Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts Issue No. 39 November 11 - 17, 2001 Quezon City, Philippines |
Hypocrisy, Hatred and the War on Terror BY
ROBERT FISK Back to Bulatlat.com Alternative Reader Index "Air
campaign"? "Coalition forces"? "War on terror"? How
much longer must we go on enduring these lies? There is no "campaign"
– merely an air bombardment of the poorest and most broken country in the
world by the world's richest and most sophisticated nation. No MIGs have taken
to the skies to do battle with the American B-52s or F-18s. The only ammunition
soaring into the air over Kabul comes from Russian anti-aircraft guns
manufactured around 1943. Coalition?
Hands up who's seen the Luftwaffe in the skies over Kandahar, or the Italian air
force or the French air force over Herat. Or even the Pakistani air force. The
Americans are bombing Afghanistan with a few British missiles thrown in.
"Coalition" indeed. Then
there's the "war on terror." When are we moving on to bomb the Jaffna
peninsula? Or Chechnya – which we have already left in Vladimir Putin's bloody
hands? I even seem to recall a massive terrorist car bomb that exploded in
Beirut in 1985 – targeting Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the spiritual inspiration
to the Hezbollah, who now appears to be back on Washington's hit list – and
which missed Nasrallah but slaughtered 85 innocent Lebanese civilians. Years
later, Carl Bernstein revealed in his book, Veil, that the CIA was behind the
bomb after the Saudis agreed to fund the operation. So will the US President
George Bush be hunting down the CIA murderers involved? The hell he will. So
why on earth are all my chums on CNN and Sky and the BBC rabbiting on about the
"air campaign," "coalition forces" and the "war on
terror"? Do they think their viewers believe this twaddle? Certainly
Muslims don't. In fact, you don't have to spend long in Pakistan to realize that
the Pakistani press gives an infinitely more truthful and balanced account of
the "war" – publishing work by local intellectuals, historians and
opposition writers along with Taliban comments and pro-government statements as
well as syndicated Western analyses – than The New York Times; and all this,
remember, in a military dictatorship. You
only have to spend a few weeks in the Middle East and the subcontinent to
realize why Tony Blair's interviews on al-Jazeera and Larry King Live don't
amount to a hill of beans. The Beirut daily As-Safir ran a widely praised
editorial asking why an Arab who wanted to express the anger and humiliation of
millions of other Arabs was forced to do so from a cave in a non-Arab country.
The implication, of course, was that this – rather than the crimes against
humanity on 11 September – was the reason for America's determination to
liquidate Osama bin Laden. Far more persuasive has been a series of articles in
the Pakistani press on the outrageous treatment of Muslims arrested in the
United States in the aftermath of the September atrocities. One
such article should suffice. Headlined "Hate crime victim's diary," in
The News of Lahore, it outlined the suffering of Hasnain Javed, who was arrested
in Alabama on 19 September with an expired visa. In prison in Mississippi, he
was beaten up by a prisoner who also broke his tooth. Then, long after he had
sounded the warden's alarm bell, more men beat him against a wall with the
words: "Hey bin Laden, this is the first round. There are going to be 10
rounds like this." There are dozens of other such stories in the Pakistani
press and most of them appear to be true. Again,
Muslims have been outraged by the hypocrisy of the West's supposed
"respect" for Islam. We are not, so we have informed the world, going
to suspend military operations in Afghanistan during the holy fasting month of
Ramadan. After all, the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq conflict continued during Ramadan. So
have Arab-Israeli conflicts. True enough. But why, then, did we make such a show
of suspending bombing on the first Friday of the bombardment last month out of
our "respect" for Islam? Because we were more respectful then than
now? Or because – the Taliban remaining unbroken – we've decided to forget
about all that "respect"? "I
can see why you want to separate bin Laden from our religion," a Peshawar
journalist said to me a few days ago. "Of course you want to tell us that
this isn't a religious war, but Mr. Robert, please, please stop telling us how
much you respect Islam." There
is another disturbing argument I hear in Pakistan. If, as Mr. Bush claims, the
attacks on New York and Washington were an assault on "civilization,"
why shouldn't Muslims regard an attack on Afghanistan as a war on Islam? The
Pakistanis swiftly spotted the hypocrisy of the Australians. While itching to
get into the fight against Mr. bin Laden, the Australians have sent armed troops
to force destitute Afghan refugees out of their territorial waters. The Aussies
want to bomb Afghanistan – but they don't want to save the Afghans. Pakistan,
it should be added, hosts 2.5 million Afghan refugees. Needless to say, this
discrepancy doesn't get much of an airing on our satellite channels. Indeed, I
have never heard so much fury directed at journalists as I have in Pakistan
these past few weeks. Nor am I surprised. What,
after all, are we supposed to make of the so-called "liberal" American
television journalist Geraldo Rivera who is just moving to Fox TV, a Murdoch
channel? "I'm feeling more patriotic than at any time in my life, itching
for justice, or maybe just revenge," he announced this week. "And this
catharsis I've gone through has caused me to reassess what I do for a
living." This is truly chilling stuff. Here is an American journalist
actually revealing that he's possibly "itching for revenge". Infinitely
more shameful – and unethical – were the disgraceful words of Walter
Isaacson, the chairman of CNN, to his staff. Showing the misery of Afghanistan
ran the risk of promoting enemy propaganda, he said. "It seems perverse to
focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan ... we must talk
about how the Taliban are using civilian shields and how the Taliban have
harbored the terrorists responsible for killing close up to 5,000 innocent
people." Mr.
Isaacson was an unimaginative boss of Time magazine but these latest words will
do more to damage the supposed impartiality of CNN than anything on the air in
recent years. Perverse? Why perverse? Why are Afghan casualties so far down Mr.
Isaacson's compassion? Or is Mr. Isaacson just following the lead set down for
him a few days earlier by the White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, who
portentously announced to the Washington press corps that in times like these
"people have to watch what they say and watch what they do". Needless to say, CNN has caved in to the US government's demand not to broadcast Mr. bin Laden's words in toto lest they contain "coded messages." But the coded messages go out on television every hour. They are "air campaign," "coalition forces" and "war on terror." Back to Bulatlat.com Alternative Reader Index We want to know what you think of this article.
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