Exit Bush stage left, followed by a Blair

I see that Bill Clinton is beginning to talk about withdrawal from Iraq.

For those who have any doubt that our presence in Iraq is exacerbating the insurgency, the key fact to remember that a recent survey showed that 90% of the insurgents just wanted their country back, and only 4-6% were Islamic fundamentalist jihadis.
Our forces are past their prime as peace-keepers. Once a certain number of peacekeeping troops are seen as inimical they are no longer effective peace-keepers, and then, the longer they stay, the more they will be resented.

It is clear that we must go.

On the other hand, if we do so, is there a danger that civil war will break out between Sunnis, Shias, Kurds and Islamists? It is easy to imagine that there might be. Therefore, a replacement force is needed in a peace-keeping role.

The logical replacement for US and UK troops is an UN peacekeeping force carefully selected from Islamic nations. Unfortunately there are three reasons standing in the way of this logical solution.

First, the problem with asking for a UN peacekeeping force is that it would be highly embarrassing for the USA and Britain to ask for the UN to take over, given the scathing remarks that were made about the UN by the American administration before the invasion.

Second, although we may all devoutly hope that the insurgency will die away after the removal of our provocative presence, it is equally possible that the tensions between the ethnic and religious groups may flare up into civil war, leaving the UN force holding one extremely agitated baby. It might need an awful lot of UN troops, and the UN is already over-committed.

Third, the reason that Bush sent his forces into Iraq is that he wanted to control the oil supply. It will take complex negotiations to keep American hands on the taps in the absence of American forces on the ground.

So, let us hope for a speedy withdrawal. But do not hold your breath.

Al-Zarqawi and the Baroness

Since my blog on the British Government's tardiness on freezing the assets of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has inexplicably become unobtainable, I will try to recap the story here.

Months before the Ken Bigley case (Kidnapped and beheaded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), I wrote to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to ask how the financial prosecution of the "war on terror" was going.  [update I wrote on : 25 March 2005]

They wrote back, fine thanks, no problem, on top of the case.

Then when Ken was kidnapped, it was reported that the Government was taking action to freeze the assets of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Ken Bigley's killer.

So the Government officers had not previously taken action against al-Zaqari's group. Now this was either because either (a) they were ignorant of his existence, or (b) they knew of his existence, but did not see fit to freeze his accounts. I wrote via my MP 12 months ago to ask which was the case.

Baroness Symonds at the FCO replied.

The Baroness writes, "The Government always takes action to freeze the
assets of any terrorist or terrorist group, whenever it is apparent that
there are clear grounds on which to do so".

This is a clear indication that Government knew of the Musab al-Zarqawi's
group's existence, but did not see fit to freeze its assets.

The question I would now like you to put to the Baroness is,
"How many other terrorist groups of Musab al-Zaqarwi's calibre is the Government aware of, but does not see clear grounds to freeze their assets?"

A related question is this: "How does the funding of the officials charged
with the identification and asset freezing of terrorist groups, compare with
the military expenditure on the Iraq invasion?"

[A further question, which has just popped into my head, is this: " If Al-Zarqarwi was the last terrorist to be spared having his asset's frozen, why was this, given that he has a long history of terrorist activity predating the Ken Bigley murder?"].

To my recollection, I have not yet had an answer to these questions, so I will prompt them for a reply. I would have forgotten about this had someone not diverted the URL of the original page to the Not Found page.

You can ask them too, if you like. The address is

Foreign and Commonwealth Office
King Charles Street
LONDON SW1A 2AH

Moving towards Consensus on Terrorism?

Is the protracted debate on the Democracy & Terror - Discussion forum: moving towards consensus?

I fully agree with Matt's point about dealing with regimes like Saudi Arabia. I also agree that, in addition to his specific aims which I have pointed out, Bin Laden had a wider deeper emotional and religious objectives such as the conversion of the America to Islam, which is clearly a fantasy.

There is an eerie equivalence between the beliefs of the President of Iran's expectations of the return of the 12th Imam at the end of time, and the equally worrying belief of George W Bush that in the Second Coming of Christ, some time after the battle of Armageddon.
http://www.greenhealth.org.uk/IraqBBBible.htm

Again I accept the existence of deep irrationality and total rejection of Western values - good and not so good - by Islamists, which you continually emphasise.

I am glad that we agree on the unwisdom of the Iraq invasion.

