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cana
newsletter issue 5
29th September 2001
A meditation
Cana - Christians Against Nato Aggression - was established 1999
as a pressure group opposing the NATO war on Yugoslavia &
this is still our prime concern. The fact that the aggression was
successful doesn't make it right. Events in Macedonia &
the arrest of Milosevic were the main topic of the last e mail
news letter sent out in April 2001. (CANA also publishes -
even less regularly than the News Letter - another e
mail newsletter "Anti - Fascist News", more
'catholic', dealing with more topics).
In this issue Yugoslavian interests are secondary. There is a need for reflection. Everything fades in the light of the world crisis. Someone said to me a few days ago that the situation now is as when the earthquake first struck Lisbon in 1759 (or thereabouts). The sea went out far beyond the horizon. The Portuguese looked out of their homes & saw ... there was no sea. But after a delay, the sea came in.... A new world dis-order has been created, but not since September 11th 2001, as it was there before, @ least since March 24th 1999, when Britain & the USA entered the terrorism business in a big way. Meanwhile we wait for the inevitable, predictable, deplorable US reprisal.
I say deplorable because I deplore it. I deplore the fact that we still seem not to have sorted our brains out. The suicide bombers/hijackers who hit the World Trade Centre (WTC) weren't brainless. They knew exactly what they were doing, but do we? "September 11th we suffered a grievous loss", to quote President Bush. By we I mean all of us who believe in a common humanity, who see war & conflict as evils to be averted, (for me, if possible, & only if that possibility is consistent with national honour). But we are all appalled @ innocents paying the price for the mistakes of their opinion formers & political leaders.
So what happens now? Nothing the US can do in any reprisal can bring back the lives of all those loved ones, husbands, fathers, sons, daughters, lovers, friends, lost pn September 11th. It is the primitive instinct to retaliate. US culture demands instant results. The US electorate demand retaliation, but, against whom? I paste below a letter I sent to the Daily Mail three days ago. It hasn't been published. From Britain's viewpoint I don't see why the Prime Minister believes it's in the national interest, or otherwise moral, for us to join the Americans in an attack on Afghanistan. In one obvious sense the argument doesn't have anything to do with us. We know that 200 or so Britons died in the Two Towers & that, according to Mr Blair, justifies us attacking Afghanistan. But the IRA killed more Britons in their campaign. We never bombed them. Instead we made them cabinet ministers.
Everyone has said how much the Americans helped us in the war, by which they presumably mean the 1941 - 45 war, not the one which began in 1939. When London was bombed, the Americans didn't send us any direct military help - although Ed Murrow gave some good broadcasts from Trafalgar Square. Why is it our PM believes that we must inevitably join America, both when they are bombed & when they bomb?
For years the UK has been engaged in an illegal bombing campaign against Iraq. The UK has been the only European country willing to join the US in this. Then in 1999 for 78 days the UK joined the US in another illegal bombing campaign, against Yugoslavia, creating thereby innumerable tragedies, each one as bad as any featured at the WTC. And earlier the UK assisted the Americans in the bombing of Libya & Bosnia, (but didn't join the US in bombing Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Grenada, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Bulgaria, or Cuba). I mention this (not exhaustive) list of countries bombed by the US since 1960 to illustrate the point that if you bomb countries (or bombard them from the USS New Jersey) @ some stage you can expect to be bombed in return.
I think no power to your refrigerator, no gas to your stove, you can't get to work because the bridge is down - the bridge on which you held your rock concerts and you all stood with targets on your heads. That needs to disappear at three o'clock in the morning." These words of U.S. Air Force General Michael Short quoted in The International Herald Tribune 14 May 1999 justified US terrorism in bombing civilian targets in Yugoslavia: a policy which killed & maimed thousands of people, followed by "The Terror" - days of terror in Kosovo in the presence of international forces, when Washington's Muslim allies, the KLA, took control of the province, murdering, torturing, smashing up churches, & abducting children. (The Kosovo Terror had similarities to the August 1995 "Operation Storm". Croatian forces, their campaign directed by the Pentagon sponsored US firm, Military Professional Resources Inc. invaded the Krajina, expelling from their homes, & killing thousands of Serbs).
