There is an article in the Independent called Another fatal day in the ‘war on terror’ in which Patrick Cockburn, the “award-winning journalist and author” states:
The real reason of the increasing violence in the Middle East is the return to imperial control and foreign occupation half a century after the European colonial empires were broken up. This is the fuel for Islamic militancy. This is why fanatical but isolated Islamic groups can suddenly win broader support. Governments allied to the US and Britain have no legitimacy.
It seems to me that “the real reason for the increasing violence in the Middle East” is a bunch of Saudi Arabian Muslims hijacked several aircraft flying over the United States and used to to commit mass murder in 2001 and thereby caused the US to defend itself. Forget that and nothing makes sense.
The Taliban, the government who sponsored and facilitated Al Qaeda’s attacks on the USA, did not take control of Afghanistan because of a “return to imperial control and foreign occupation”, except in the sense that foreign Arabs did indeed occupy parts of Afghanistan.
Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and the Taliban all pre-dated the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Pretending they were caused by unwise actions of western governments rather than by the development of anti-modern Islamist ideology centred on Iran and Saudi Arabia, puts the blame in the wrong place. If the US and UK have made any major strategic mistakes, they were not intervening in more force in Iraq and to have not started working to encourage ‘robust’ opposition to Wahabbism in Saudi Arabia and Shi’ite fascism in Iran decades ago.
Well said!
Cockburn needs to re-examine the timeline. Islamic terrorism predates all of the things he claims as causal factors.
Still, we don’t really expect anything better of The Independent, do we?
Effect, meet cause. If anything, one can make a better argument that muslim militancy arose out of the educated middle class in the muslim world (educated by benevolent european colonial powers) when their benefactors abandoned them back to 3rd world savagry and/or feudalism, leaving open the door for Marxist entryism and agitprop.
But whats really caused the problem??
Fact is, if it wasn’t for big oil supplying the oil sheikhdoms with billions a year, the Middle East would be even less important to the world economy than Africa. We wouldn’t even notice them.
We have given them the means to attack us!
We need to become energy independant even if its a lot more expensive, we need to stop empowering the enemy!
I’d rather have a hole in my pocket than my head!
The estimated cost for Al Qaeda to carry out the 9/11 attacks has been put at $250,000. This would not have been beyond the reach of any number of armed groups in Africa. The difference is Al Qaeda’s ideology.
Becoming less dependent on mideast oil is a good idea for general security but don’t expect it to reduce terrorism.
Speaking of which, the nightly news is finally noticing the 50 billion barrels of oil in the US area of the Gulf of Mexico that is now starting to be drilled. Expected to come on world markets within 5 years, this deposit will go a long way to eliminating US dependence on foreign oil. If we all switch to hybrid cars in the mean-time, by 2011 the Saudis may not be asking for foreign aid, but we won’t have any reason to pay any attention to any of those countries….
Perry
It is an indisputable fact that US foreign policy has exacerbated an already volatile Middle East. Whatever your views on the wrongs and rights of the Iraq war (i supported it, erroneously with hindsight) and the invasion of Afghanistan, they have been major recruiters of fanatics.
The US has made a total mess of Iraq. It’s execution has been risible and its preparation would have made a schoolboy blush.
But it’s real policy blunder has been to prop up the corrupt, dynastic regimes of Saudi Arabia and their ilk in order to secure oil supplies. It is this support throughout the 80s and 90s that breathed life back into the pre-historic Wahabbis and has come back to haunt the US and its allies.
Cockburn’s concluding thesis is just nuts. The astonishing thing is people can still find a market for this “anti-colonial” tripe half a century after decolonisation.
And it is also nuts to believe that the violence of Islamist movements is a post-2001 phenomenon – that the Two Towers was the starting point – when there’s been a steady accumulation of incidents since the 80s.
