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November 19, 2001
Operation Enduring Bush
While President Bush distracts Americans he is quietly trying to accrue more dictatorial powers to himself. Afghan women may be able to remove the veil from their faces, but most people especially Americans had a heavier veil placed over their minds under the disguise of fighting terrorism. Full Article
Leahy challenges Bush on military tribunals
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday challenged President Bush's call for special U.S. military tribunals to try foreigners accused of terrorist attacks, saying the trials could give the world the impression that the United States is looking for "victor's justice."
"We need to understand the international implications of the president's order, which sends a message to the world that it is acceptable to hold secret trials and summary executions, without the possibility of judicial review," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, in what many consider the opening volley of a bitter fight by Democrats to oppose the trials.
"Could this put U.S. citizens abroad, including military personnel and peacekeepers, at grave risk? We also must take care not to give the court of world opinion the impression that what we have in mind is victor's justice," he said. Full Article
Our friends in the North are just as treacherous and murderous
By Robert Fisk
When the Iranian army massed on the western border of Afghanistan in 1998 and prepared to storm across the frontier to avenge the Taliban slaughter of its diplomats – and its Afghan allies – in Mazar-i-Sharif, it received a message from the Taliban leadership in Kandahar.
"You will decide the date of your invasion," came the two-sentence communiqué from Mullah Omar's men. "We will decide the date of your departure." The Iranians wisely held their fire. It may have been a reply from the Taliban – but it was a very Afghan reply. The US and Britain – or the "coalition" as we are constrained to call them – are now getting similar treatment. The Northern Alliance watched the American bombers clear the road to Kabul. They were grateful. Then they drove into Kabul and now they are asking the British to leave. Poor old Jack Straw had trouble contacting the Afghan foreign minister to sort things out. The Afghan satellite phone was not switched on. You bet it wasn't. Full Article
Bin Laden needs tackling, but don't overestimate him
By Peter Preston
There has been no sense of the ridiculous to the handful of days since John Simpson liberated Kabul. And yet so much is ridiculous. Not just us, quivering a week ago because an airliner had crashed on New York and Wall Street was plunging, then suddenly puffed with triumphalism and short-term memory loss as the Taliban scarpered. Osama bin Laden, too. He is, among other things, a ridiculous figure. Full Article
This raging colossus
By Madeleine Bunting
Fear drives this kind of emotional intensity. It is a pitifully short time, only two months, since we learned of a ruthlessness born of fanaticism which we had not thought possible; our perception of human nature is having to painfully readjust to the revelation of a capacity for calmly premeditated brutality. I'm sure that fear has influenced my continuing conviction that waging war on Afghanistan is unlikely in the long term to defeat that kind of ruthless Islamist terrorism, and is very likely to have disastrous consequences for the poor benighted country itself. I very much hope I will be proved wrong.
And yet, it's not even those Jalalabad warriors that have made the last week's events so troubling, but the growing appreciation of just how ruthless and ambitious the US is likely to become in its war against terrorism. What the events of the past few days have starkly revealed is that the US had only one interest in this war in Afghanistan, capturing Bin Laden and destroying al-Qaida; that imperative outstripped all considerations of Afghanistan's future. So the timing of the attack was decided by US military preparedness rather than any coherent political strategy for the region, and the US war aim determined the crucial switch in tactics around November 4 when the US decided to throw its weight behind the unsavoury Northern Alliance by bombing the Taliban frontlines.
For the US, the whole country of Afghanistan is collateral damage. Or, to put it another way, a little hors d'oeuvre before they move on to the next course - Somalia, Yemen or, most worryingly of all, Iraq? The latter is already being openly touted in Washington as a possibility for the "second stage" and tension is growing in the Gulf region. Meanwhile, as far as the US is concerned, the UK with its nation-building agenda, the UN and everyone else is welcome to spend their soldiers' lives on the onerous task of clearing up the mess the US bombing has left behind, freeing it to concentrate on the next task. WHOLE ARTICLE
