Two Minutes of Silence for London
At noon on Friday, we should commemorate the deaths of the 52 persons in the 7/7 London underground bombings with two minutes of silence, as is being done (in a different time zone) in the UK itself.
We should remember that this atrocity killed Muslims as well as Christians and was not the work of Muslims or Islam, but of al-Qaeda. It seems increasingly clear that the cell that undertook it was recruited by Ayman al-Zawahiri through a Pakistani client organization, perhaps Jaish-i Tayyiba. Another farewell video by one of the four perpetrators has surfaced, introduced by al-Zawahiri (he also introduced the tape of Muhammad Siddiq Khan last summer). I noted at the time, last year, that the Arabic-language announcement of the operation, posted to the internet, seemed to me to have been written by an Egyptian Islamist, and I now think it was Zawahiri himself.
In his tape, Shehzad Tanweer said to the British: , "What you have witnessed now is only the beginning of a strain of attacks that will continue and become stronger until you pull your forces out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and until you stop your financial and military support to America and Israel."
The young Briton, brainwashed by agents of Zawahiri, obviously did not understand his own country. The UK has never paid the slightest attention to such threats, and if he had wanted to reinforce the British public in the policies he mentioned, he could have found no better instrument to that purpose than to menace them with bombings.
Tanweer also did not live long enough to understand his own religion, which unreservedly condemns terrorizing people (hirabah) as a means to accomplishing one's objectives.
What I regret most of all is that our efforts in combatting al-Qaeda have been so inadequate as to leave Zawahiri free to corrupt minds and subvert souls, and to continue to sow terror.
The best commemoration of 7/7 will be his capture, and that of Bin Laden.
posted by Juan Cole @ 7/07/2006 06:36:00 AM
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7 Comments:
"At noon on Friday, we should commemorate the deaths of the 52 persons in the 7/7 London underground bombings with two minutes of silence, as is being done (in a different time zone) in the UK itself."
Why? Why should you, an American, take special note of the deaths of 52 people in Britain when you don't do the same every time 52 innocent people are slaughtered in Iraq? (I'm obviously not saying you don't care about the Iraqi deaths - clearly you do, but you don't call for a worldwide 2 minutes silence every time 50 are killed)
I cannot ask this of my fellow British countrymen, because they will simply respond "because they are our fellow countrymen and it happened in this country". That might be questionable, but it is unanswerable, if you see what I mean.
But why are 52 innocent British victims of the US/UK declaration of war on Iraq so much more special to you than the 52 Iraqis who die in the resulting war every day or so, that you must hold a special commemoration for the former and not for the latter?
Objectively, these are just 52 more victims of Bush and Blair's choice to destroy the government of Iraq. Obviously Bush and Blair (especially the latter) would prefer they are treated as special - victims of an entirely unrelated "unprovoked terror attack". For emotional reasons, this is politically impossible to attack openly, but must you go along with it by cooperating? Why not treat these victims exactly as you do the Iraqi victims? If it's not practicable to hold a 2 minute silence every time 50 are butchered in Iraq, then why not hold an alternative silence for all the victims of the attack on Iraq collectively, Iraqi, British and American?
Its worth mentioning that the UK government still denys any link between its involvement in the Iraq war and the bombings here in London last year, in defiance not only of the plain facts but of the adivce they received from their own security advisers right across the board.
For example, a substantial home office/foreign office study, ‘Young Muslims and Extremism’, published in April 2004 said: "It seems that a particularly strong cause of disillusionment amongst Muslims including young Muslims is a perceived 'double standard' in the foreign policy of western governments (and often those of Muslim governments), in particular Britain and the US…Perceived western bias in Israel's favour over the Israel/Palestinian conflict is a key long-term grievance of the international Muslim community which probably influences British Muslims. This perception seems to have become more acute post-9/11. The perception is that passive 'oppression', as demonstrated in British foreign policy, eg non-action on Kashmir and Chechnya, has given way to 'active oppression' – the war on terror, and in Iraq and Afghanistan are all seen by a section of British Muslims as having been acts against Islam" (see FCO/home office paper published in the Sunday Times, available at www.times-archive.co.uk/onlinespecials/cabinet2.pdf .) “
But that’s not all. Five weeks before the invasion Britain's intelligence chiefs warned Blair's government in strong terms that military action would increase the risk of terrorist attacks against Britain by groups such as al-Qaeda. As the UK Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee noted in 2003: "The JIC assessed that al-Qa'eda and associated groups continued to represent by far the greatest terrorist threat to Western interests, and that threat would be heightened by military action against Iraq".
As Britain's involvement in the occupation of Iraq continued, the government's advisers continued to warn of the possible consequences. A joint Home Office and Foreign Office dossier, ordered by Tony Blair following the train bombings in Madrid, identified Iraq as a "recruiting sergeant" for extremism. The analysis was that the Iraq war was acting as a key cause of young Britons turning to terrorism. It said: "It seems that a particularly strong cause of disillusionment among Muslims, including young Muslims, is a perceived 'double standard' in the foreign policy of western governments, in particular Britain and the US. The perception is that passive 'oppression', as demonstrated in British foreign policy, eg non-action on Kashmir and Chechnya, has given way to 'active oppression'. The war on terror, and in Iraq and Afghanistan, are all seen by a section of British Muslims as having been acts against Islam."
