Britain's Ward Churchill
July 12, 2005
By Douglas B. Wakeman
Unbelievably, the Ward Churchills in England do not hide out in obscurity on the campus of some deviant university like CU here in America. They come right out spewing their filth in major newspapers. Here is an article written by one Gary Younge in The Guardian and my response emailed to him at g.younge@guardian.co.uk
Blair's
blowback
Of course those who backed the Iraq war refute any link with the London bombs -
they are in the deepest denial
Gary Younge
Monday July 11, 2005
The Guardian
Shortly after September 11 2001, when the slightest mention of a link between US
foreign policy and the terrorist attacks brought accusations of heartless
heresy, the then US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice got to work.
Between public displays of grief and solemnity she managed to round up the
senior staff of the National Security Council and ask them to think seriously
about "how do you capitalise on these opportunities" to fundamentally change
American doctrine and the shape of the world. In an interview with the New
Yorker six months later, she said the US no longer had a problem defining its
post-cold war role. "I think September 11 was one of those great earthquakes
that clarify and sharpen. Events are in much sharper relief." For those
interested in keeping the earth intact in its present shape so that we might one
day live on it peacefully, the bombings of July 7 provide no such
"opportunities". They do not "clarify" or "sharpen" but muddy and bloody already
murky waters. As the identities of the missing emerge, we move from a
statistical body count to the tragedy of human loss - brothers, mothers, lovers
and daughters cruelly blown away as they headed to work. The space to mourn
these losses must be respected. The demand that we abandon rational thought,
contextual analysis and critical appraisal of why this happened and what we can
do to limit the chances that it will happen again, should not. To explain is not
to excuse; to criticise is not to capitulate.
We know what took place. A group of people, with no regard for law, order or our way of life, came to our city and trashed it. With scant regard for human life or political consequences, employing violence as their sole instrument of persuasion, they slaughtered innocent people indiscriminately. They left us feeling unified in our pain and resolute in our convictions, effectively creating a community where one previously did not exist. With the killers probably still at large there is no civil liberty so vital that some would not surrender it in pursuit of them and no punishment too harsh that some might not sanction if we found them.
The trouble is there is nothing in the last paragraph that could not just as easily be said from Falluja as it could from London. The two should not be equated - with over 1,000 people killed or injured, half its housing wrecked and almost every school and mosque damaged or flattened, what Falluja went through at the hands of the US military, with British support, was more deadly. But they can and should be compared. We do not have a monopoly on pain, suffering, rage or resilience. Our blood is no redder, our backbones are no stiffer, nor our tear ducts more productive than the people in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those whose imagination could not stretch to empathise with the misery we have caused in the Gulf now have something closer to home to identify with. "Collateral damage" always has a human face: its relatives grieve; its communities have memory and demand action.
These basic humanistic precepts are the principle casualties of fundamentalism, whether it is wedded to Muhammad or the market. They were clearly absent from the minds of those who bombed London last week. They are no less absent from the minds of those who have pursued the war on terror for the past four years.
Tony Blair is not responsible for the more than 50 dead and 700 injured on Thursday. In all likelihood, "jihadists" are. But he is partly responsible for the 100,000 people who have been killed in Iraq. And even at this early stage there is a far clearer logic linking these two events than there ever was tying Saddam Hussein to either 9/11 or weapons of mass destruction.
It is no mystery why those who have backed the war in Iraq would refute this connection. With each and every setback, from the lack of UN endorsement right through to the continuing strength of the insurgency, they go ever deeper into denial. Their sophistry has now mutated into a form of political autism - their ability to engage with the world around them has been severely impaired by their adherence to a flawed and fatal project. To say that terrorists would have targeted us even if we hadn't gone into Iraq is a bit like a smoker justifying their habit by saying, "I could get run over crossing the street tomorrow." True, but the certain health risks of cigarettes are more akin to playing chicken on a four-lane highway. They have the effect of bringing that fatal, fateful day much closer than it might otherwise be.
Similarly, invading Iraq clearly made us a target. Did Downing Street really think it could declare a war on terror and that terror would not fight back? That, in itself, is not a reason to withdraw troops if having them there is the right thing to do. But since it isn't and never was, it provides a compelling reason to change course before more people are killed here or there. So the prime minister got it partly right on Saturday when he said: "I think this type of terrorism has very deep roots. As well as dealing with the consequences of this - trying to protect ourselves as much as any civil society can - you have to try to pull it up by its roots."
What he would not acknowledge is that his alliance with President George Bush has been sowing the seeds and fertilising the soil in the Gulf, for yet more to grow. The invasion and occupation of Iraq - illegal, immoral and inept - provided the Arab world with one more legitimate grievance. Bush laid down the gauntlet: you're either with us or with the terrorists. A small minority of young Muslims looked at the values displayed in Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay and Camp Bread Basket - and made their choice. The war helped transform Iraq from a vicious, secular dictatorship with no links to international terrorism into a magnet and training ground for those determined to commit terrorist atrocities. Meanwhile, it diverted our attention and resources from the very people we should have been fighting - al-Qaida.
