Pilger's BombsJohn Pilger gained a bit of notoriety in the US a couple years back when he published a book on the "theft" of the 2000 election. Now he's back with a screed in the poorly named
New Statesman called "Blair's Bombs".
In all the coverage of the bombing of London, a truth has struggled to be heard. With honourable exceptions, it has been said guardedly, apologetically. Occasionally, a member of the public has broken the silence, as an east Londoner did when he walked in front of a CNN camera crew and reporter in mid-platitude. "Iraq!" he said. "We invaded Iraq and what did we expect? Go on, say it." What about 9-11? Pilger's got an answer for that one, too:
Anyone with an understanding of the painful history of the Middle East would not have been surprised by 11 September or by the bombings of Madrid and London, only that they had not happened earlier. I have reported the region for 35 years, and if I could describe in a word how millions of Arab and Muslim people felt, I would say "humiliated". When Egypt looked like winning back its captured territory in the 1973 war with Israel, I walked through jubilant crowds in Cairo: it felt as if the weight of history's humiliation had lifted. In a very Egyptian flourish, one man said to me, "We once chased cricket balls at the British Club. Now we are free."So who's to say that the cricket balls at the British Club aren't still to blame?
Moron Pilger at
Oliver Kamm's. Oliver's an old Usenetter; I remember his terrific posts skewering the goofballs at alt.fan.noam-chomsky.
The always-terrific Jonah Goldberg says
that of course Iraq is the reason.
This is all a prime example of how politics can distort a serious argument. After all, it is obvious that the attacks in London were a result of Iraq, and in a more straightforward debate this would be an inconvenient fact for the opponents of the invasion.
For years we've been told that the war in Iraq was a mistake because the real enemy was al-Qaida or jihadism. Iraq is a "distraction" and all that.
And all along Blair and Bush have been saying the exact opposite: Iraq is the central front in the war on terror.
And yet, when terrorists strike at the heart of London, the pro-war crowd says this has nothing to do with Iraq and the anti-war crowd says it does.There's plenty of time for figuring out the motivations; let's wait for more evidence.
