Jul 12 , 1:32 PM
"And which principle considers your blood real blood and our blood water?" - Osama bin Laden
by Ian Welsh
Last year, on April 13th, I wrote about the bin Laden peace offer to Europe. It was an offer of peace rejected by all European governments.
Vengeance is mine?
One common reaction since 7/7, 9/11 and M11 has been the "kill em all, let God sort'em out" school. Bin Laden had something to say about that, though not directly...
The greatest rule of safety is justice, and stopping injustice and aggression. It was said: Oppression kills the oppressors and the hotbed of injustice is evil. The situation in occupied Palestine is an example. What happened on 11 September [2001] and 11 March [the Madrid train bombings] is your commodity that was returned to you.
Having said this, we would like to inform you that labeling us and our acts as terrorism is also a description of you and of your acts. Reaction comes at the same level as the original action. Our acts are reaction to your own acts, which are represented by the destruction and killing of our kinfolk in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine.
Which religion considers your killed ones innocent and our killed ones worthless? And which principle considers your blood real blood and our blood water? Reciprocal treatment is fair and the one who starts injustice bears greater blame.
The killing of the Russians was after their invasion of Afghanistan and Chechnya; the killing of Europeans was after their invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan; and the killing of Americans on the day of New York [reference to 11 September] was after their support of the Jews in Palestine and their invasion of the Arabian Peninsula.
Bin Laden considers himself justified. In other communiques he has also referred to the deaths caused by the Iraqi sanctions (some number of hundreds of thousands). His position is simple. The US and Europe have supported Israel's killing and opression of Palestinians. They have killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. They keep despotic government in power throughout the Muslim world with their aid. They are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the torture of very, very many (before Bush the CIA trained torturers and supplied them with the equipment.) Bin Laden wants all these activities to stop. And he considers turnabout fair play. If Muslims can be killed by westerners, why cannot westerners be killed by Muslims? What is it that makes the lives of 3,000 Americans worth so much more than the hundreds of thousands who died in Iraq? Why is killing Iraqis and Palestinians somehow not a big deal, but killing westerners is? Why is 80 deaths in the Metro a horrible tragedy that is "above politics" yet the daily deaths by violence in Iraq, are not?
The rage that many people here feel at events like 9/11 or 7/7 is... interesting. They seem to have no such reaction to the deaths of Muslims. No such reaction to the death of people who aren't like them. They cry out for vengeance against those that have done these monstrous crimes.
Their cry for vengeance is the exact mirror of the cry for vengeance that bin Laden makes and that he justifies.
Let's examine, for example, the policy of "punishing countries who tolerate or support terrorism". What does that mean in practice? Embargos perhaps? Bombing raids or invasions if the neocons had their way. Most of those countries aren't democratic. Their citizens didn't elect their governments. They did not give their governments sanction. But any actions against them will mostly fall on the backs of civilians - they're the ones who will die, have their children killed and go without food, water or shelter. They are being punished for the actions of their government, actions they had no control over.
Should you be held to account for the actions of the US? For those it has killed? For those it has tortured? For those it has made homeless? After all, most people who read this blog didn't agree with those actions. You were against the Iraq war. You were against torture, you hate Gitmo and the Patriot Act is anathema to you.
But it's your government, and it was (arguably) democratically elected. And it supports terrorism. It thinks nothing of killing civilians who get in the way, and it doesn't even bother to keep a count of how many it kills. It kidnaps other people's citizens and delivers them to be tortured, if it doesn't do it itself. It lies all the time.
If the deaths of Iraqis are somehow acceptable, then why aren't yours? Why aren't those of British? What is different about Bin Laden's justification for killing from that of your leaders? Except that he didn't lie about why he went to war and that he attacked the right countries? I mean Bin Laden didn't say "America has attacked my people therefore I will blow bombs up in Brazil," did he?
I'm not a reflexive peacenik. I supported the initial Gulf war and I supported the invasion of Afghanistan. I believe Canada should have a much stronger army, and I've even argued we need nukes. But I don't pretend that when Canada was involved in Gulf war I and the coalition destroyed sewage systems and treatment plants that there could possibly be any justification for that. I don't think that Muslim blood is somehow fake and only ours is real and that only the deaths of other Westerners matter.
Heinlein, who a lot of right wingers like to quote, once said something very similiar to this, "I like to think in terms of us and them, not good and evil."
This isn't a war where good or evil are on one side. Both sides have engaged in behaviour that is despicable. Bin Laden is a religious fanatic who would rule his people according to medieval religious law. (Insert Bush joke here.) The Western democracies treat their own populations very well, historically speaking. But both have killed innocents. A lot of innocents. And frankly, neither side gives a shit. The Bush administration doesn't even want to know how many they've killed - that's how little it matters to them.
Now we need to solve this problem. And all the moral self-righteousness is getting in the way. Fuck whether it's evil or good - the question we need to ask is this: is it helpful or harmful? And in order to ask that we need to be fucking honest for a change and ask ourselves a very important question - what are we trying to accomplish?
Are we?
A) Trying to reduce the amount of Islamic terrorism targetted at western countries? (A question dealing with ending it completely is ruled out because it's effectively impossible short of commiting genocide.)
B) Trying to secure oil supplies?
C) Trying to bring democracy to the middle east?
D) Trying to get vengeance for 9/11 and other attacks?
E) Trying to bring the perpetrators of terrorist acts to justice?
F) Trying to kill the perpetrators?
H) Some combination of the above?
Because, y'know, I don't know.
And what's more, other than some NeoCons who have some fantasies and live in a world 90 degrees askew from this one, I don't think anyone does.
But, y'know, most of those things can be done (they can't all be done in all combinations and some solutions preclude others.) But we have to decide what we want to do. Want to stop Islamic terrorism against western countries and still get oil? Easy enough - pull the troops out and stop giving money and support to despotic regimes or regimes which oppress large Muslim populations. I guarantee you that whoever takes over will still sell you the oil. It's not like they have anything else to sell, and they'll need the money. And there will be very few terrorist attacks in Western countries. Life will suck in a lot of Muslim countries, but let's be honest, most westerners don't really give a damn about that.
And so on. But coming up with solutions means stopping pretending that what you're doing right now is working. And that means stopping pretending that you're basically the "good guys" because if you think you're in the right, then why should you change what you're doing?
Bin Laden's an evil man. He's a man who has decided that it is his job to take vengeance, his job to do God's job. But he's right that Muslim blood isn't any less red than that of westerners. And it's that fundamental hypocrisy, all the teary eyed weeping over western deaths that is so absent when some Muslim gets killed, or their kids get offed, that is the bleeding moral wound at the heart of the War on (some) Terror.
Want Westerners not to be killed by terrorists? Stop killing Muslims. Stop torturing Muslims. And stop supporting regimes that kill Muslims and torture Muslims.
Do unto others, as you would they do unto you.
It's not just the moral thing to do.
It's the smart thing to do.
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