Salim Lone

The Gleneagles summit’s grand stage might well have shown up Bush’s hypocrisy in proclaiming an “ideology of compassion” over African poverty and global warming. Instead, the London bombings allowed the president and Tony Blair to strut as anti-terror champions again, when in fact their policies continue to produce thousands of new terrorists.

Bush and Blair were back in full throttle over the terrorists’ barbarity in contrast to the west’s superior culture and values. You would think the pair of them had never hurt a soul. There appeared to be no memory of the half a million Iraqi children killed by sanctions ruthlessly maintained by the US and UK. Indeed, this was defended as necessary to advance US interests by Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state.

While repeatedly reporting comments asserting the other side’s inhumanity in recent days, western TV networks have not even hinted at the images they possess of more recent of crimes against humanity committed in Falluja, Najaf, Qaim, the mountain villages of Afghanistan, Jenin. Yes, the terrorists are barbaric - but who is more so? Bush, Blair and all the countries threatened with terror nevertheless have the world’s support in taking all lawful steps necessary to protect their citizens. Muslims in particular want to see an end to terrorist carnage: after all, the principal victims of terror and the US-British aggressions disguised as a response to it are Muslim countries. For every westerner killed by Muslim terrorists since the end of the cold war, at least a hundred Muslims have died in wars and occupations perpetrated by the west.

Action against terrorism is imperative, but will only succeed if accompanied by steps to address intense Muslim grievances, including curbing wars of aggression and occupation, which are among the central causes of the exponential growth in terror. But no one dares to put these items on the international agenda because of US power - and the support given to the US by Britain. Without that British support, the US would be comprehensively isolated and forced to reconsider its policies. The greatest blow Bush and Blair could strike against terror would be to terminate the occupation of Iraq within a fixed time. This would profoundly affect the outcome of the coming elections, and forge peace through power-sharing with Iraqi insurgents. But there is little pressure for Bush to do so since two senior Democratic senators, John Kerry and Joseph Biden, urged him to send more US troops a fortnight ago. These Democratic leaders seem to have bought into the strategic goals for which the Bush administration launched the war: control of oil in an oil-thirsty world, with its economic rival China the thirstiest of all; the establishment of military bases in support of the American project to redraw the political landscape of the region; and weakening Iraq so it could never again pose a threat to Israel.

Most Americans, whose media provide them with extremely limited information about the brutality of US actions in the Muslim world, continue to believe that theirs is a good country trying to fix the world and rid it of US-hating terrorists. It’s hardly surprising that there is little public pressure to terminate the Iraqi occupation. And the major western states are incapable of exerting pressure on the US, even when it is destabilising their world. —The Guardian