'Now we have a
new target, and a new reason to dispense mercy from the sky, with
similar prospects of success.' Photograph: ASAP/ECPAD/Corbis
Let’s bomb the Muslim world – all of it – to save the lives of its
people. Surely this is the only consistent moral course? Why stop at
Islamic State (Isis), when the Syrian government has murdered and
tortured so many? This, after all, was last year’s moral imperative.
What’s changed?
What humanitarian principle instructs you to stop there? In Gaza this
year, 2,100 Palestinians were massacred: including people taking
shelter in schools and hospitals. Surely these atrocities demand an air
war against Israel? And what’s the moral basis for refusing to liquidate
Iran? Mohsen Amir-Aslani was hanged there last week for making “innovations in the religion”
(suggesting that the story of Jonah in the Qur’an was symbolic rather
than literal).
Surely that should inspire humanitarian action from
above?
Pakistan is crying out for friendly bombs: an elderly British
man, Mohammed Asghar, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, is, like
other blasphemers, awaiting execution there after claiming to be a holy prophet. One of his prison guards has already shot him in the back.
Is there not an urgent duty to blow up Saudi Arabia? It has beheaded
59 people so far this year, for offences that include adultery, sorcery
and witchcraft. It has long presented a far greater threat to the west
than Isis now poses. In 2009 Hillary Clinton warned in a secret memo that
“Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida,
the Taliban … and other terrorist groups”. In July, the former head of
MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, revealed that Prince Bandar bin Sultan, until
recently the head of Saudi intelligence, told him:
“The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be
literally ‘God help the Shia’. More than a billion Sunnis have simply
had enough of them.” Saudi support for extreme Sunni militias in Syria
during Bandar’s tenure is widely blamed for the rapid rise of Isis. Why
take out the subsidiary and spare the headquarters?
The humanitarian arguments aired in parliament last week,
if consistently applied, could be used to flatten the entire Middle
East and west Asia. By this means you could end all human suffering,
liberating the people of these regions from the vale of tears in which
they live.
Perhaps this is the plan: Barack Obama has now bombed seven largely
Muslim countries, in each case citing a moral imperative.
The result, as
you can see in Libya, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan,Yemen, Somalia and
Syria, has been the eradication of jihadi groups, of conflict, chaos,
murder, oppression and torture. Evil has been driven from the face of
the Earth by the destroying angels of the west.
Now we have a new target, and a new reason to dispense mercy from
the sky, with similar prospects of success. Yes, the agenda and
practices of Isis are disgusting. It murders and tortures, terrorises
and threatens. As Obama says,
it is a “network of death”. But it’s one of many networks of death.
Worse still, a western crusade appears to be exactly what Isis wants.
Already Obama’s bombings have brought Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra,
a rival militia affiliated to al-Qaida, together. More than 6,000
fighters have joined Isis since the bombardment began. They dangled the
heads of their victims in front of the cameras as bait for war planes.
And our governments were stupid enough to take it.
And if the bombing succeeds? If – and it’s a big if – it manages to
tilt the balance against Isis, what then? Then we’ll start hearing once
more about Shia death squads and the moral imperative to destroy them
too – and any civilians who happen to get in the way.
The targets
change; the policy doesn’t. Never mind the question, the answer is
bombs. In the name of peace and the preservation of life, our
governments wage perpetual war.
Just as crucial evidence was about to be
released, Tony Blair intervened to stop the investigation. The biggest
alleged beneficiary was Prince Bandar. The SFO was investigating a claim
that, with the approval of the British government, he received £1bn
in secret payments from BAE.
And still it is said to go on. Last week’s Private Eye, drawing on a
dossier of recordings and emails, alleges that a British company has
paid £300m in bribes to facilitate weapons sales to the Saudi national
guard. When a whistleblower in the company reported these payments to
the British Ministry of Defence, instead of taking action it alerted his
bosses. He had to flee the country to avoid being thrown into a Saudi
jail.
There are no good solutions that military intervention by the UK or
the US can engineer. There are political solutions in which our
governments could play a minor role: supporting the development of
effective states that don’t rely on murder and militias, building civic
institutions that don’t depend on terror, helping to create safe passage
and aid for people at risk. Oh, and ceasing to protect, sponsor and arm
selected networks of death. Whenever our armed forces have bombed or
invaded Muslim nations, they have made life worse for those who live
there. The regions in which our governments have intervened most are
those that suffer most from terrorism and war. That is neither
coincidental nor surprising. Yet our politicians affect to learn nothing. Insisting that more
killing will magically resolve deep-rooted conflicts, they scatter bombs
like fairy dust.
A fully referenced version of this article can be found at monbiot.com
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