Posted on
11th November 2001
Hypocrisy,
Hatred And Terror
By Robert Fisk
'If the US attacks were an assault on "civilisation", why shouldn't
Muslims
regard the Afganistan attack as a war on Islam?' 08 November
2001
"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 realise 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 realise 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
"civilisation", 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 harboured 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".
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