But Americans are now finding that it is not only other people's refrigerators, stoves, & bridges which can be smashed up. Bombing is a two way business & for a long time Americans thought it was a one way business. And in this historical reminder I don't include here other scenarios, such as Haiti, or the Dominican Republic, where US ground troops were used, or an invasion made under the threat of force. What were the reasons for the September 11th attack? Evidently religious fanaticism played a part, giving the hijackers confidence & the hope of resurrection to a better life on account of their noble deeds. The hijackers, most of whom were Saudi, were under the influence of the Wahabi branch of Islam, & The Taliban are very much a Saudi creation & Wahabiism is both anti Christian & anti Western.
As well as Wahabiism, Americanism played its part. The terrorists were socialised by their exposure to American culture. Americans worship success & this was successful. Americans worship size & this was big. American events are media events. This was the most overwhelming media event in history. Americans glorify violence, ruthlessness & the destruction of innocent lives in pursuit of political goals, or to demonstrate their technology, & this was violent & ruthless, & served a political end, (while displaying the limitations of American technology). In addition the terrorists were driven by a sense of injustice.
Just about the stupidest article I have read in these last few days was one in The Independent by Anne McElvoy. She wrote: "...the worst misunderstanding of 11th September is that it was some sort of retaliation for America's misdemeanours on the world stage & its strident support for Israel. An even less credible variant blames America's tone or manner or something conveniently imprecise. In either case runs the argument, the US should try to understand how much it is loathed...". She says, "...there is no evidence - repeat no evidence - that the motivation of this attack was the treatment of the Palestinian people." She doesn't put forward any alternative explanation as to why the attack took place, other than the fact that they were terrorists. Manifestly there was a combination of religious & political grievance, & Palestine was one of the grievances, Iraq another, & Lebanon another, & in an earlier interview bin Laden admitted as much. But bin Laden is also driven in his hatred of America by resentment at US forces being on the (to him) sacred territory of Arabia. (Incidentally, in writing in these terms about bin Laden I am not implying he was necessarily responsible for the September 11th attacks - only for the purpose of this article I am accepting US claims, although at the time of writing no evidence has yet been produced.)
Politics & religion inter-relate in many societies. An extreme political situation can create an extreme in religion & vice versa. In the disasters which overtook the Islamic world since 1945, it was easy for Muslims to see a failure to maintain Islam in its purity as the cause, & there is thus a gravitation towards fundamentalism, whether represented by Iran, or by the Wahabi sect. (In the same way the early Christians, when they saw they were losing out to Islam, examined their traditions & decided they weren't pure enough, & the iconoclast movement began). They used to say about Ireland that the Catholics took their religion from Rome & their politics from Ireland. I always thought that a stupid statement, as the two are linked. There is an element in the Wahabi branch of Islam which is totalitarian, intolerant, & a fundamental threat to world peace & all the freedoms we hold dear. That being the case it is really remarkable that a so called Christian country, the United States, should have supported a repulsive Wahabi regime for so long, while being opposed to other Arab regimes which are secular & to some degree pluralist, states such as Libya & Iraq. The particular Wahabi regime which the US has supported, armed, trained & generally gets on very well with is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), accurately described by Robert Fisk in The Independent (27th September) as ".... a cradle of determined killers.". US policy towards the KSA has never put human rights anywhere. This e mail is going to people with many different views, so I don't expect everyone to agree with me, but I should explain for anyone who doesn't know already that as an Englishman I am writing from a Christian perspective, specifically from an evangelical/protestant/pentecostalist background. I am familiar with Islam, @ least the form practised in Saudi Arabia - I am familiar with dump trucks, where the back was uplifted automatically & a load of stones deposited on to the terrified woman supposed adulteress underneath, familiar with public executions, with torture, electric shocks, crucifixions & I knew about the black holes of Al Hufuf, into which Saudi political prisoners are thrown & then left.