Caught up in anti-colonial rhetoric, such people (tho’ it isn’t clear Cockburn is wholly one of them) are entirely happy to ignore the butcher’s bill of the 80s and 90s that scarcely touched the West: hundreds of black Africans killed in the East African embassy bombings; hundreds of thousands of black Africans and Maghrebians killed by Islamist militias and governments; the contribution of Islamists to ‘little wars’ against post-colonial regimes from Indonesia to Chad; terrorism in Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, participation (as but some of the contending parties) in the Lebanese civil war of the 80s; and the arguably anti-colonialist stuggle (supported by the West) against the Russians in Afghanistan.
But that’s not quite the same as saying Western policy has not been mistaken, nor made things worse since 2001. By buttressing terrorist claims to importance, and by weaving all the many-sided pre-existing Middle Eastern problems into the black-and-white inanity of ‘War on Terror’, recent US policy has been counterproductive. So has been discarding liberal values and constitutional protections, and endorsing the savagery of dubious allies with such relish.
The Iraq war in particular has led to vastly greater suffering, and has turned out far worse than many (including me) imagined. It wasn’t directly driven by and justifiable on the basis of 9/11, as the fall of the Taliban was.
I agree with pommygranate. The founding mistake has been sucking up to the House of Saud all along. That has been the perpetuation of an old style colonialist play in the US’s patronage of Ibn Saud and his erstwhile bunch of bandits over other local interests to the point where the Saudis held the upper hand over their patrons – but quite why it has continued, and quite why no effort was ever made to contain Saudi theocratic missions, beats me. The same catspaw strategy backfired very badly in Iran, after all.
To that extent Cockburn has a point. His “colonialist” overview is nonsensical, but I suspect he is right in at least the first 3 sentences of the following:
But “becoming unstable”? What does that mean? It isn’t necessarily a bad thing for corrupt brutal dictatorships to be removed, I would have thought. What we need is a foreign policy that doesn’t encourage their replacement by unfriendly, belligerent, brutal dictatorships whose people can blame us for their condition.
Guy’s comment is spot-on. I would also add that as far as I can tell, there has been a steady increase in the pace, frequency and audacity of attacks on western targets since the late 1970s. Yes, there is no doubt that some of the actions in Iraq, for example, may have recruited some hotheads to the cause, but then one might turn the argument upside down and point out that a great many Muslims benefited from the overthrow of Saddam’sr regime, that murdered Shiites, Marsh Arabs, etc. But then that never gets any credit from the “blame America first” crowd like Cockburn.
The problem with folk like Cockburn is that they want to believe that there is a proximate cause for terror, which if it can be addressed, will go away. They liken islamist terror to the IRA or the Basque separatists of ETA. Give them what they want (united Ireland, separate Basque state, etc), the violence will go away. This seems even to be the broad view of libertarian isolationist blogger Jim Henley. If you strip away all his snarkiness, what you get is a belief that if we “mind our own business”, the rest of the world, including islamic thugs, will leave us alone as they are deterrable and rational.
This view is fatally wrong. The people we are up against want to create a global totalitarian islamic state. We can argue about how to combat that, pitting some libertarians against each other in terms of whether to support pre-emption or adopt a purely reactive foreign and defence stance based on deterrence and containment, but the nature of the threat is clear.
Steady on, Jonathan:
This view is fatally wrong. The people we are up against want to create a global totalitarian islamic state.
Or they say they do, yes.
…but the nature of the threat is clear.
Oh no it isn’t. The rhetoric is consistent, and much amplified by recent US and allied policy. Even the rhetoric, however, is far from clear – advocates of a “restored” (?) caliphate are able to say approximately as much about what that would mean as the 60s &70s revolutionaries could tell us about a communist society. Zilch.
The degree of physical and (as important) cultural threat they are able to offer, as opposed to that they wish and claim they do, is highly disputable. As is their purported difference from earlier clusters of terrorist cults.
The blame the w.o.t. crowd in the UK always seem to completely forget the fact that muzzies tried to blow up the Israeli embassy in London in the 90s. I should know I was standing nearby and it was an interesting experience.
