What They Said ...

The Prime Minister's "we are at war" statements are irresponsible in the extreme. It is said that some of his senior officials understand this, as do many MPs: thus the messages of "restraint" now being whispered to journalists.

Tony Blair is endangering the people of this country as well as Britons abroad. His willingness to join Bush's "crusade" and use military force will neither avenge nor bring justice to nor honour the memory of the ordinary people who died so terribly in America last week because it will almost certainly lead to a gratuitous slaughter of more innocents in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere. It also risks nurturing a new generation of suicidal killers.

Blair's being "shoulder to shoulder" with Bush means allying this country to a willingness to kill large numbers of non-Americans in pursuit of uncertain immediate goals that have long been a feature of US policy. This list is long. Remember, if you can, the "free- fire zones", including the use of chemical weapons, that killed as many as 50,000 civilians every year in Vietnam; the bombing of Cambodia that killed 600,000 people; the unnecessary slaughter of tens of thousands of Iraqis during the 1991 Gulf war, the beginning of a silent holocaust that has since claimed half a million children, according to the UN. For Blair and Bush to say that war has been declared upon America is rich.

During my lifetime, America has been constantly waging war against much of humanity: mostly impoverished people in stricken places. Moreover, far from being the main perpetrators of terrorism, Islamic peoples have been victims - more often than not of an American fundamentalism and its proxies.

Copyright 2001
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