Leftwing axe-grinding? As early as February 2003 the joint intelligence committee reported that al-Qaida and associated groups continued to represent "by far the greatest terrorist threat to western interests, and that that threat would be heightened by military action against Iraq". At the World Economic Forum last year, Gareth Evans, the former Australian foreign minister and head of the International Crisis Group thinktank, said: "The net result of the war on terror is more war and more terror. Look at Iraq: the least plausible reason for going to war - terrorism - has been its most harrowing consequence."
None of that justifies what the bombers did. But it does help explain how we got where we are and what we need to do to move to a safer place. If Blair didn't know the invasion would make us more vulnerable, he is negligent; if he did, then he should take responsibility for his part in this. That does not mean we deserved what was coming. It means we deserve a lot better.
2005/07/12
Gary Younge
I am endlessly fascinated by Leftist appeasers who place the blame for Islamo-Fascist atrocities on the only people who are fighting Islamo-Fascism. The contortions of language and the willful ignorance of the nature of this fight employed to promote the extermination of one’s own civilization is a singular study in the pathology of otherism.
Of particular curiosity is this sentence that you were somehow unashamed to present to the world:
“For those interested in keeping the earth intact in its present shape so that we might one day live on it peacefully, the bombings of July 7 provide no such "opportunities".
If this sentence were to make any sense, shouldn’t it be, “For those interested in keeping the earth intact in its present shape so that we might continue to live on it peacefully?” Don’t you, by your tortured construction, inserting the phrase, “one day”, admit that the Earth, in its present shape is one on which we cannot live peacefully? You must have realized this when you were writing it. Why did you continue? Is it because you cannot address other arguments, besides yours, on how to proceed to create the dreamed of world? Is it because you, as a nihilistic Leftist, wish to sap the will of modern civilization to fight these medieval barbarians by retaining the suicidal status quo acknowledged by your contradictory phrases, “in its present shape” and “one day”?
Isn’t the Earth, “in its present shape”, the same Earth where murdering, fanatical, Islamo-Fascist monsters have been slaughtering innocent civilians all over the Earth relentlessly for 40 years, long before Iraq?
You still use the figure of 100,000 people killed in Iraq! This canard has been thoroughly debunked. I am astonished to see that there are some terrorist sympathizers in the main media of any western country so far beyond embarrassment that they will willingly jettison any pretense of a reputation and defecate on their place in history by promoting this blood libel.
The smoker analogy I just don’t get. They are targeting us! Read their own words! They seek to kill or convert every single infidel on the planet. You use this lame analogy to say Britain was targeted for going into Iraq. I have a few questions.
Did Pim Fortuyn, Salmon Rushdie or Theo van Gogh go into Iraq? Did the Moroccans? Did the Philippinos? Did the Indians? Did the Sudanese Christians? Did Leon Klinghoffer? Did the Muslims killed all over the world by these fanatics? Did the Israelis? Did the Jewish tribe of the Banu Qurayzah go into Iraq when the psychotic, schizophrenic Muhammad himself raped and slaughtered them in 632 AD? Were the following 7 centuries of rape, plunder and genocide perpetrated by the Mohammedans against Asia and Europe based on the USA/British invasion of Iraq? Did Constantinople go into Iraq? Did the Persians who were raped, plundered and slaughtered go into Iraq in the 7th century? Did Spain go into Iraq (in the 8th century, genius)? Did the poor tortured and decimated people of Kosovo go into Iraq in 1389?
YOU DO NOT NEED TO GO INTO IRAQ TO BE TARGETED FOR EXTERMINATION BY THESE VERMIN! IT IS WHAT THEY DO!
Nobody who honestly researches and writes on this conflict could say that Iraq had, “no links to international terrorism.” What possible motive could there be for passing on this ridiculous lie?
I know that you are not ignorant of the threat to modern Western civilization by these demonic fanatics.
I know that you seek their triumph and our defeat.
I don’t aspire to show you the error of your views. I’m no shrink. To you, there is no error. You want it all destroyed. You crave the stench of the burned bodies of the innocent. Why? Who knows? Maybe it’s not perfect. Maybe the world isn’t made in your image. Maybe people don’t behave exactly as you wish them to. If you could only rule, you would make them toe the line. But you don’t rule. You are only a pathetic, little newspaper columnist. So, from your little elitist perch you slyly disseminate your poison with the end of seeing it all torn down and burned to the ground. The ignorant masses who do not share and demand your vision of Heaven on Earth do not deserve to live. I don’t know what drives your ilk and I don’t really care.
I just want you to know that I, and every other decent person on the planet, know you for what you are. You are a lying, dissembling, cancerous termite in the foundations of the inexorable march toward human freedom and dignity. It will proceed right over you. When the history of this period and the battle with Islamo-Fascism is written in the book of humanity’s triumph over its own barbaric instincts, you will be regarded in the ranks of Benedict Arnold, Oswald Mosley, Hanoi Jane Fonda and a thousand lesser Quislings as a collaborationist with the Fascist enemies of liberty. And Tony Blair and G. W. Bush will be honored as heroes.
As the courageous soldiers of the West fight and die to defend your freedom to pen your petty, treasonous bile, and you sit and watch your dreams of Armageddon collapse, contemplate that, worm.
Doug Wakeman
USA