So what should we have in place of the War on terror?

To summarise (as far as I see it - please add points that I overlook)

We need to defend ourselves against Islamist jihadi terrorists through good intelligence and police work, while still maintaining our democratic values and liberties.

We need to remove the many provocations of Muslim sensibilities that exist in the world - US bases on holy Saudi Arabian soil, oppressive and authoritarian secular regimes in Muslim countries, exploitation of Muslim oil, resolution of the Palestine/Israel problem.

There are many tools for this to come about, but my own personal 2p worth is
(a) Withdrawal of Western forces from Iraq, and their replacement with Muslim UN peacekeeping forces (yes, i know that this is highly problematical, not least because we are asking the UN to clean up the mess that we wanted and they opposed, and because it leaves us without the original objective, exclusive rights to Iraqi oil)

(b) The Index of Human Rights in the UN, which will have exert a systemic, continual inhibition on oppressive regimes

(c) A massive New Deal effort to develop sustainability in the Middle East (as a model for the rest of the world)making it ecologically secure in terms of water, food, sustainable energy, housing and waste disposal. The application of human energy, attention and resources towards constructive co-operation will divert the attention of the body of muslim opinion away from preoccupation with resentment and support for the totalist violence of people like Osama Bin Laden.

Are we moving towards some kind of consensus here on how we should respond to Osama Bin Laden? I hope so, because I want to divert my attention and resources back to averting the threat of Pandemic flu http://www.greenhealth.org.uk/AvianFlu.htm
and lobbying for the Index of Human Rights
http://www.greenhealth.org.uk/Index%20of%20Governance.htm

Bush avoided attacking Al-Zarqawi because...

Avoiding attacking suspected terrorist mastermind - Nightly News with Brian Williams - MSNBC.com

"Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam."

Interesting, this. Months ago, I blogged about a letter I wrote to the UK Governemnt asking why they had not frozen Al-Zarqarwi's assets before he killed poor Ken Bigley.

The URL of the blog was http://greenerblog.blogspot.com/2004/12/department-of-freezing-terrorist.html ) Baroness Symonds kindly wrote back to the effect that they did not think he was dangerous before the Ken Bigley abduction and murder.

Even more interesting, my abovementioned blog cannot now be accessed. The first time I checked it after reading the MSN news page, it opened, but now it leads to the dreaded "Not Found" page.

(There's another reference to the question to Baroness Symons here: Mabinogogiblog: The freedom not to ask questions . That is working at the moment).

Yet more interesting still, when I first got onto the Department of Freezing Terrorists' Assets page on my blog, (I hope you're following all of this)
I pressed the automatic Blog This button, which gave me the url of the page in an active link form. It looks like this:

<*a href="http://greenerblog.blogspot.com/2004/12/department-of-freezing-terrorist.html">Blogger: 404 - Page not found
(only without the *, which I put there so you could see the code).

Note the >Blogger: 404 - Page not found<
What it should have had there should have been >Mabinogogiblog[date]<


I will ask the good people at our host Blogger what they make of all this.

Watch this space...

Shared humanity?

David Thompson is an articulate and well-read writer on openDemocracy.net who is very worried about Islamic fundamentalists. Here's my current offering to the debate:

David, as I understand it, you hold that Islamists like O.B.Laden are expressing not an aberration, but the core message of Islam. I read you as saying that Muslim theology and culture are systemically, radically and totally in error. I hope I have not mis-read you.

Let me detail the bits that I like about Muslim culture, off the top of my head.

The bit of the Quran that I like is way each chapter begins with the phrase "In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful".
I like their duty of giving to charity. (thought - how much did the Saudis give to Pakistan?)
I share their suspicion of the moneylender system.
I like their architecture and am grateful the knowlege they passed on to us.
I cherish the story of Saladin's mercy to the inhabitants of a conquered town.
I also cherish memories of Muslims who gave me hospitality as I travelled through their lands.

At the same time, I also feel that Islam comes across as a pretty uptight religion, on a par with Ian Paisley and Pat Robertson's religion. It is patriarchal, but so is Christianity (although the Anglicans are painfully trying to emerge from that particular chrysalis), and even Bhuddism denies the possibility that women can reach enlightenment.
It can be homophobic, but so are many Christians.
I do not know whether the Islamic mullahood has as many paedophiles as the Catholic priesthood, but I doubt it, because at least Islam does not make the cardinal (sic) error of imposing celibacy on its priests.

