Claptrap conceals the truth
Robert Fisk
October 27, 2001
Mullah Mohammad Omar's 10-year-old son is dead. He was, according to Afghan refugees fleeing Kandahar, apparently travelling in the Taleban leader's car when it was attacked by United States aircraft. No regrets, of course.
Back in 1985, when American aircraft bombed Libya, they also killed Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's 6-year-old adopted daughter. Whether these children deserved their deaths, be sure that their fathers - in Western eyes - were to blame.
In 1991, the Independent revealed that American Gulf War military targets included "secure" bunkers in which members of Saddam Hussein's family or his henchmen were believed to be hiding. I wonder - now that President George W. Bush has given permission to the CIA to murder Osama bin Laden - if the same policy applies today?
And so the casualties mount. From Kandahar come ever more frightful stories of civilians buried under ruins, of children torn to pieces by American bombs.
The Taleban refuses to allow Western journalists to enter the country to verify these reports. So when a few television crews were able to find 18 fresh graves in the devastated village outside Jalalabad, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could describe the deaths as "ridiculous". But not for much longer. For if each of the wars for infinite justice and eternal freedom have a familiar trade mark - the military claptrap about air superiority, suppression of "command and control centres", radar capabilities - each has an awkward, highly exclusive little twist to it.
In 1999, Nato claimed it was waging war to put Kosovo Albanian refugees back in their homes - even though most of the refugees were still in their homes when the war began. The bombing of Serbia led directly to their dispossession. The West bears a heavy burden of responsibility for their suffering - since the Serbs had told us what they would do if Nato opened hostilities. But Nato's escape clause won't work this time round.
As the Afghan refugees turn up in their thousands at the border, it is palpably evident that they are fleeing not the Taleban but Western bombs and missiles. The Taleban is not ethnically cleansing its own Pashtun population. These people are terrified of our "war on terror". They are victims as innocent as those who were slaughtered in the World Trade Center on September 11. So where do we stop?
It's an important question because, once winter begins in Afghanistan, a tragedy is likely to commence, one which no spin doctor or propaganda expert will be able to divert. We'll say that the thousands about to die or who are dying of starvation and cold are victims of the Taleban's intransigence or the Taleban's support for "terrorism".
Of course - despite the slavish use of the phrase "war on terrorism" - it is nothing of the kind. We are not planning to attack Tamil Tiger suicide bombers or ETA killers or Real IRA murderers or Kurdish KDP guerrillas. Indeed, the US has spent a lot of time supporting terrorists in Latin America, not to mention the rabble we are now bombing in Afghanistan. This is a war on America's enemies.
Increasingly, as the date of September 11 acquires iconic status, we are retaliating for the crimes against humanity in New York and Washington. The figure of 6000 remains as awesome as it did in the days that followed. But once the UN agencies give us details of the starving and the destitute who are dying in their flight from our bombs, it won't take long to reach 6000. Will that be enough? Will 12,000 dead Afghans appease us?
If we think we know what our aims are in this fraudulent "war against terror", have we any idea of proportion? Can we turn the falsity of a "war against terror" into a war against famine and death, even at the cost of postponing our day of reckoning with bin Laden?