, and Islamist murderers - who go and kill anyone they want in the name of the more extreme forms of Islamic belief. He attempts to strengthen his point in relation to the new war with this little gem:
Between 1970 and 2000, the developed world declined from just under 30 per cent of the world’s population to just over 20 per cent, and the population of Muslim nations increased from about 15 per cent to 20 per cent. 1970 isn’t that long ago.
Mr. Steyn, is the war you talk about a war on Islamist death cults? Or Islam itself? If it’s just the death cults then why quote figures about the increase in numbers of one particular form of religious belief? Why, in the article does one paragraph concern Islamic terrorism, followed by a paragraph about the growth of Islamic populations? Is what you are really saying some kind of Huntington-esque clash of civilizations, and what we really have to do is stop the growth of Islam, and stop them coming into Europe? Just wondering.
Victor Erofeyev sounds alot like John Waters in the Irish Times last week, and Mark Steyn in the Spectator last Thursday.
Where does Basayev end and Al Qaeda begin? A separatist and a fundamentalist are two very different things. The first demands political separation; the second declares holy war against us. But the separatist Basayev no longer exists. A massacre of children worthy of Herod is not a coded invitation to peace negotiations. Basayev’s message can no longer be reduced to vengeance, an idea that presumes we call it quits when all the scores have been settled.
The military dispute over Chechen sovereignty, morally impossible for Russia to win from the very beginning, has mutated, leaving none of the old certainties in place. Like Osama bin Laden’s attack on the United States, Basayev’s attack on the school signifies the start here of the Third World War of which the whole of Western civilization is so rightly afraid, which it tries with all its might to postpone, which it even tries to ignore.
Javier Marías is the author of “Dark Back of Time.”, and makes an interesting argument right at the end of the piece, I am inclined to agree with him.
Here in Spain, we don’t feel as if we are at war because we aren’t. And neither are the inhabitants of the United States, however vociferously many Americans may insist that they are.
War is something else entirely. No semi-normal life can be led while a war is going on. The residents of Madrid who lived through the siege of their city between 1936 and 1939 know that very well. The survivors of the daily bombardments of London during World War II know it, too. And those Americans who participated in that war know it, also.
There is no war against terrorism. There can be no such thing against an enemy that remains dormant most of the time and is almost never visible. It’s simply another of life’s inevitable troubles, and all we can do as we continue to combat it is repeat Cervantes’s famous phrase “Paciencia y barajar”: “Have patience, and keep shuffling the cards.”
Not since the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 have I been as frightened by a single news story as I was by the revelation late last year that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons program, had been selling nuclear technology and services on the black market. The story began to break last summer, after U.S. and British intelligence operatives intercepted a shipment of parts for centrifuges (which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs as well as fuel) on its way from Dubai to Libya. The centrifuges turned out to have been designed by Khan, and before long investigators had uncovered what the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has called a “Wal-Mart of private-sector proliferation”—a decades-old illicit market in nuclear materials, designs, technologies, and consulting services, all run out of Pakistan.
Two French journalists held hostage in Iraq have urged their government to lift a ban on Muslim headscarves in schools to save their lives. In a new video shown on Arabic TV station al-Jazeera, the men also called on French people to protest against the law, due to come into force this week.
If this one plays out badly we will see videos released on Islamist websites showing the journalists being beheaded. I do hope they return safely.
Philip Bobbitt wrote a very good criticism of the current system of terror warnings a couple of weeks back. Have a read.
A top Russian official acknowledged on Thursday what many citizens already suspected - that terrorism was the most likely cause of two jetliners crashing minutes apart, a feeling reflected in a newspaper headline warning that “Russia now has a Sept. 11” :
Read the rest of this entry »
Irish hack Orla Guerin writes about her recent experience with being held by IDF forces.
…But before we found him, Israeli troops found us, forcing us at gunpoint into a disused room on the upper storey - first the cameraman, then the producer, then me. There we saw Rana, trapped in a chair in the corner, a white headscarf on her silver hair. She was neatly dressed, and alert, flanked protectively by the doctor and a Palestinian paramedic. Soldiers seized our phones, confiscated our camera tape and when we tried to leave forced us back, at the barrel of a gun.
She continues:
As the minutes stretched into hours, he asked how long we would be kept there. “You’ll be here until we kill someone,” a soldier replied, in perfect English. “We’re being held illegally,” I said. The soldiers nodded in agreement, but still refused to let us go. “You could compromise our operation,” one said, “by revealing our location.”
More seriously she notes:
Later a few threats were murmured in my direction. “She’ll get out of here in a body bag,” one soldier said in Hebrew, assuming incorrectly, that we would not understand.
Crazy behaviour by any armed force, is it not?
Yet another video, it may or may not be a hoax. And it may or may not be a CIA man. Will have to wait and see how this one plays out.