In 2005, the government was warned yet again. Just weeks before the London bombings, the Joint Terrorist Analysis Centre - including officials from MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the police - explicitly linked the Iraq war with an increased risk of terrorist activity in Britain. The report, leaked to the New York Times, said that "Events in Iraq are continuing to act as motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist-related activity in the UK".”
None of this of course is good enough for the Prime Minister, whose frequent posturing as a tolerant liberal who has read the Qur’an and who wishes to reach out to “moderate Muslims” contrasts sharply with his cowardly attempt earlier this week to hold those same “moderate Muslims” responsible for the continuing terrorist threat, knowing full well of his own culpability. Whilst he lectures the Muslim community on its responsibility to “root out extremism”, his government continues to take the extremist position of denying any connection between the Iraq war and the increasing terrorist threat to this country.
Nevertheless, the facts are clear. The UK government is deliberately and repeatedly ignoring the advice of its intelligence services, departmental advisers and independent experts, and pursuing policies that are increasing the threat of terrorist attacks on Britain. With 52 innocent people dead, many more injured, and the threat of further atrocities hanging over the country, the government continues to strenuously avoid any honest discussion of the problem, preferring to obscure the issues with self-serving mendacity. By uncontroversial reference to the plain facts, New Labour is clearly failing to discharge its basic duty of care towards the population and as such has rendered itself unfit to govern in the most fundamental sense of the term.
David Wearing
London, UK
We should remember that this atrocity killed Muslims as well as Christians...
It killed people of all faiths and no faith. This isn't a battle between Muslims and Christians and although the UK is nominally a Christian country we are - for the most part - pretty secular.
Hey There,
My name is Karen Shacham and I work with CNN Pipeline in Atlanta.
I thought you might be interested to know that the London Bombing Memorial will be on Pipeline, LIVE at 1pm ET.
CNN Pipeline is an online, commercial-free multiple live-news feed. It showcases four simultaneous news feeds from around the world and an on-demand function that allows you to select from a variety of news stories.
Please let your members know that they can go to http://www.cnn.com and click on the Pipeline link to watch it *live* and get a two week free trial.
Thanks and have a great day!
Karen
What to make of the US raids in Sadr City? Is this a replay of Bremer's move on the Sadrists back in April 2004? Or something else?
One report has the US military saying they were after a breakaway Sadrist leader named Abu Diraa who was trying to smuggle in arms from Syria.
Has anyone ever heard of Abu Diraa before? Professor Cole has said many times that the Sadrists are a "movement" more than a hierarchical organization. Is it possible that Sadr will go along and allow the US to crackdown on some parts of the "movement" so long as they spare his own organization?
For background on this, I've assembled some of the news on the latest clashes between the US and the Sadrists at profcutler.com.
Why? Why should you, an American, take special note of the deaths of 52 people in Britain when you don't do the same every time 52 innocent people are slaughtered in Iraq?
I turned on the TV here in Thailand last night and was flabbergasted at the extravaganza over the "memorial" to the 52 dead. Certainly they were innocents and were murdered because of the acts of their government and that is shameful indeed. But the extravaganza was choreography to obscure this very fact.
Thailand is a Buddhist country and the central tenet of Buddhism is cause and effect. So it is stupifying to see the Israelis, Americans and British claim that their is no connection between their decades of mistreatment of the peoples of the Middle East and the retaliation those people take in return.
None of this violence is "justified". There is no such thing as "justified" violence. There is just violence.
Where is the extravaganza over the raped, the burned, the murdered children and infants in Iraq. We kill 52 there everyday and twice on Sundays.
Hath not an Iraqi eyes? hath not a Palestinian hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as an Englishman is? as an Israeli? as an American? If you prick them, do they not bleed? if you tickle them, do they not laugh? if you poison them, do they not die? and if you wrong them, shall they not revenge? If they are like us in the rest, they will resemble us in that.
As David Wearing points out above, the UK government is very careful not to admit to the clear causative link between the invasion of Iraq and the deaths on 7/7. That is entirely understandable, because the UK government is way out on a limb over Iraq and cannot afford for the popular perception of the cost of that elective war to become too emotionally charged.
What is slightly less clear is why the media still seem willing to play along (virtually no mention of this aspect in the Newsnight programme devoted to the issue, for instance, despite a lengthy discussion of the latest message fom one of those who perpetrated the bombings!)
As for the wider issue of American denial of the clear causative link between US foreign policy over decades and the 9/11 attacks, there are clearly powerful interest groups determined to avoid any such connection being made in the popular mind. I think they succeed, though, mainly because of the primary cultural importance attached to being an innocent victim, in affirming the American exceptionalist self-image and justifying ongoing American violence.
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