EX Labour Advisor Speaks

David Clark, a former Labour Party advisor, has written a piece for the Guardian in which he claims that the war on terrorism is failing. He argues that

"their ability to bring violence and destruction to our streets is as strong as ever and shows no sign of diminishing."

That's funny, I don't recall the terrorists being able to conduct operations on the same scale as 9/11- however horrific the London attack was, it is simply not on the scale of 3,000 innocent people murdered. He then goes on to state that

"al-Qaida has never depended on state sponsorship, except in the wholly unintended sense that the US-funded campaign against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan brought its members together and gave them their first taste of jihad."

That's even more strange- does he not remember the terrorist training camps in Afghanistan? And does he really believe that Afghanistan was the first taste of jihad? Really? Or is he simply denying hundreds of years of history? Wouldn't it also make more sense to lay "blame" for these groups coming together not with America but with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which is what originally focused the attention of the Mujahideen, along with funding from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, along with the USA? Or perhaps, with the jihadis themselves? Can't he blame the murderers for their own actions rather than trying to blame America? Let's just think about what he's saying for a moment- America is to blame for a group of Islamofascists bombing London. The so-called "occupation" of Iraq by America has liberated some 25 million people from tyranny, given them control of their own oil and allowed them free and democratic elections for the first time in 30 years. So perhaps these people should be thanking America for freeing Muslims from a secular disctatorship rather than attacking her and her allies. He also wants us to turn-

"our attention away from the terrorists and on to the conditions that allow them to recruit and operate" because "it must be said that everything that has followed the fall of Kabul has been ruinous to the task of winning over moderate Muslim opinion and isolating the terrorists within their own communities. In Iraq we allowed America to rip up the rule book of counter-insurgency with a military adventure that was dishonestly conceived and incompetently executed. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed by US troops uninterested in distinguishing between combatant and noncombatant, or even counting the dead."

I'm not going to even bother responding to that grotesque lie, other than to point out that the US went to great lengths to have Fallujah evacuated of civilians before entering to engage in house to house fighting. If they didn't care about distinguishing between combatant and non-combatants they would simply have bombed the city. I'm disgusted by this man.

And how, pray tell, does Clark envision us combating the conditions behind this terrorism? Why, obviously it's to-

"take legitimate Arab grievances seriously. We must start by acknowledging that their long history of engagement with the west is one that has left many Arabs feeling humiliated and used. There is more to this than finding a way of bringing the occupation of Iraq to an end. We cannot seriously claim to care for the rights of Arabs living in Iraq when it is obvious that we care so little for Arabs living in Palestine. The Palestinians need a viable state, but all the indications suggest that the Bush administration is preparing to bounce the Palestinians into accepting a truncated entity that will lack the basic characteristics of either viability or statehood. That must not be allowed to succeed."

So, Arabs feel "humiliated and used" by the West. That's really odd considering that the United States alone gives them billions of dollars- Egypt has received $26 billion, Jordan has been given $4.1 billion, the West Bank and Gaza have been given $1.5 billion, and work is ongoing in Iraq to name but a few. If that's being used and humiliated then I'll have a double helping.

Finally, we can see that in Clark's mind this all boils down to one simple issue- Israel (despite his own mention of the desires to see the creation of a "medieval pan-Islamic caliphate"). Again, £1.5 billion dollars doesn't seem to much like not caring. Nor does the extra $3 billion in aid for the infrastructure of Gaza. Of course, Clark doesn't like the idea of a "truncated state" for Palestinians calling for it to "not be allowed to succeed". In other words, then, he seems to want the destruction of Israel as a whole. Of course, in Clark's mind this is a "legitimate grievance"- that Israel even exists at all.