Truth be told the Islamists have been trying to kill Westerners by the cart-loads since Islam first rode out of the Saudi penninsula. To say anything different is to ignore the history of the religion.
Guy, you may choose to ignore what the radicals say, as is your privilege. Maybe they have more modest aims and are playing out some sort of late adolescent fantasy. That is a thought that we can perhaps comfort ourselves with. To admit that these folk have global ambitions is something that large parts of the liberal chatterati don’t want to entertain.
But however easy it may be to ridicule the preening rhetoric of the jihadis, history should teach us that when murderous groups speak of restoring things like the Caliphate, it pays to take them seriously.
Jonathan’s comment was bang-on. Guy, I think you miss the point.. “Islamist” covers a variety of sins. That much is true. Certainly between them they don’t have a coherent world-view. What is important is not what they are trying to create, it’s what they’re trying to destroy. They hate everything about us. They hate capitalism, Christianity, bikinis, pork pies, Stella Artois, homosexuals, men without beards, secular law, feminism, democracy…
They don’t want anything from us. They just hate us.
That is why they are different from the likes of ETA or the IRA. They are major-league pissed off because, obviously, Islam is the solution to all the world’s problems yet the wealth and technology gap between Islam and the rest of the world* is gigantic. This can only be so if they believe in an epic Crusader/Zionist plot to deprive the Umma of the means to prosperity.
This started when the “great age” of Islam came to an end with the destruction of the caliphate by the mongols in 1258. Since then the Koranimals have developed an inferiority complex. They believe in an almost mythical level of Islamic sophistication which was cruelly stripped away from them and that every bad thing that happened since is the fault of someone else. This is a specifically Islamic thing because Islam is a complete belief system, not just a personal road to salvation.
If you believe the Koran is the final word of God yet Islam hasn’t brought the order and prosperity it should have done because of Crusaders/Zionists/whoever then what alternative is there but to fight against those enemies and by doing so recreate those earlier glories?
*Obviously not including Africa.
And the guilty man is W J Clinton.
If imperialism and colonialism cause terrorism, where are the tibetan suicide bombers?
“They don’t want anything from us. They just hate us.” – Nick M
Actually, that’s not quite true Nick M. They want to use our technology. Our our computers, our Sat phones, our modern high explosives, our weapons, our combustion engine automobiles, our civilian aircraft etc. If it wasn’t for Western Civilization these little beardy nappy headed bastards would still be riding camels and waving their curved pointy swords and using carrier pigeons to communicate their global jihad.
Well, YouSothoth beat me to the punch leaving me with the job of endorsing what he has said. Where, indeed, are the Tibetan suicide bombers? For that matter, the Turks have been occupying Northen Cyprus for over 30 years so where are the Greek Cypriot suicide bombers?
Further, the Madrid bombers were all North African – a wholly unoccupied region. The London bombers were all British Asians of Pakistani origin and a Jamaican-born convert from Nottingham. Who is occupying Pakistan, Jamaica and Nottingham then?
All those killers had something else in common. Can’t think what it is though.
It is correct that our support for the House of Saud may be at the root of all these problems. (Though the House of Laden may have been the alternative). Their financial support for nutters everywhere, laid the groundwork for the situation we are in.
However this is surely not removed from the Iraq war, as one of the reasons for that war has to be to reduce reliance ond Saudi Oil (not that its working out too well, but thats another issue).
Samsung,
They want our tech as nothing more than an expedient. They no more want to establish a technological civilisation than I want to to see burkhas on the beach.
They took down the WTC with Boeings but name me an Islamic airliner?
I’m not quoting Sura and verse but there is something in the Koran about using the devices of the infidels against them. Or maybe that is hadith. Oh fuck knows, I’m pissed off with the C21st (when we should be living in cities on the moon) being dictated by the morals of a bunch of C7th nomads.
Thaddeus,
Perhaps it is historical. I occupied Nottingham between ’92 and ’95. Well at least I lived there. And I didn’t keep Sharia in any sense of the concept.