Years ago I had a mystical experience. I have had a few such experiences, at widely divergent intervals. This one was around 1978. I had been at work & had come into the house @ about 5 am. I had not been married long. We were living in a flat in Crouch End, London. It was light & the birds were twittering outside. I sat in a chair & suddenly I had, not quite a dream, but a waking vision, as I was awake when I had it. I saw two scenes: in one I saw a room. In the middle of the room was a man, quite large, ( I think I actually met him later). He was @ prayer, but whether to an idol or to the Christian God I had no idea. The scene then shifted, & I was coming down rapidly, on to a city, as if in an aircraft, on to something which appeared like an island. The city had tall towers & masts. Simultaneously a voice said to me: "So they came to the Land of the Uttermost Darkness." (In fact I wasn't clear whether the word was "utmost" or "uttermost.") The vision then faded. Later I spoke to Isabelle & told her what I had seen. I said "who are 'they'? is it us? And where is "The Land of Uttermost Darkness." Isabelle replied, quite sensibly, "if 'they' is us, then this means we are going there sometime, & we will recognise the land when we get there." Which is what happened. We didn't go to Saudi Arabia for another six years or so. We went first to Zimbabwe & then to Cyprus, where I researched the position of indigenous Christian minorities in the Middle East. In January 1985 I flew to Riyadh, & in March 1985, my wife joined me there, with my 3 children. (Another child was born in Riyadh). I recognised the place from my vision. The sense of it being an island was possibly due to the fact that Riyadh is just stuck in the middle of nowhere, & hundreds of square miles of desert. While in Saudi I didn't earn high money, like oil people do. I worked for the University, then for a royal school, teaching. The royal school was complete mayhem. As far as I recall only the grandson of King Faisal worked well. He sat there with a lectern in front of him, while pandemonium prevailed all around. Our head of English was an ineffectual American called Don. Because all these little brats were princes we had to humour them, in the best child centred progressive style now favoured in the UK, & they took advantage. Later I left the royal school & had a contract with one of bin Laden's associates, a Mr Mafhooz , & later still, at the time of the Gulf War, I worked for the Saudi Ministry of Telecommunications. Of course the idea that Saudi Arabia might be a land of uttermost darkness rather than light would never occur to any Muslim. The KSA stamps show great beams of light radiating out from Mecca. But speaking to a Coptic Christian I found the phrase, "uttermost darkness " had a particular application.
According to Islam the days before Mohammed were the days of darkness in the Arabian Peninsula, & darkness also meant ignorance. Actually I believe the darkness came after. Before the Prophet were days of light, when the Church was well established in Arabia. (I discovered one once in the desert, a beautiful 4th century Nestorian construction. Thankfully the Saudis are protecting the site, or were. I hope they still do.) Anyway what happened to us in the KSA is hard to talk about in a few words. When Isabelle arrived & we went to our apartment, several times there was a terrific noise, as if a mob was outside, a thousand people banging on the door in great agitation. At one time I was right by the door when this happened, & opened it immediately. There was absolutely nobody there. We experienced a number of other amazing events, not all negative, & one particularly wonderful. Involved with the expat community we had many good times & made many friends, but the injustice & cruelty, particularly towards TCNs (Third Country Nationals) & to those who were believers, was hard to take. On one occasion the metowah (religious police) having broken up our clandestine pentecostal church arrested & proposed to execute Pastor Wally on Christmas Day. On this sole occasion the US administration indicated an interest in human rights, & the US President placed pressure on the Saudis to desist. (The Saudis learned from this rebuff - since then in their execution of Christians they have been careful to allege criminal offences).
I am still tormented by some of the things I found out. When the Gulf War started I was in Riyadh. A number of scuds came over from Iraq. Patriot missiles were then fired in a blaze of pyrotechnics. The BBC reported the scuds were being intercepted, so listeners, including Saddam Hussein, assumed the bombardment was ineffective. But it was a play on words. Though intercepted the scud was not neutralised. The patriot was a proximity weapon exploding the main body of the scud, & deflecting it from its target.... & then the war head dropped. Poor Cynthia had a flat near the airport. I had made the mistake of believing CNN & CNN had told us that morning, the first day of the aerial bombardment of Iraq, that the Iraqi missile sites had all been hit. Cynthia was in a panic & I tried to calm her down. "CNN have said that the Iraqi missile sites were targeted this morning... don't worry. Saddam would have either used his missiles by now, or not at all. They are all knocked out... CNN has said so." "Really?" She looked at me with trusting eyes, but the first scud to land in Riyadh was opposite her house that night.
When I next visited it, the house & the whole district was a shambles with bits of patriot everywhere. That night Cynthia narrowly escaped death & fled to Streatham in south London, (she was Anglo-Indian) but when she got to there she was accosted on the stairs of the apartment block by a burly black man who robbed her of £80, & she returned to Riyadh where she said she felt safer.
