Robert Fisk on the Hypocrisy
of the "War on Terror"
Published on Thursday, November 8, 2001 in the Independent/UK
Hypocrisy, Hatred and the War on Terror
by Robert Fisk
"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 realize 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 realize 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
"civilization", 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 harbored 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".