HAVING FIRST ANNOUNCED a list of states supposedly promoting international terrorism, President Bush has embarked on a tour of Europe to rally support among Europeans for military action against such an enemy. It is unlikely to succeed and will probably accentuate the widening divide between Washington and its European allies.
The Europeans do not speak with one voice on the dangers, or lack or them, from governments such as Iran’s, Iraq’s or North Korea’s. At one end of the scale the UK and Italy are sympathetic to Bush’s views; others like the French and Germans are skeptical to the point of derision. But one common view unites them. None of them feel that with the Middle East still boiling with anger and hate and India and Pakistan hurtling toward potential war and even nuclear conflagration, this is the time to be planning military action against any government. They fear that even mere talk of action plays into the hands of those who preach hatred of the West, whether it be Saddam Hussein, Palestinian extremists or Iranian arch conservatives.
That reluctance to stand up now and be counted alongside Washington will embitter public opinion-formers in a US where there is a long tradition of regarding Europeans as self-indulgent wimps who should be left to sort out their own messes, not have to have the Americans sort them out for them. It is bound to exacerbate such antipathies, especially given that President Bush appears to share them. His words on leaving the US for Europe — that the Western alliance “must remain tough in the war against global terror” — looked more like a demand than an appeal and will have caused no small amount of exasperated annoyance in Europe. It was not a well-chosen turn of phrase, serving as it does merely to highlight the growing divide between the US and Europe on who are the terrorists and how they need to be combated. If there were unanimity between them, he would not have needed to say what he did. It is ironic but there is more chance of support from Russia, with which he is to sign a new arms treaty. To meet his own domestic agenda, President Putin has also chosen to make “terrorism” his prime target. Outside Europe there is much more than exasperation that George Bush looks at terrorism in the blinkered way he does. There is anger. He rolls out a list of countries which he accuses of being terrorist, yet there is no mention of Israel — the one state which in the view of hundreds of millions is the ultimate exponent of terrorism, using as it does all means available to it to terrify an entire people into abject submission. Iran, on the other hand, is listed as the top promoter of terrorism, not because it has been involved in terrorist activities but because it supports the Palestinians’ efforts to free themselves by supplying them weapons. Since when does a people’s struggle for freedom have to be equated with terrorism?
Sixty years ago the French resistance, like other resistance movements in Europe, engaged in violence to free themselves from German occupation. The underground movement felt that there was no alternative to bombs, ambushes and assassinations to combat the militarily superior oppressor. The Americans and the British, who supported the Resistance both materially and morally, never once felt the need to condemn their acts as terrorism. They backed them all the way because they saw them — rightly — as freedom fighters. Even to this day they have never questioned the undoubted horrors that took place.
Of course there is international terrorism — and it needs to be combated. But how can anyone say that for the Palestinians to resist oppression by violence if necessary is terrorism (and those who help them are sponsors of terrorism) but for the French Resistance 60 years ago it was a necessary, even honorable undertaking? It is sheer bigotry and hypocrisy that makes people refuse to see the Palestinian struggle in the same light. That is what makes countless millions so angry about President Bush’s and Washington’s views. They are without a shred of integrity. Until there is some balance in US’s approach, it will sadly remain despised by those who believe that the Palestinians, like the French before them, have justice on their side. Washington’s list of terrorist states will be regarded with contempt it deserves.
