Peace,
David
Robert Fisk:
There is a firestorm coming, and it is being provoked by Mr
Bush
More and
more, President Bush's rhetoric sounds like the crazed videotapes
of Osama
bin Laden
25 May 2002
Independent
So now Osama bin Laden is
Hitler. And Saddam Hussein is Hitler. And George
Bush is fighting the Nazis.
Not since Menachem Begin fantasised to President
Reagan that he felt he was
attacking Hitler in Berlin - his Israeli army was
actually besieging Beirut,
killing thousands of civilians, "Hitler" being
the pathetic Arafat - have we
had to listen to claptrap like this. But the
fact that we Europeans had to do
so in the Bundestag on Thursday - and, for
the most part, in respectful
silence - was extraordinary.
I'm reminded of the Israeli columnist who,
tired of the wearying invocation
of the Second World War to justify yet more
Israeli brutality, began an
article with the words: "Mr Prime Minister,
Hitler is dead." Must we,
forever, live under the shadow of a war that was
fought and won before most
of us were born? Do we have to live forever with
living, diminutive
politicians playing Churchill (Thatcher and, of course,
Blair) or Roosevelt?
"He's a dictator who gassed his own people," Mr Bush
reminded us for the two
thousandth time, omitting as always to mention that
the Kurds whom Saddam
viciously gassed were fighting for Iran and that the
United States, at the
time, was on Saddam's side.
But there is a much
more serious side to this. Mr Bush is hoping to corner
the Russian President,
Vladimir Putin, into a new policy of threatening
Iran. He wants the Russians
to lean on the northern bit of the "axis of
evil", the infantile phrase which
he still trots out to the masses. More and
more, indeed, Mr Bush's rhetoric
sounds like the crazed videotapes of Mr bin
Laden. And still he tries to lie
about the motives for the crimes against
humanity of 11 September. Yet again,
in the Bundestag, he insisted that the
West's enemies hated "justice and
democracy", even though most of America's
Muslim enemies wouldn't know what
democracy was.
In the United States, the Bush administration is busy
terrorising Americans.
There will be nuclear attacks, bombs in high-rise
apartment blocks, on the
Brooklyn bridge, men with exploding belts - note how
carefully the ruthless
Palestinian war against Israeli colonisation of the
West Bank is being
strapped to America's ever weirder "war on terror" - and
yet more aircraft
suiciders. If you read the words of President Bush,
Vice-President Dick
Cheney and the ridiculous national security adviser,
Condoleezza Rice, over
the past three days, you'll find they've issued more
threats against
Americans than Mr bin Laden.
But let's get back to the
point. The growing evidence that Israel's policies
are America's policies in
the Middle East - or, more accurately, vice
versa - is now being played out
for real in statements from Congress and on
American television. First, we
have the chairman of the US Senate Foreign
Relations Committee announcing
that Hizbollah - the Lebanese guerrilla force
that drove Israel's demoralised
army out of Lebanon in the year 2000 - is
planning attacks in the US. After
that, we had an American television
network "revealing" that Hizbollah, Hamas
and al- Qa'ida - Mr bin Laden's
organisation - have held a secret meeting in
Lebanon to plot attacks on the
US.
American journalists insist on
quoting "sources" but there was, of course,
no sourcing for this balderdash,
which is now repeated ad nauseam in the
American media. Then take the "Syrian
Accountability Act" that was
introduced into the US Senate by Israel's
friends on18 April. This includes
the falsity uttered earlier by Israel's
Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, that
Iranian Revolutionary Guards "operate
freely" on the southern Lebanese
border. Now there haven't been Iranian
Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon - let
alone the south of the country - for 18
years. So why is this lie repeated
yet again?
Iran is under threat.
Lebanon is under threat. Syria is under threat - its
"terrorism" status has
been heightened by the State Department - and so is
Iraq. But Ariel Sharon,
the Israeli Prime Minister held personally
responsible by Israel's own
enquiry for the Sabra and Shatila massacre of
1,700 Palestinians in Beirut in
1982, is - according to Mr Bush - "a man of
peace". How much further can this
go? A long way, I fear.
The anti-American feeling throughout the Middle
East is palpable. Arab
newspaper editorials don't come near to expressing
public opinion. In
Damascus, Majida Tabbaa has become famous as the lady who
threw the US
Consul Roberto Powers out of her husband's downtown restaurant
on 7 April .
"I went over to him," she said, "and told him, 'Mr Roberto, tell
your George
Bush that all of you are not welcome - please get out'." Across
the Arab
world, boycotts of American goods have begun in earnest.
How
much longer can this go on? America praises Pakistani President
Musharraf for
his support in the "war on terror", but remains silent when he
arranges a
dictatorial "referendum" to keep him in power. America's enemies,
remember,
hate the US for its "democracy". So is General Musharraf going to
feel the
heat? Forget it. My guess is that Pakistan's importance in the
famous "war on
terror" - or "war for civilisation" as, we should remember,
it was originally
called - is far more important. If Pakistan and India go
to war, I'll wager a
lot that Washington will come down for undemocratic
Pakistan against
democratic India.
Across the former Soviet southern Muslim republics,
America is building air
bases, helping to pursue the "war on terror" against
any violent Muslim
Islamist groups that dare to challenge the local
dictators. Please do not
believe that this is about oil. Do not for a moment
think that these oil and
gas-rich lands have any economic importance for the
oil-fuelled Bush
administration. Nor the pipelines that could run from
northern Afghanistan
to the Pakistani coast if only that pesky Afghan loya
jirga could elect a
government that would give concessions to Unocal, the
oddly named concession
whose former boss just happens to be a chief Bush
"adviser" to Afghanistan.
Now here's pause for thought. Abdelrahman
al-Rashed writes in the
international Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat that if
anyone had said prior to
11 September that Arabs were plotting a vast scheme
to murder thousands of
Americans in the US, no one would have believed them.
"We would have charged
that this was an attempt to incite the American people
against Arabs and
Muslims," he wrote. And rightly so.
But Arabs did
commit the crimes against humanity of 11 September. And many
Arabs greatly
fear that we have yet to see the encore from the same
organisation. In the
meantime, Mr Bush goes on to do exactly what his
enemies want; to provoke
Muslims and Arabs, to praise their enemies and
demonise their countries, to
bomb and starve Iraq and give uncritical
support to Israel and maintain his
support for the dictators of the Middle
East.
Each morning now, I
awake beside the Mediterranean in Beirut with a feeling
of great foreboding.
There is a firestorm coming. And we are blissfully
ignoring its arrival;
indeed, we are provoking it.