I really hate to, but I’ve just read over at Wired that
we’ve killed at least 4,700 people via drone strikes. The figure
comes from Sen. Lindsey Graham, who glibly admits that “Sometimes
you hit innocent people, and I hate that.” “But,” he adds,
“we’re at war, and we’ve taken out some very senior members of
al-Qaida.”
We are emphatically not at war with Pakistan,
Somalia, or Yemen. As for al-Qaeda, there is no such thing, as
Peter Hitchens has pointed out here:
There is no such organisation… The spooks know this, Cabinet
Ministers know this and so do the ‘security correspondents’ who so
readily trot out the spooks’ point of view on our broadcasting
networks.
Of course, there are terrorists, and there are also fantasists,
fanatics, low-lifes and camp followers who plot and attempt
horrible things. Some of them even call themselves ‘Al Qaeda’ these
days because they have learned that this is a good way to scare
us.
and here:
I am always baffled by people’s willingness to believe in ‘Al
Qaeda’. This alleged organisation is supposedly everywhere, popping
up in the Philippines one week, Spain the next, Bali the following
month, Indonesia, Turkey and Iraq after that. These places are all
deeply different and the connections between Islamists in them are
tenuous and have never been proven. But it is also supposedly a
tightly organised plot controlled by that bearded chap in the
mountains.
I specially love the phrase ‘all the hallmarks of al Qaeda’ and
wait for TV reporters to intone it at some point in any account of
a terrorist outrage anywhere. The ‘hallmarks of al Qaeda’ are,
apparently, that it is an outrage, and that it has been done by
Muslim Jihadists. These are not actually hallmarks. It is like
saying that having four wheels, an engine and a windscreen are ‘all
the hallmarks of a car’.
The truth, that there is now a global ideology of Islamic
militancy, which doesn’t require a central command, or training
camps in Asia, or a man with a beard, is partly addressed in the
new US intelligence report which also rather obviously admits that
the Iraq invasion may have something to do with the current upsurge
of militancy. These Washington experts are slowly getting there.
Sooner or later they’ll come up with a report saying that George
Bush is no good as President, shortly after he’s left office.
Once again, the interesting question is why people believe
something that is plainly silly. In the case of the
neo-conservative enthusiasts for the global ‘War on Terror’, I
think it is because they are anxious to come up with an explanation
for this conflict which does not involve Israel - when it is
obvious to anyone who can see that Israel is the pivot of the whole
argument. I think some PC people are worried about seeming
anti-Muslim if they link the outrages with militant Islam. In the
case of the spooks and the policemen, they need a bogeyman with
which to frighten the public and justify their powers and their
budgets. I just wish journalists would stop swallowing it
whole.
Any popsicle-stand jidhadist can adopt the untrademarked
al-Qaeda brand for himself, just as the current administration can
justify any drone strike, however misguided, however
destructive of civilian life, by waving the black and yellow
flag.
Be skeptical, folks.