“We need to become energy independant[sic]…”
We need to be healthy, rich and happy….
There is no way to manage without ME oil, for at least another century. Stop dreaming….
The problem with those Arab nuts is that they have too much money, that they use to finance trouble making.
The West (hell, the rest of the world !) needs to take control of the oil fields, by force, and then hand the Arabs oil money on condition that they behave, i.e. stop making trouble in other countries.
It’s eithr this or the Caliphate.
I mean – if they blame Western military action for the Arab (and Iranian) terrorism, let’s give them some real military action!
Is there such a thing as a journalist who is not of the ‘award-winning’ ilk in this day and age?
For that matter, the Turks have been occupying Northern Cyprus for over 30 years so where are the Greek Cypriot suicide bombers?
It was the separation of Cyprus into a Turkish north and Greek south that ended years of terrorism from both sides.
Samsung,
Its even worse than you think, since both the domestication of the camel and the use of carrier pigeons is Chinese, and that famous Damascus steel is Indian by way of Greece (Alexander the Great).
Despite all he whining about their great civilization, the ‘slims cannot point to a single thing in all of human history which is an indisputable islamic invention.
Sucks to be them.
Robert,
You’re right. Even the old Arabic numerals are Indian.
I’ve always thought the old “clash of civilisations” thing was a bit iffy because when I look at their side I don’t see any civilisation.
I see hatred and evil.
Perhaps imperial colonial control is exactly what is needed. The arab world seems, in so much of it, incapable of rational governance. The “award winning” Cockburn offers nothing but the old apres defeatist bovine fertilizer. The mock world government of the UN isn’t a candidate for the job of “colonial” government. Quite simply the UN is like a minnow with delusions of whalehood and has nothing of value to offer.
“Imperial” America is stuck with dealing with a tribal sump of evil. It might have been easier to send in neutron bombs on cruise missiles and a mop up force afterwards. The point is that they chose not to even consider it. A little neocolonialism is a small price to pay, though there is now every chance that not even that will work.
As for Iran with nukes? Ho hum!
Idiotic hack journo, meet a group of bloggers who are superior in terms of intellect, insight and analysis – well done Samizdata for the excellent comments on this post.
I would have thought that the ‘real reason’ for islamic militancy comes from their interpretation of the Koran, which tells muslims that (i) they are morally superior to the kuffar, who are the unwashed ungodly infidel, (ii) as a virtue of their superiority, muslims have an obligation to convert or otherwise negate the kuffar (if necessary, by killing) and (iii) that muslims have a moral obligation to live by the precepts of islam in all aspects of their lives, involving constant prayer, social obligations hiding women etc etc. We all know the drill.
Problem for your extremist muslim these days is that despite being brainwashed into (i) – (iii) above, the kuffar seems to have advanced in all areas and leads the world, while the muslim world seems to have gone backward on all fronts, produces little and is morally empty. Rather than admit this inconvenient fact, the best solution is to blame kuffar for all problems, project hatred onto the societies where the kuffar has succeeded the most (USA etc etc) , murder as many kuffar as possible and also murder any muslims that don’t ‘get it’. And then claim ‘martyrdom’.
The real reason why there is increasing violence in the mid-east is because the jihadists hate us, everything we have achieved, everything we aspire to and dream of and all the ideals we have expressed in our political system (not perfect, but still the best around). The violence is not a response to us, but to the doctrines of their holy book as they have interpreted same. This violence will continue until these sad people are wiped out or give up.
The biggest demand for ME oil in the years ahead will come from India and China. I look forward to a joint Sino-Indian hegemony of the oil-bearing lands of the ME. They will be a lot less nice about it than the Americans. Do not count on the Chinese to build kindergartens and try to accomodate the local customs. Ha. No way. When those days come, we will see the indigenous populations bulldozed aside like the Oglala Sioux. Literally bulldozed. The things the Chinese are willing to do to their own people are simply horrible. Imagine how they will treat a bunch of violent Arabs. The Indians will be a little nicer, probably. But I think they get to handle Iran. Let the Chinese have the Arabs. The problem will be solved the old-fashioned way.