On another occasion I went into the garden & saw 300' above me a scud which was gliding gracefully towards Airport Road. It narrowly passed The Hyatt & then hit & killed numerous TCNs, which because they were TCNs have never been entered in any casualty list. The city emptied. Going into a Turkish restaurant in Mursallat the terrified 'patron' bent down to take my order: "It's anthrax tonight " he whispered. During the Gulf War the Kingdom relaxed from the point of view of admitting press & when the press discovered I was ex NUJ & had 'contacts' I had a lucrative period. But there was a difference then to my feelings now. At no time then did I ever feel worried, or doubted that the United States would inevitably liberate Kuwait. To me it was a straightforward issue. Saddam Hussein was a loathsome chap, a bounder. Everybody said so, including CNN & the BBC. His occupation of Kuwait was unlawful & he would in time be thrown out. But this time I am not confident. If the US begins a military attack on Afghanistan & if at any stage there are significant numbers of Muslim casualties that will be the end. Whatever they call it, it will not be a war on terrorism. It will be a war on Islam & could last, (with truces, new theatres of conflict, changes of alliance etc) for at least a Hundred Years, if the human race lasts that long. As not enough people have pointed out, you can win a war against a state, but a war against terrorism is never won. So this formula is a recipe for perpetual conflict.
Terrorism can only be contained, & the main way to contain it is to ensure you have security + good intelligence, & also you need to get rid of the causes. If the cause is the Muslim religion we are not going to abolish that, not by military might, but we could deal more constructively with the political & economic grievances which have fuelled the flames. Had anyone told me in 1991 that ten years on we would still be bombing Iraq I would have said they were mad. Why am I saying all this? I am saying it because as the responsibility for the bombing of the WTC was mostly Saudi it is entirely wrong in my view to take it out on the Afghan people.
It is also important not to confuse the extreme form of Islam in the KSA with Islam per se. There are many strands of Islam. I too prefer the old way. Islam under the Ottomans generally proved a more tolerant regime than Western Europe under the Catholics. Western policy has encouraged extremism, both in politics & religion. Further the US & UK media fails & has failed to report the truth. Americans & British seem ignorant of the fact that week after week, month after month, the RAF & USAF have bombed Iraq & a couple of years ago the USAF even managed to bomb St Matthews Tomb near Mosul! In addition there have been colossal child mortality figures in Iraq as a result of sanctions. These sanctions have been kept up only for one purpose, not to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, but to keep Iraq out of the oil market.
I saw a former UN arms inspector at the House of Commons a couple of months ago. He resigned from his job because he believed Saddam was already substantially disarmed & there was no justification for continuing sanctions. He also revealed something else, something on public record but not well reported in the West: how Saddam had correctly divined that many of the arms inspectors were CIA spies, a fact later admitted by Kofi Annan, & that had undermined the inspectorate's work.
Another problem is Palestine. The problem lies for some Arabs in the fact that the State of Israel exists. But other Palestinians are, or were, prepared to accept the continuance of the State of Israel. But the question is - is it all worth it? Is not one possible solution withdrawal from the West Bank &/or the dissolution of both the State of Israel & the "arab bantustan" experiment which has failed so disastrously. This implies the creation of an entirely new secular state in the area. Jews have to realise their experiment has failed. The Zionist dream has turned into a nightmare, not only for them, but for all of us. I say this as a disenchanted pro- Zionist. Because of my religious credentials when I grew up in UK in the 1950's I was given to understand that the Balfour Declaration & the subsequent creation of the State of Israel were the best thing since fried eggs. It was all prophesied in the good book that the Jews would return to The Holy Land - wasn't it? But evangelicals in the UK in the 1950's, & Bible Belt Christians in the Mid West in 2001 in the USA, did not give enough thought to the question: who is a Jew? In racial terms Yasser Arafat may have a lot more Jewish blood in him than most of the so called Jews coming to Haifa from Brooklyn. And St Paul argues in the New Testament: "if you belong to Christ, then you are the descendants of Abraham & will receive what God has promised...". In other words, as the Church is 'the Israel of God', it would seem to me that there's a good argument on theological grounds that the Palestinian Christian Arabs, who are a substantial proportion of the Palestinian population, are heirs to all the promises given to Abraham, including those about territory. Their DNA probably gives them a biological claim to Jewishness as well. (That the majority of Arabs are Moslem doesn't invalidate the argument from their point of view either, as it is probable that conversion was forced on their ancestors. I don't think the Lord takes too much notice of forced conversions, so by my reckoning most Arab Moslems are Christians really.)
