Gordon Brown and The War On Terror

Gordon Brown:

"We've got to ask ourselves why, eight years after September the 11th, nobody has been able to spot or detain or get close to Osama bin Laden, nobody's been able to get close to Zawahiri, the number two in al-Qaeda."

Yes, we should ask the question. And then note the very obvious answer. Which is that both Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri aren't going to be advertising their presence. They won't be in the phone book. They are not going to have an e-mail account. They are terrorists on the run and they are on the run in an area of the world that is pretty close to being in a state of anarchy. Finding bin Laden and the other members of the al-Qaeda is never going to be easy. For some reason - like the fact that they are amongst the most wanted people in the world - bin Laden and al-Zawahiri aren't going to make it easy.

And I also fail to see why finding al-Zawahiri and bin Laden is supposed to make that much difference to the so-called War on Terror. Al-Qaeda is not structured like a traditional terrorist group. If you decapitate al-Qaeda, then you aren't going to end the threat from Islamic terrorism. It just isn't the way al Qaeda or the extremes of Islam work.

But of course bellicose words are always tempting for a beleaguered Prime Minister, particularly when said bellicose words are a call for someone else to do something. However, we shouldn't be fooled by Brown's crude tactic for one moment. His demand directed at Pakistan is nothing more than a distraction tactic. He is using the out-of-date rhetoric of the War on Terror - a spurious campaign against a concept rather than a meaningful war against a tangible enemy. Pakistan is fighting a terrorist foe that increasingly resembles an insurgency in parts of its domain. The very last thing they need is the endless prattle of a discredited British Prime Minister trying to claim some sort of authority in his final months in power.

Election 2008: Bring Me War!!

We’ve had Obama threatening to attack Pakistan. We’ve had John McCain threatening to “Bomb Iran”. To the tune of “Barbara Ann”. To date, Hillary Clinton’s solitary selling point for me was her failure to make bellicose, hawkish statements about attacking other nation. So it is pretty depressing to see that she has jumped on the attack bandwagon, and joined McCain in proposing the bombing of Iran. Albeit in a much less musical way:

A row erupted when Mrs Clinton was asked how she would respond if Iran launched a nuclear attack on Israel. She replied that: "If I'm the president, we will attack Iran... (if they attack Israel) we would be able to totally obliterate them. That's a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that, because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic."

Hmmm. I’m no nuclear strategist, but I can’t help but think that nuking one state in response to them nuking another state is pretty much how things slip out of control and we end up with a nuclear holocaust. And, y’know, there are no real winners from a nuclear holocaust.

Ok, ok, we are talking about a fairly extreme scenario here, where Iran would be the first to push the button and Israel has been destroyed. But it is worrying both that the US voters seem to expect their Presidential candidates to take part in this sort of sabre rattling, and that the presidential candidates seem to be A-Ok with meeting these expectations for sabre rattling.

One of these people – McCain, Obama or Clinton – will have their finger on the proverbial button come next January. And yes, they may, conceivably have to push it. But, fuck me, can’t they be a little less happy to discuss the prospect of global nuclear annihilation? And can’t they, in the case of McCain, anyway, be a little less gleeful when discussing that prospect?

When blogging previously about the US campaign, the song “Bad Moon Rising” popped into my head. Reading this story, this afternoon, the DJ has changed the track. It is now “Don’t Fear The Reaper."

Come on, sing with me! One, two, three, four – “All our times have come/Here, but now they’re gone…”

Political Saviours and Pakistan

Some politicians achieve legendary status - and indeed, immortality, at least in the mind of the public - through dying. It is also helpful if they die before they can achieve true political power. RFK is a good example, and the fact that Martin Luther King never had to compromise his principles in political office has helped his posthumous reputation to flourish.

Benazir Bhutto is another good example of this phenomenon. Assassinated by a gunman/suicide bomber before she could achieve real political power, she can now live on after her death, never having to disappoint the potential that many felt she had. Yes, she had been Prime Minister, but few could have doubted before Christmas that this was her time, and this was her struggle to fight and maybe even win. Now she is dead she cannot succeed. But equally she cannot fail. Her supporters will hail the fallen Bhutto, and forever wonder what could have been achieved had she lived.

It may be a harsh thing to say so soon after her untimely demise, but such an idealised view of Bhutto is naive at the very least. Bhutto was not the answer to the deep and worrying problems facing Pakistan. It sounds facetious but the very fact someone assassinated her (and tried to on her return to Pakistan as well) shows the depths of hatred some in the country felt for her. Even if she had achieved political power (in the face of strong resistance from the increasingly dictatorial Musharraf) she would have struggled to unite the country. In fact a Bhutto presidency may have been the tipping point into a civil war that still hangs over Pakistan like the sword of Damocles.

The simple truth is that the deep rooted problems of Pakistan can't be solved by one person. The rifts in Pakistani society that are now boiling over have been around since that country gained independence, and arguably before. It is tempting to look at Bhutto and add to the layers of tragedy that surround any untimely death by seeing the assassination as a calamity for Pakistan as well as the Bhutto family. But the sad fact is that Bhutto could not have saved Pakistan.

And the even sadder fact is that it is now difficult to see who will.