TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE A RIGHT
(21/9/98)
At the beginning of September members of Bradford social club - The 1 in 12 Club - protested outside City Hall at the Labour Party's unconditional support for the US bombing raids on Afghanistan and Sudan, adding its voice to the growing disquiet felt in Bradford about US foreign policy and its demonisation of the Muslim community.
On August 7th the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were attacked with a car bomb leaving 247 dead, the vast majority Kenyans and Tanzanians. This attack was indefensible and wrong.
On 20th August the United States fired 75 sea-launched Cruise missiles into Afghanistan and the densely populated city of Khartoum in Sudan killing an estimated 50 people and injuring hundreds more. This attack was indefensible and wrong.
But whilst one act of inhuman outrage quite rightly received international condemnation the other won praise from the Labour government in Britain. Whilst countries such as France, India, Russia, Ireland, Pakistan and Japan all withheld their support, Tony Blair wasted no time at all in offering the UK's unconditional backing.
But in whose name was this unequivocal support given. Certainly for many in Bradford the actions of the US were no less deplorable than the earlier embassy attacks. Eye witness accounts of the scenes in Khartoum North recorded by the Irish Times describe a situation of absolute panic and terror amongst the civilian population as the US missiles began to drop into the city. The potential inaccuracy of these weapons is well documented, indeed during the simultaneous raids on Afghanistan one missile dropped 50km short in Pakistan.
This disregard for human life, national sovereignty, and natural justice is unacceptable, like a school bully the US exerts its authority not by reason and argument but by flexing its considerable military muscle. Justifying its attacks under UN law with one breath, whilst vetoing demands for a UN investigation of its alleged evidence in the next. But the hypocrisy gets
The alleged perpetrator of the embassy bombings and US public enemy number one - Osama bin Laden - was not so long ago a favoured son. His rebel group armed and financed by the CIA during the 1980s when the US backed the mujahaddin against the invading Soviet forces in Afghanistan. The Pentagon knew where bin Laden's bases were in Afghanistan because it was the Americans who had built them!.
Every time the US kills Muslims - in Libya in 1986, in Iraq since 1991, now in Sudan and Afghanistan - US presidents stress they had nothing against the people killed, only their leaders. But the leaders are never harmed by Cruise missiles, only innocent civilians.
The consequences of the US bombings have already been disastrous and include, - at least 50 people dead and many more injured.
In this context the much vaunted ethical foreign policy of the Labour government looks extremely unconvincing as almost alone amongst the international community Britain has stood shoulder to shoulder with the US. How does the indiscriminate bombing of people in either Kenya, Sudan, Afghanistan or Tanzania further the search for just and equitable settlements to the real conflicts at the heart of this carnage.
To many cruise missiles have a lot in common with the car bombs used in the embassy attacks. They are both cowardly weapons. Those that use them do not see their enemy, or risk their own life.