If Jerusalem is a Jewish city, as it is, I also believe it is a Christian city & a Muslim city. It is holy to all three faiths. The best way forward is an entirely new secular state. I believe that the Jews have a right to a national home in Palestine, but without prejudice to the rights of the other inhabitants. This is the actual text of the Balfour Declaration. The logic that the Arabs shouldn't have been made to pay the price for Hitler's atrocities is overwhelming. I believe with inspired leadership on both sides there would have been... could have been, some sort of solution, but now it's all too late.
A few days ago I went into a shop in Nottingham with my son. A sales assistant helped us. She was extremely charming & I asked where she came from, "Italy?" "No. Jordan." My mind went back to a visit I made in 1985 to Jordan, the wonderful people I had met there. Palestinians aren't Jordanians but I guess there is some affinity & it amazes me that the Israelis have not been able to strike a deal, make some sort of workable compromise somewhere. Now of course the Americans are banging everyone's heads together? But why? Why is there now pressure being put on Israel? Answer: because of the terrorist attacks, which goes to prove that terrorism works, exposing the cynical nature of American foreign policy. I don't think we have seen the end of civilisation these last few weeks, as it had already ended. Christian civilisation in the West was overthrown a long time ago, (in Britain by Roy Jenkins & other proponents of secularist relativism).
I support the Iranian Revolution, their view that America, (to which I would add the EU, even more so) spreads corruption on the earth. If you want proof of that just look at any of the depraved programmes routinely put out, not only by porn channels, but by main stream satellite & terrestrial broadcasters. Islam & Christianity teach that sex is not a public affair, but this is not a belief espoused by the pornographic capitalistic conspirators who control the media. All these points are linked. It was in order to indulge himself with Monica Lewinsky that America's debauched Emperor abandoned his control of foreign policy to his gang of three, Madelaine Albright, Holbrooke, & Rubin - with disastrous consequences.
But September 11th is the end of democracy, our political equivalent of The Reichstag Fire. Such residual freedoms as we now have will disappear inevitably under the pressure, & with the excuse of the omnipresent war on terrorism. Yet it was not always like this. In 1964 I was a young student in London & walked up Downing Street in the mid evening. The front door of Number Ten opened & out came Mr Wilson puffing his pipe, engaged in animated conversation with a young man, his Secretary, Peter Shore , who died this week. No-one thought very much of it.
ends
The above may be freely reproduced in any media but with reference to source.
info from cana (christians against nato aggression) 1 Scales Road, London N17 2HD Tel: (0044) (020) 8376-1454 http://canauk.human-rights.org/ canauk@blueyonder.co.uk
To The Editor The Daily Mail
From William Spring 1 Scales Road, London N17 2HB
Tel: (020) 8376-1454 - September 25th 2001
1 page by fax
Dear Sir/Madam : If there's to be a war on terrorism why didn't Americans discover it earlier?
Ulstermen knew about it years ago & were regularly bombed by terrorists, aided & funded by Americans & with a political agenda supported by the Clinton White House! Macedonians & Serbs have also suffered from US sponsored Albanian terrorism!
What's needed isn't a war but a criminal investigation.
If Bin Laden is to be blamed, (although I can't see how the US can blame him without producing evidence), disposing of him is a matter for special forces. Instead the Tories give a blank cheque to Blair to commit British troops. (Duncan Smith says the WTC attack was an act of war. "Elementary, my dear Watson". But by whom? Evidently Duncan Smith wasn't elected Tory leader on account of intellectual acumen. I find the arrogance of these professional politicians breathtaking.)
Now Blair's given Bush a blank cheque, & Parliament is not consulted. (Any recall is only after UK forces are engaged). But you can't hold the Afghani people responsible for what, after all, is a global conspiracy. Neither innocent Afghans, nor British soldiers, should have to die all because security lapses by US airlines put profit before passenger safety. Some Saudis have made devastatingly successful suicide terrorist attacks on New York & Washington, but that's no reason for Britain to go to war with Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries on earth.
Yrs sincerely, William Spring Director: Christians Against Nato Aggression (CANA)
(http://www.canauk.human-rights.org/)
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