[Reader-list] Fwd: FISK

[anjali mody]

>From: Rachana Raizada <rachana_raizada at yahoo.com>
>To: rachana_raizada at yahoo.com
>Subject: Fwd: FISK
>Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 20:49:27 +0100 (BST)
>

>
> > Subject: FISK
> >
> > The wickedness and awesome
> >  cruelty of a crushed and
> >  humiliated people
> >
> >  By Robert Fisk
> >
> >  12 September 2001
> >
> >  So it has come to this. The entire modern history of the
> >  Middle East ­ the collapse of the Ottoman empire, the
> >  Balfour declaration, Lawrence of Arabia's lies, the
> >  Arab revolt, the foundation of the state of Israel, four
> >  Arab-Israeli wars and the 34 years of Israel's brutal
> >  occupation of Arab land ­ all erased within hours as
> >  those who claim to represent a crushed, humiliated
> >  population struck back with the wickedness and
> >  awesome cruelty of a doomed people. Is it fair ­ is it
> >  moral ­ to write this so soon, without proof, when the
> >  last act of barbarism, in Oklahoma, turned out to be the
> >  work of home-grown Americans? I fear it is. America
> >  is at war and, unless I am mistaken, many thousands
> >  more are now scheduled to die in the Middle East,
> >  perhaps in America too. Some of us warned of "the
> >  explosion to come''. But we never dreamt this
> >  nightmare.
> >
> >  And yes, Osama bin Laden comes to mind, his money,
> >  his theology, his frightening dedication to destroy
> >  American power. I have sat in front of bin Laden as he
> >  described how his men helped to destroy the Russian
> >  army in Afghanistan and thus the Soviet Union. Their
> >  boundless confidence allowed them to declare war on
> >  America. But this is not the war of democracy versus
> >  terror that the world will be asked to believe in the
> >  coming days. It is also about American missiles
> >  smashing into Palestinian homes and US helicopters
> >  firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and
> >  American shells crashing into a village called Qana and
> >  about a Lebanese militia ­ paid and uniformed by
> >  America's Israeli ally ­ hacking and raping and
> >  murdering their way through refugee camps.
> >
> >  No, there is no doubting the utter, indescribable evil of
> >  what has happened in the United States. That
> >  Palestinians could celebrate the massacre of 20,000,
> >  perhaps 35,000 innocent people is not only a symbol of
> >  their despair but of their political immaturity, of their
> >  failure to grasp what they had always been accusing
> >  their Israeli enemies of doing: acting
> >  disproportionately. All the years of rhetoric, all the
> >  promises to strike at the heart of America, to cut off
> >  the head of "the American snake'' we took for empty
> >  threats. How could a backward, conservative,
> >  undemocratic and corrupt group of regimes and small,
> >  violent organisations fulfil such preposterous
> >  promises? Now we know.
> >
> >  And in the hours that followed yesterday's annihilation,
> >  I began to remember those other extraordinary assaults
> >  upon the US and its allies, miniature now by
> >  comparison with yesterday's casualties. Did not the
> >  suicide bombers who killed 241 American servicemen
> >  and 100 French paratroops in Beirut on 23 October
> >  1983, time their attacks with unthinkable precision?
> >
> >  There were just seven seconds between the Marine
> >  bombing and the destruction of the French three miles
> >  away. Then there were the attacks on US bases in Saudi
> >  Arabia, and last year's attempt ­ almost successful it
> >  now turns out ­ to sink the USS Cole in Aden. And then
> >  how easy was our failure to recognise the new weapon
> >  of the Middle East which neither Americans nor any
> >  other Westerners could equal: the despair-driven,
> >  desperate suicide bomber.
> >
> >  And there will be, inevitably, and quite immorally, an
> >  attempt to obscure the historical wrongs and the
> >  injustices that lie behind yesterday's firestorms. We
> >  will be told about "mindless terrorism'', the "mindless"
> >  bit being essential if we are not to realise how hated
> >  America has become in the land of the birth of three
> >  great religions.
> >
> >  Ask an Arab how he responds to 20,000 or 30,000
> >  innocent deaths and he or she will respond as decent
> >  people should, that it is an unspeakable crime. But they
> >  will ask why we did not use such words about the
> >  sanctions that have destroyed the lives of perhaps half a
> >  million children in Iraq, why we did not rage about the
> >  17,500 civilians killed in Israel's 1982 invasion of
> >  Lebanon. And those basic reasons why the Middle East
> >  caught fire last September ­ the Israeli occupation of
> >  Arab land, the dispossession of Palestinians, the
> >  bombardments and state-sponsored executions ... all
> >  these must be obscured lest they provide the smallest
> >  fractional reason for yesterday's mass savagery.
> >
> >  No, Israel was not to blame ­ though we can be sure that
> >  Saddam Hussein and the other grotesque dictators will
> >  claim so ­ but the malign influence of history and our
> >  share in its burden must surely stand in the dark with
> >  the suicide bombers. Our broken promises, perhaps
> >  even our destruction of the Ottoman Empire, led
> >  inevitably to this tragedy. America has bankrolled
> >  Israel's wars for so many years that it believed this
> >  would be cost-free. No longer so. But, of course, the
> >  US will want to strike back against "world terror'', and
> >  last night's bombardment of Kabul may have been the
> >  opening salvo. Indeed, who could ever point the finger
> >  at Americans now for using that pejorative and
> >  sometimes racist word "terrorism''?
> >
> >  Eight years ago, I helped to make a television series
> >  that tried to explain why so many Muslims had come to
> >  hate the West. Last night, I remembered some of those
> >  Muslims in that film, their families burnt by
> >  American-made bombs and weapons. They talked
> >  about how no one would help them but God. Theology
> >  versus technology, the suicide bomber against the
> >  nuclear power. Now we have learnt what this means.
>
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