I am right in thinking that Patrick Cockburn is from an antiwestern family of writers that have been active since at least the 1930’s?
I seem to remember writers of that family name producing first anti British and pro Soviet Union stuff, and then (as Britain declined in importance) anti American and pro Soviet Union stuff.
Perhaps the name is a coincidence, but I doubt it.
It reminds me of the 1960s “rebels” – it turned out that most of the leaders of the student communist groups were from communist families (some “rebels”).
Socialism has had some hard knocks recently (although welfare state programs and regulations continue to expand and multiply) so with the Soviet Union having gone and Red China having “sold out”, people like Mr Cockburn are looking for new powers to side with against the West that they hate so much.
Even the Islamofascists will do.
TD
It’s a good point you make but one that is not often made. It could really be this simple – the politics of envy on a global jihadist scale – not so much “soak the rich” as “bomb the rich”.
Like it or not, globalisation (and i cant believe anyone who reads this site doesn’t) does have its rather serious drawbacks. Namely
i) the “Al-Qaeda” global franchise is one of its most successful products (far more so than Starbucks or McDonalds)
ii) it has created fabulous wealth for a very, very few lucky (some would argue hard-working, others would say well-connected) individuals. This doesn’t tend to play well with the impoverished masses.
Americans have killed more civilians in Iraq than al-Qaeda has killed around the world. Unless dark-skinned people are worth less, I would say we are crossing the border of self-defense into the realm of genocide.
Americans killed more civilians in nazi germany than nazis killed American civilians. Unless the teutonic people are worth less, I would say we were crossing the border of self-defense into the realm of genocide.
Nick,
I think that what you meant to say was that “Iraqis have killed more civilians in Iraq…”.
By the way, and by some estimates, the RAF killed more people in the bombing of Dresden than the Luftwaffe killed in its entire ‘blitz’ on Britain. So its obvious who the bad guy in that conflict was.
The Taliban was a Cold War creation made to combat Soviet expansion with Saudi and American funding. Osama got his apprenticeship as a charismatic fundraiser fanatic at the expense of US/Soviet ire. 1980s, not post-2001.
Iraq is a ridiculous chimera of Kurdish, Sunni, and Shiite peoples, made as some sort of propped-up kingdomlet to let the British interests screw the French interests in Syria and British Palestine. 1920s, not post-2001.
Syria, Lebanon, and Israel have been interfering in each others’ interests as long as they’ve co-existed. 1890s-1940s/1948-67/1980s, not post-2001.
That all these areas are having a clustered flare-up of activity in the post-2001 era is not proof so much of a reaction to our colonial interests (the existence thereof I will let others argue), but it is proof of long-standing enmity between various interests. Whether we should be in this fight is a question Cockburn should focus on. This nonsense of “root causes” isn’t good for anything but seeing which group a person sides with. The root is always self-interest. Only the selves are different.
As a politician said in a debate, “The first thing I’d do to solve this is not start from here.” Those of us in the real world, attempting to do something about real problems, have to step on some toes.
Many people seem to have a curious belief that only the West can initiate evil, that any evil which comes from non-Westerners must somehow therefore be a reaction to some action by Westerners, and all we need to do is identify which action that was.
The fact is that jihadism is innate in Islamic belief and to a great extent even in Islamic culture. It can lie dormant for decades or centuries at a time, due to Muslim weakness relative to the infidels or due to rulers who simply lack interest in their jihadist “duty”, but it is always there.
As other have pointed out, colonialism and meddling do not explain the terrorist problem. If that were the main issue, the West would be bedeviled by Latin American, black African, Indian, and Buddhist terrorists as well as Muslim ones.
The reality is that even if the colonial era in the Middle East had never happened, even if Israel had never been created, even if we imported no oil from there at all, we would probably still have basically the same terrorist problem.
Of course Islamist violence and the paranoid fantasies on which it feeds existed well before 9-11.
