Dr M Savages Bush and Blair

'Father' of Malaysia savages Bush and Blair

Mahathir brands US a rogue nation terrorising innocents and stands by
claim that Jews 'rule the world by proxy'

Simon Tisdall in Kuala Lumpur
Friday May 27, 2005, The Guardian

Mahathir Mohamad, modern Malaysia's founding father and moderate
Islam's self-styled champion, denounced the Bush administration
yesterday as a "rogue regime" bent on terrorising innocent civilians.
He also said he was disappointed that Tony Blair, who he called a
"proven liar", had won re-election after joining the US invasion of
Iraq.

Reflecting the rage felt across the Muslim world over abuse scandals
in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, and continuing violence in
Palestine and Iraq, Mr Mahathir said President George Bush and other
US politicians were "ignorant" people who believed might made right -
a return to colonial-era "old thinking".

Speaking to the Guardian at his offices in Putrajaya, near Kuala
Lumpur, Mr Mahathir also claimed that the Israeli government had been
given a free hand by Washington to continue to expropriate
Palestinian land and entrench its control over Jerusalem. The war on
terror would not end until the Middle East conflict was justly
resolved, he said.

Asked whether he regretted his statement that "Jews rule the world by
proxy", which caused an international furore in 2003, Mr Mahathir
said he took nothing back.

"US politicians are scared stiff of the Jews because anybody who
votes against the Jews will lose elections. The Jews in America are
supporting the Jews in Israel. Israel and other Jews control the most
powerful nation in the world. And that is what I mean [about Jews
controlling the world]. I stand by that view."

On his balcony overlooking the tower blocks, mosques, bridges and
artificial lakes of Putrajaya, Malaysia's new administrative capital
which he created in the 1990s, Mr Mahathir, 79, cuts a slight, almost
self-effacing figure. His personal manner is reserved and courteous
to a fault.

Earlier in the day, he had lectured students at his Perdana
Leadership Foundation on the importance of education and development
in the Muslim world to defend the Islamic faith. The problem was not
Islam itself, he said, but the many incorrect interpreta tions of the
Qur'an that were exploited by extremists.

"Islam is a positive, not a negative force. Today most Muslim
countries seem incapable of developing good governments, they are
always fighting each other, assassinating each other and doing all
the wrong things." Distortions of the Prophet's teachings had held
back the peoples of many Muslim countries, he said.

But Mr Mahathir's strongest criticism was directed outwards. Even
though he retired as Malaysia's longest-serving prime minister in
2003, many in the region still regard him as the country's leader and
one of Asia's most influential voices. His anger is undimmed; his rhetoric flows unstaunched.

"The US is the most powerful nation," he said. "It can ignore the
world if it wants to do anything. It breaks international law. It
arrests people outside their countries; it charges them under
American law. It kills them.

"The US war on terror is a way of terrorising people. If you are an
Iraqi and you are expecting to be bombed, aren't you terrified? If
you have done nothing, if you are an innocent Iraqi citizen and you
are expecting any time a rocket to fly in and blow you to pieces,
aren't you terrified?

"That is terror [and] the US is as guilty of terrorism as the people
who crashed their planes into the buildings ... Bush doesn't
understand the rest of the world. He thinks everybody should be a
neocon like him."

Mr Mahathir was equally scathing about Israeli policies in Palestine.
He said his visit to the West Bank last month had been deliberately
disrupted by the Israeli government. Specifically, he said he was
blocked from travelling to Jerusalem and Jenin, scene of some of the
worst Israeli violence in 2002, where he was to open a school funded
by Malaysia. Israel has denied impeding his visit.

"I suppose I was mistaken in thinking that there are parts of
Palestine that are under the control of the Palestinians. But
apparently the Israelis have occupied the whole of Palestine. They do
anything they like there," he said.

Mr Blair had discredited himself and Britain in Muslim eyes by
backing the Iraq war, Mr Mahathir said. "He was wrong and he was more
wrong because he tells lies. You know, Jack Straw came to see me [on
the eve of the war in January 2003] and I asked him,

'Why are you with the Americans?' He said we're trying to influence
the Americans not to take that kind of action. But it seems it was
the other way round.

"They [Britain] were influenced in supporting America to do something
that they knew was wrong ... They knew they were being lied to, and
yet they supported the Americans and today 300,000 Iraqis are dead
because of these lies.

"I think a person like Blair would feel very guilty and I am
disappointed that the British people would re-elect a person who
obviously told lies ... We're beginning to lose faith in the present
leadership of Britain." One eventual consequence, he suggested, could
be Malaysia's withdrawal from the Commonwealth.

Malaysia, which is encircled by conflicts in western Indonesia, the
Philippines and southern Thailand, fully supported the fight against
religious and political fanaticism, he said. But the west was going
about it the wrong way.

"Even if you get Bin Laden, you can't be sure there won't be another
Bin Laden. You cannot get terrorists to sign a peace treaty. The only
way to beat terror is to go for the basic causes.

"They don't blow themselves up for no reason, they're angry, they're
frustrated. And why are they angry? Look at the Palestinian
situation. Fifty years after you created the state of Israel, things
are going from bad to worse. "If you don't settle that, there will be no end to the war on terror. For how long are you going to go on examining people's shoes?"