[Peace-discuss] [Fwd: It's Up to the Anti-War Movement]

[chason at shout.net]

It's Up to the Anti-War Movement to Restrain the Thirst for More Blind
Revenge

Message from London

By Mike Marqusee

07/07/05 "Counterpunch" - - This morning, the suffering, grief and terror
that have visited so many innocents in recent years came to London. We
have not paid the kind of price that people have paid in Fallujah, Najaf
or Jenin, but it is a steep price nonetheless. And its root causes are the
same.

The bomb blasts were grimly predictable. Indeed, they had been widely and
repeatedly predicted ­ not least by rank-and-file Londoners, who knew that
by taking Britain into Iraq side-by-side with the USA, Tony Blair had
placed their city in the firing line.

As I write, the wreckage is being cleared and the casualties counted. But
Blair has already appeared on television to address the nation, pledging
to defend "our values" and "our way of life" against those who would
"impose extremism on the world". He spoke of the unity of "civilised
nations" in resisting "terrorism". While the delivery may be slicker, his
"us" vs "them" world-view was indistinguishable from Bush's. Even by
Blair's standards, it was a performance of nauseating hypocrisy, as he
sought to seize the moral high ground in relation to violence and
destruction that he himself helped unleash.

The Labour government, egged on by the Conservative opposition and the
right-wing press, will now seek to play on fear and drum up vindictive
feelings. At this stage, however, it is unclear how the British population
will respond. Will the mood more resemble post 9/11 USA or Spain in the
wake of the Madrid carnage?

Coming the day after London's Olympic triumph, the attacks are a grim
reminder that media-hyped feel-good boosterism will do nothing to mitigate
the UK's plummeting global standing. Blair's closeness to Bush, his
championship of the US neo-liberal model in the European Union, his
aggressive pursuit of the "war against terror" have all diminished Britain
in the eyes of Europe and the world.

This is a reality of which many people in Britain are acutely aware.
Opposition to the invasion of Iraq spread across every sector of British
society, and was overwhelming in London. Subsequent revelations concerning
the bogus claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have further
embittered public opinion ­ and made the Prime Minister, according to
every poll, one of the least trusted and most disrespected individuals in
the country.

Of course, Blair was able to overcome this decided disadvantage and get
himself re-elected in May thanks to the absence of meaningful opposition
within the established political system. That absence will be felt acutely
in the days to come as Britain wrestles with the consequences of the bomb
blasts.

The Blair government will doubtless seek to use this morning's atrocity to
escalate its alarming attacks on civil liberties. The country's 1.5
million strong Muslim population, already subject to police harassment,
will come under increased pressure. (Commentators have been quick to claim
that the bombs may be the work of people hiding anonymously within the
"law-abiding Muslim community".) Anti-globalisation protesters ­ currently
gathered outside the G8 summit at the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland ­ will
be branded as "terrorists" and dealt with accordingly.

Fomenting and exploiting fear has been a speciality of the Blair regime.
Asylum seekers, teenagers wearing hoods, militant Muslims, anarchists,
paedophiles the list of targets is lengthy and frighteningly flexible.
Whenever there is a need to distract people from the impact of the
government's neo-liberal economic policies, from its failure to rebuild
the public sector, from its misbegotten foreign adventures, a new
scapegoat is conjured up. The bomb blasts may aid this process, but there
is also reason to hope that this time there will be substantial public
resistance.

On 15th February 2003, some two million people gathered in London to
demonstrate against the imminent attack on Iraq. I remember speaking to a
neighbour who told me proudly that he was going on the march ­ his first
ever protest march ­ because he was damned if he was going to let Tony
Blair endanger his children's lives by making London a prime target for
attack.

Everything that has happened since then ­ the exposure of lie after lie,
the deaths of British soldiers, the refusal of ground realities in Iraq to
conform to Blair's scenario - has further entrenched popular resentment of
the war, widely seen as a result of Blair's determination to court favour
with George Bush. The prime minister calculates that the bomb blasts will
unite British people behind their government and that a touch of
well-rehearsed statesman-like gravitas will refresh his image. Much of the
media will pump out the message that we are all under threat from faceless
barbarians irrationally opposed to "our way of life". It will be up to the
anti-war movement to articulate a different analysis, to remind people
that this attack is a consequence of our role in dishing out brutality in
Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine, and to insist that no amount of
moralistic posturing by our leaders can substitute for a desperately
needed change in policy.

Mike Marqusee is the author of Chains of Freedom: the Politics of Bob
Dylan's Art and Redemption Song: Muhammed Ali and the Sixties. He can be
reach through his website: www.mikemarqusee.com
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