In short, I think that Muslims are people just like us (although different, of course, just to save you the trouble of pointing this out) - a mixed bag of good and bad, holding some true thoughts and some erroneous ones, and like us, perfectly capable of entertaining mutually exclusive ideas at any one time. They are capable of being misled by their political leaders, just like us. It they are tortured, they scream, just like us. If they are cut, they bleed, just like us. If they lose a lot of blood, they die, just like us.

Most important of all, their lives and ours both depend on the same biosphere.

What I want is to co-operate with my Muslim friends in bringing about a world of social justice and ecological sustainability.

David, what do you want?

War on Unsustainablity

More debate on the Open Democracy Discussion forum David Thompson is well read in Islamic fundamentalism.

David,
In your first post on this thread you conclude,
There are, of course, other, more legitimate grievances that need to be addressed, and a successful resolution may diminish wider support for extremists and sociopaths.

That is exactly my point. I agree with you that there is no scope for persuading or "appeasing" the Islamists, because they are fundamentalists, and therefore immune to reason, since they start from a different axiomatic basis from the rest of humanity. The only fruitful response to them is to try to arrest them through intelligence and police action. The "War on Terror" is just a hindrance to this objective, since it alienates the mainstream body of muslim opinion, and therefore deprives us of intelligence (in more than one sense, look you).

The analogy we can make is with the IRA. There was little point in trying to negotiate with the IRA leadership, because they had one objective, a united Ireland (although such direct negotiations may have taken place in secret, just as they are probably taking place in secret with Al-Qaeda). However, the British Government has concluded a difficult and imperfect peace negotiation with Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, to the benefit of the majority, in that the IRA are no longer carrying out their bombings.

Yes, there are differences, but there are also similarities. The Orangemen are steeped in their study of IRA ideology, which is totally inimical to their Orange world view, and they feel strongly about the grief caused by IRA atrocities, while being at the same time blind to the grief caused by loyalist atrocities. This is a simple psychological fact of life for humans engaged in conflict. It should be noted as a problem, but policy for the nation cannot and must not be dictated by the actions and reactions of the extremist factions. Statesmen have to rise above the perceptions of the extremists and take action to achieve the best outcome for the community as a whole.

Yes, the ideology of Osama regarding the ultimate dominance of Islam throughout the world is a totalist fantasy, and there is no point in dreaming of negotiating with him about that. But look: he also calls for the end of U.S. support for the oppression of Muslims by Russia
would we also not like to see an end to the horrendous war in Chechnya?
the end of U.S. protection for repressive, apostate regimes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, et cetera;
Would we not also like to see democracy implemented in those countries? Even the US State Department has made similar noises. Of course, OBL does not want to see democracy there: he wishes for Islamist repression in those countries. The sooner we can bring about democracy instead of autocracy in those states, the smaller the chance that Osama's wishes there will be met.

There is an important common ground between the US and the dissident, anti-war lobby, on the desirability of extending democracy worldwide. The difference is about methods. Bush thinks democracy comes out of the barrel of a gun. I believe democracy can be facilitated through an
Index of Human Rights in the UN.


and
the conservation of the Muslim world's energy resources and their sale at higher prices.
Is this not a reasonable aim? Islamists are achieving their aims by blowing up pipelines, causing pollution and waste - and denying Iraqi citizens reliable supplies of power. Rational governance would bring about a progressive transition (using such instruments as Contraction and Convergence ) to renewable energy resources - with which, incidentally, Arab countries are well-endowed.

Instead of the "War on Terror" we need a "War" (for which read an intensive, focussed effort in which the availability of money is not a limiting factor) on Unsustainablilty - for which read ecological and economic catastrophe in the not-too-distant future.

The collateral effect of the War on Unsustainability is the creation of millions of useful, worthwhile jobs world wide; a diversion of attention and effort away from a sense of grievance, and towards doing something practical and direct in providing food, water, shelter, clean energy and safe waste disposal for families and communities everywhere; and a new sense of unity and solidarity between individuals and nations arising from a sense of co-operation in a great common cause against a common enemy (said ecological and economic collapse).

Remember that David King, the UK government's Chief scientific officer, no wishy washy liberal leftie he, has declared that global warming is a greater threat to humanity than terrorism.