By M. Ali
Ibrahim
The cartoon published here had already appeared
on Wednesday, in the British newspaper, The Times, only 24 hours
after the terrorist attacks against the US, which left Americans and
the rest of the world completely stunned.
The cartoon portrays
Osama bin Laden, Yasser Arafat, Khameini, Qaddafi of Libya and
Saddam Hussein. It conveys an important message to the whole world,
namely that these five men foster and export terrorism. What a hasty
and dangerous assumption to make! Before any investigation had been
started or any concrete evidence had emerged, the cartoonist created
a drawing which implies that only these five Middle East men could
have been responsible for Tuesday's events in America.
The
collapse of the World Trade Center was the most vivid display of
terror that I have ever seen in my whole life. The forces of
darkness and light met and the result was sheer havoc. But I must
stress one thing here: I am very sympathetic towards everyone who
has been affected by this appalling tragedy, which has probably left
more than 12,000 dead.
After the horror comes the response. The
wise military leader always keeps in mind the enemy's goal. As with
other recent attacks on Americans at home and abroad, the objective
is not the traditional one of those who wage a war of violence. It
is not to defeat America, to undermine its economic power or
military strength, or even to destabilise it politically. Such goals
are unachievable. That is why comparisons with Pearl Harbor or the
Battle of the Bulge are absurd.
The objective could be to
propagate a cause, to humiliate the US and goad it into a violent
response. To achieve this goal, a 'big bang' is required. This big
bang must receive maximum publicity and then the reaction to it must
be equally violent. Its effectiveness lies not only in the number of
deaths it causes, but also in the reverberations in the media. It
lies in the action replay, the humanising of the tragedy, the
publicity surrounding those who are responsible for it. In a word,
it lies in the aftermath.
There is absolutely no military defence
against such attacks. In fact there is no realistic defence at all,
as Simon Jenkins said in his article in The Times. America will
doubtless redouble its efforts to penetrate and contain the groups
responsible. But they will not be defeated by main force. Any plane
can be hijacked. Any building is vulnerable. People can be protected
individually, but not en masse. A whole community can always be
gassed or poisoned.
Modern state-of-the-art electronic equipment
make developed states more vulnerable to random attacks.
Paradoxically, in the war of the weak against the strong, the weak
hold a lot of trump cards. They have access to weapons that are far
more powerful than ever before. Global technology is constantly
making the rich richer and the poor poorer. But, ironically, it also
offers the self-appointed champions of the poor very powerful means
to get the attention of the whole
world.
Obsolete
Faced with the horrors we have
recently witnessed, 'anti-missile' defence systems suddenly seem
obsolete. No rogue state needs an intercontinental ballistic missile
to attack the US, when a boy or young man with a suitcase full of
primed explosives or a suicide hijacker can simply walk through
almost any security cordon. A trillion dollars hurled into outer
space can do absolutely nothing to stop a hijacked twin-engined
plane from flying out of Boston Airport. Flyingdales may pick up a
threat from outer space, but not a few grams of a deadly virus
hidden inside a woman's handbag or a madman who decides to travel
Club Class.
To protect every key American building abroad, let
alone in the US itself, is clearly impossible. To attempt to protect
city centres against suicide attacks, you have to play the
attacker's game. This gives him the attention he craves and he
becomes a kind of twisted celebrity. The constant search for
security becomes a bizarre re-enactment of the original outrage, a
reminder of what might happen next time. It is part of the 'ripple
effect' of terror. Its potency lies in the pictures of bloodstained
bodies and sobbing women, of shattered buildings and a world turned
upside down.
The thought of the US deciding to retaliate against
whatever suspects it may find raises many issues. For the US to
carry out punitive action demands a collective entity that can be
held responsible for past and future incidents. According to Simon
Jenkins, we are talking about shadowy groups which move from country
to country, striking terror into the hearts of their hosts and the
rest of the world.
In 1993, the same World Trade Center was hit
by a massive car bomb. Washington confirmed that it was the work of
Arab fundamentalists who had ties with Kabul and Khartoum.
Washington then arrested an American citizen, Timothy McVeigh, and
found him guilty of the bombing. Washington then went even further
when it put states like Iraq, Libya, Iran and Sudan on a blacklist
of countries that support terrorism.
No good has come of all
this. Trade sanctions were imposed on nations with primitive
political economies and whose citizens were already destitute. That
is why people in the Middle East are quite astonished at being
instantly accused of planning the attack. Muslims, even those living
in the US, have also been under fire.
The US needs to realise
that we would never gloat over such a tragedy or rejoice at its
misfortune. But it must also realise that some of its foreign
policies, like sponsoring the state of Israel, has led the United
States into protracted and senseless animosity towards the cause of
the dispossessed Palestinians. The US also recklessly financed
anti-Soviet warlords in Afghanistan in the early 1990s. This has led
to the emergence of highly motivated terrorist groups, including
those operating under the aegis of Osama bin Laden.
America's
crackdown on the trade in hard drugs like heroin and cocaine (of
which the United States is the world's biggest consumer) has only
served to encourage the production of these evil substances in
states throughout Asia and South America. The continuing Kuwaiti
policing operation, with its weekly bombings of Iraq, has made
Saddam a hero and America an object of hatred.
To seek revenge
would be senseless. The US showed in the 1998 punishment attacks on
Sudan and Afghanistan after the bombing of its African embassies
that it regards revenge attacks as a legitimate weapon in its
geopolitical arsenal. The attack on Afghanistan was ineffective,
while the attack on Sudan was illegal and militarily indefensible.
Revenge is not the right response from a sophisticated political
community.
Washington is at odds with nearly every corner of the
globe, not just the Middle East. It has enemies everywhere, who
resent its luxury, wealth, high standard of living and prosperity.
Drug cartels, Serbs, the Japanese Yakosa, the Russian Mafia and
white radical American militiamen are all baying for US blood.
To
react to an atrocity by abandoning the customary self-control
expected of a democracy is merely to give a helping hand to the
terrorist. For the US to extend its blind support of Israel,
sanctions in the Middle East, isolation and military aggression will
only serve to encourage certain groups to carry on with their acts
of terrorism.
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