However, the chaotic situation created in Iraq by the deposition of Saddam Hussein has created a trpile whammy:
— a firestorm of jihadi activity – and an additional ‘grievance’ upon the basis of which mindless fanatics are prepared to blow themselves and others up;
— a nascent Iran mark 2 in the Middle East with the ascendancy of Islam written into the constitution and military hit squads imposing burka-wearing and homosexual-killing on the streets; and
— a civil war.
The invasion of Iraq has made the world a more – not less – dangerous place.
Trying to get the hawks and Neo-Cons of the Bush and Blair administrations to admit this is like trying to get Marxists to admit that capitalism is a force for liberation.
Lex – a reasonable outline of a future possible.
Witness the behaviour of the Chinese in Africa. The shape of things to come.
Now, why are we not building more Nuclear Power Stations and Methanol synthesizers?
“The invasion of Iraq has made the world a more – not less – dangerous place.”
What will really make the world more dangerous is if the US leaves Iraq before things have settled down.
We must have the courage to wait for victory and endure the hardships until Iraq becomes a country capable of standing on its own. We cannot accept defeat in Iraq.
Lexington Green makes a fine point. The Chinese are far less concerned about the niceties of human (and press access) rights than the Americans. Take Sudan – the Chinese have been utterly ruthless in securing the safe supply of oil from the Sudanese fields, penning a blank moral cheque for the already barbaric Northern Arab government in Khartoum and “helping out” when appropriate. From the Chinese point of view, the Southerners aren’t opponents because of ethnic concerns – they’re simply victims of history. If they controlled Sudan’s oil, the Arab northerners would find Chinese muzzles pointed at them, instead. As China demands more and more of the Middle East’s oil, we’ll likely see much more similarly amoral foreign policy enacted in Arabia.
It was “Ncx” (not Nick) who blamed the murder of civilians in Iraq on Americans, when (in fact) the vast majority of them have been murdered by terrorists (both from Iraq and Islamofacists from other lands).
A handful of Americans may have murdered civilians in Iraq (the trials are on going), but the vast majority of civilian murders have been done by the very “resistance” that the left supports.
One of the wonders of our age is that every time there is a terrible crime by the “resistance”, the media present as somehow the Americans fault.
I think a look at Kurdish areas should see if the “Crusader” is responsible for unrest and death.
From my cosy armchair, I detect a lack of violent insurgency, popular animosity towards the Infidel etc. in those areas. This to me says the act of the Iraq war, the invasion, the deployment of forces and the removal of Saddam and the disbanding of the police and army from then on was not in itself the cause of the distruption.
I’ve even detected mild animosity towards the Kurds from the Sandalistas – it must infuriate them that the Kurds can get along and by so doing expose the disingenuous “concern” they peddle.
Looking back at the thread I see that “jon” has claimed that the Taliban was a cold war creation financed by the Americans – this is not true.
The Taliban (the “students”) were not an American creation, and the big fight with the Soviets was years before the Taliban became important.
I am reminded of the oft repeated claim that the Americans armed the socialist dictator Saddam Hussain – this claim is often made with the back drop of troops holding Ak47 rifles, T72 tanks rolling by and Mig aircraft flying overhead.
Yet the people who make the (false) claim never seem to see the contradiction between their words and the pictures they show.
The United States did show pictures of Iranian military buildups to the Iraqi side during certain periods of the Iraq/Iran war (although the basic American position was best summed up by the old line “it is a pity that both sides can not lose”) but I suppose “photos to Iraq” does not have quite the same ring to it.
This isn’t to say it was made by such funding, only that it was maintained by such funding. A trifle of a distinction, perhaps, but a distinction nonetheless. The Taliban had its genesis in the anti-Soviet Mujahedeen, the US funded such groups, and it would be wishful thinking to assume that no US dollars were behind the Taliban. I don’t think the Taliban was a US creation, but I do think that we Americans subsequently tolerated them as long as our interests seemed mutual.