"TERRORISM" AND THE LONELY HEARTS COLUMN. posted by Richard Seymour

From yesterday's lonely hearts column:

"Married white male, middle-aged, WLTM anyone from the ME who likes sado-masochistic relationships. I have money and control of the world's biggest economy. Contact mail box number 4850".

The twin bombings in Iraq and Israel have produced some of the most cartoonish news hysteria witnessed so far since the occupation of Iraq began some four months ago. The Sun produced the most intelligent headline, referring to the bombing of the UN compound: "Let's Get Real" , although the remainder revealed depths of sophistry and idiocy as yet unsuspected in Rebekah "lynch mob" Wade. The thrust of their leading article was to suggest that such awesome violence rendered the Hutton Inquiry irrelevant. "Who cares why we got into this collossal mess, when we're in this collossal mess?" seems to be the message.

As I predicted , the occupation has gone awry with the beginning of large-scale casualties, such as were seen in Lebanon when the successful resistance against America picked up. Instead of taking one or two in ambushes each day, we may now begin to see Iraqis scoring a plurality of double-figure casualties. The difference between Iraq and Lebanon is how little time it has taken to reach this point, and that the target in this instance is a "soft" one. Not military bases, but a largely unarmed compound was attacked. The media and politicians instantly picked up on this and referred to it as a "terrorist" incident likely to be the work of Al Qaeda, or related anti-American forces. It is simply inconceivable that Iraqis themselves may object to the occupation, even though recent opinion polls conducted in Baghdad (faulty, to be sure, probably no more than indicative) suggested that most of those asked believed the Americans' main reason for invading Iraq was either to access oil or to assist Israel. Let noone say that this is because of state-sponsored lies on Iraqi television, or even recycled on Al Jazeera. When Patrick and Andrew Cockburn were preparing their book, "Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession" (2000), they encountered Iraqi Shi'ites who shamed them with their knowledge of UN sanctions negotiations and the wrangling behind the scenes. The reason, they discovered, was that Iraqis have access on their radios to BBC Arabic World Service, Voice of America and Radio Monte Carlo.

So, Iraqis, distrustful of the occupation, signing up to join resistance armies in their thousands , shot dead at checkpoints or in their homes , detained under the worst conditions, napalmed illegally ... they could not possibly have considered that the UN had santioned the occupation and was aiming, in Kofi Annan's words, to "confer legitemacy on the process" (Guardian, 22/07/03) and decided that they were a suitable target for guerilla attacks? In Newsweek's diplomatic diary, Richard Wolffe suggests that it may have been no coincidence that the bombing followed last week's resolution welcoming the new Iraqi governing council and creating a new, more permanent, UN mission to Iraq. "They" would like to frighten foreign countries and corporations away from Iraq, and they want everyone from the Nepalese army to Starbucks terrified of involvement in "the new Iraq".

There are, allegedly, a few hundred foreign fighters operating in Iraq. It is entirely plausible that they are Al Qaeda affiliates exploiting the poor security and chaotic conditions in the Middle East's new, burgeoning democracy. Today's statements apparently issued by the Iraqi resistance to Arab news media deny any involvement in the attacks and condemn them outright. According to Agence France Presse, Ahmed Chalabi is now running around telling journalists that the US had prior warning of the attack, including clear intelligence "that a large-scale act would take place ... against a soft target, such as Iraqi political parties or other parties, including the U.N." That intelligence seems not to have been passed on to the United Nations.

However, we now know that US investigators believe Iraqis were involved and that it was an "inside job" inasmuch as those who carried it out must have known that a very important public meeting was taking place in front of the world's media, and where exactly that meeting was going to be. If this is so, think for a second about is meaning. The bombing could not have been the work of Al Qaeda or some "foreign" terrorist group. It had the cooperation of Iraqis working for the compound. It was therefore a strike organised by the resistance, probably Sunnis.

Robert Fisk suggests in Counterpunch that "Saddam created enough pseudo-Wahabist groups to let off steam during his reign. Talk about Islam, they were told, but not about politics. But the moment the regime collapsed, these organisations, which had always been hostile to Saddam, were left to their own devices, and immediately opposed US rule in Iraq. They, not al-Qa'ida, or anyone else, are running this butchery of a war against America and its friends in Iraq." Investigations may reveal a great deal as they continue.

Quite who is responsible therefore is unclear.

The automatic association with Al Qaeda may be no more than a reflex of Western political elites, but the style of the bombing and the selection of the target seem on the face of it to suggest at least some inspiration was drawn from Al Qaeda. On the other hand, it is not so dissimilar to tactics used by the Palestinian resistance, both religious and secular, for some time now. This link was made in a particularly poignant way by the juxtaposition of the two attacks.

The hypocrisy over the bombing of the bus in Israel is perhaps the most obscene aspect of it. On 31st July, Israel struck Nablus , an attack in which they killed 8 people. Nablus attacked again on Friday 8th July, this time killing four. Hardly a word was said. No front pages were decorated with blood and gore, certainly not in the UK or America. The number one news item was not a story of Israel breaking a fragile peace.

Yet, today, we have wall-to-wall sanctimony from Gideon Meir, Dore Gold and other disgusting hypocrites from the Israeli hard right, claiming that the Palestinian Authority had not clamped down on the terrorists enough and that Israel would never make peace with Palestine until it did. Israel occupied vital towns and cities in Palestine for 18 months and couldn't stop terrorists from attacking, so quite how the enfeebled and prostate Palestinian Authority was supposed to manage it is going to remain one of life's little mysteries. The media is alive with portentous reporting about the end of a fragile peace, how Israel might no longer be able to live with the Road Map, a deal they were never too hot on in the first place. Apart from the fact that the Road Map leads to almost complete negation of everything the Palestinians have ever stood for, where were these Cassandras when Israel was killing people not long ago? Where was the Greek Chorus then?

Israel's government was not instructed to root out the terrorists responsible because *they* were the terrorists reponsible. They were not asked to condemn the attacks because they carried them out. We did not see Mahmoud Abbas or Yasser Arafat on the BBC demanding that the perpetrators be brought to justice, because they are not in a position to demand anything. America and the UK did not react with outrage, because Israel carries out such attacks with American money and British weapons. And who will ask the question - is it not possible that Israel, who did not approve of the Road Map from the beginning, intended to provoke a violent Palestinian reaction? By breaking their ceasfire in a way they knew would not accrue international media attention, they incited a break in the ceasefire of Hamas and other groups. Such a question is not even permissible if you believe, like the Sun, that "The Israelis only retaliate when attacked. They don’t initiate violence."

The US does not initiate violence, Israel does not initiate violence, their only enemies are terrorists against whom they must retaliate.

This, then, renders absolutely eloquent the sublime hypocrisy of our unloved rulers. No wonder they're so lonely.