[Reader-list] Comment: David Miliband's argument is flawed

[Taha Mehmood]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5525152.ece

Times Foreign Editor says the Foreign Secretary may not want to call
this a war - but Osama bin Laden certainly does
Richard Beeston


David Miliband showed bad judgment and poor taste when he chose the
Taj hotel in Mumbai to take a last swipe at George Bush in the dying
days of his presidency.

With the blood barely dry on the reception walls, the Foreign
Secretary made his stand against Mr Bush in the city's most famous
landmark and memorial site to the 164 dead from November's terrorist
attack.

Mr Miliband said that the War on Terror was "misleading and mistaken"
and may have done more harm than good, that the threat posed by
militant Islam cannot be defeated by force of arms and that there is
no single enemy in this fight.

His points have been rehearsed by British ministers before but Mr
Miliband chose to set them out more bluntly than ever, just five days
before the US leader steps down. He separately praised the incoming
Obama Administration whose "values and priorities" he told us he
shared.

On substance his argument is flawed. As Osama bin Laden made clear in
his statement this week, the al-Qaeda leader, his No 2 and his global
organisation are alive and well. Bar some inauguration surprise, the
fugitive Saudi terrorist is likely to see off Mr Bush, who steps down
on Tuesday. Al-Qaeda and its offshoots are still well armed and funded
and running operations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia,
Somalia, South-East Asia and North Africa, not to mention mainland
Britain. Since 9/11 they have succeeded in attacking targets across
the globe — Bali, Madrid, Jedda, London, Istanbul, Baghdad, Algiers,
Islamabad and Amman to name a few. They are responsible for the deaths
of thousands of innocent civilians, mostly fellow Muslims.

Mr Miliband cited General David Petraeus, whose tactics are credited
with turning around the situation in Iraq, as a commander who
understood that America could not kill its way out of the problems in
Iraq.

That is true. But what America did do under Mr Bush and General
Petraeus was commit tens of thousands more troops to the battle and
win over the support of key elements in the local population. The
Americans, with their new Iraqi allies, then dismembered al-Qaeda in
Iraq in a series of decisive military actions.

Clearly if there are moderate, biddable elements in the Taleban, in
Hezbollah, in Hamas or among other militant groups around the world,
then the governments concerned should act to engage them. But let us
not kid ourselves about al-Qaeda and its allies. We may not want to
call this a war but they do.

The shortcomings of Mr Miliband's arguments are largely beside the
point. The Taj hotel in Mumbai is a place where visiting foreign
leaders should pay respect to the dead and praise the courage of those
who defied the terrorists.

Mr Miliband appears to have followed the advice of one of Mr Bush's
predecessors in the White House, who was fond of saying that you
should never hit a man when he was down but kick him because it saved
bending over.

Instead, the Foreign Secretary should have acted some time during the
past seven years when his words would have mattered, not on the eve of
Mr Obama's inauguration and not in Mumbai.