It is the Crusades all over again

It is the Crusades all over again

ABU MUSAB ZARKAWI's dozen top lieutenants have been killed in Iraq, say the US military, but the mayhem, including the killing, caused by his group people continue without any let up. Abu Musab Zarkawi, in case you are wondering who he is, is, again according to the US military, Al Qaeda's top man in Iraq. Probably he is. But he is probably more adept at getting lieutenants than the US military gives him credit for. Al-Qaeda had chosen him for just that capability, among others, for it is fighting a battle in Iraq in which public relations, particularly Western, is not on its side. The Al-Qaeda would not have landed in Iraq had Saddam Hussein in power. He was very firm about not letting them in, and he did not allow either the Shias or religious groups in power. And you could walk around after midnight in Baghdad during his reign. The US invaded Iraq to throw him out. Today, he is in jail and would probably be hanged, but he is fighting the Arab cause, and he welcomes anyone, including Al Qaeda, on his side. And made sure civil war will break out once they withdraw, as they have to do, not for exigencies of the situation in Iraq, but that the American people do not want the troops there. Now it is a civil and religious war, with Saddam, whom the Arab countries hated in office but support him how, and the US is caught in a cleft stick. The US has turned Iraq from a well run Arab city to a country fit for civil war, but not before bombing the place with nuclear weapons and with conventional weapons so that like the Japanese in Nagasaki and Hiroshima during World War II, Iraqis have to live with the after effects of that. US soldiers alreadty face the after-effects of handling the depleted uraniam bullets, and the US army has plans to quarantine those who handle depleted uranium bullets. The US believes that the people of Iraq will be grateful to them for the invasion of their country. They were talking of flowers thrown at them for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. They made a war, and made a mess of it. And they would have to pay for it. It is Vietnam all over again, though the precise position of the Vietnamese and the Iraqis are different, and the battles are different now and 40 years ago.

The US says, in effect, that it alone has the right to kill Iraqis – and 40 years ago, Vietnamese. It was nationalism that defeated them in Vietnam; the war was lost when its chief enemy, Ho Chi Minh, died mid-way through it. As far as the Vietnamese were concerned, the US were fighting a dead man, and could never win.

The reaction is different among the US and its foreign troops, on the one hand, and the Vietcong, Vietnam, North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese, on other. Similarly, in Iraq. The information is in the hands of the US, but the war, as in Vietnam, is in the hands of the "enemy". It was nationalism that drove the Vietnam war; it is nationalism and religion that drives the Iraq war. Islam is on the defensive because the West has targetted it as the enemy. Those living in Muslim countries find they are targetted by immigration officers in the West. In Malaysia, the a/l and a/p is removed from Indians in Malaysia largely because computerisation does not allow the back slash in computer searches, and the al that comes out is often viewed by immigration officers as belonging to Arabs. I have been told by immigration officers that al Gopal Pillai is a strange Arab name. It is, for it belongs to an Indian. So I will get my passport with an additional name. But it does not get over the fact that Islam and Muslim countries are targetted. The loss is the West's. as well as the Muslim countries. Schools are closing down in the United States because its embassies are reluctant to give visas to Muslims, and more important, Muslims do not want to go through the hassle of getting a visa. At the personal level, it works both ways. But as Tun Mahathir has put it succinctly elsewhere the West has taken Islam for an enemy.

The West thinks it can ask Muslim nations, those who support it, to treat Muslims as they have often been treated by these governments. But they forget that these Western nations, like those of old, adopted Islamic methods of punishment. The prisoners at Guantanamo prison and the British ulltra-legal methods are contrary to their legal system, and are adapted from the Islamic brethren. In the earlier crusades, from Pope Urban II's in 1089, the Christians learnt from the Moslems, as they have in the latest Crusade, as President Bush put it. Though what the Western nations have taken to heart is what they reject. It is Islam's great fault, but now it is the Christian nations' fault as well. No one talks of it, but it is a fact that the Christian nations of the West have taken to heart all the things they criticised in the past. Is the West telling us that education teaches us to be cruel to our fellow men? On the other hand, Muslim nations are blamed for what they do at the West's behalf. I happen to know the background, most of which is still confidential, of Malaysia and Indonesia's role in East Timor. It was egged on by the United States, Great Britain and Australia, among others, and the two nations did a creditable job. But the Western nations turned against Malaysia and Indonesia after East Timor had become independent, and it was these countries that were blamed, and discredited. Even by Great Britain, the United States and Australia. We now know why. It was to enable an Australian firm to grab the oil revenues between East Timor and Austria. It was important at that time of Portugal discarding its last two enclaves, Macao and East Timor, of those in Macao, and therefore the Chinese, coming freely to East Timor and going freely into Indonesia. It was the time of the clash between capitalism and communism, and countries were either with the West or with the others. Malaysia and Indonesia acted on the side of the West, and were blamed for being colonialists after the threat was over.

What we see in Iraq is Vietnam redux. What was once a clash between capitalism and communism is today between Christianity and Islam. But the old thinking of the Cold War is superimposed on it. Generals fight the wars tomorrow on what they have learnt yesterday. They do not have think afresh. But his opponents fight the war in Iraq with nationalism and religion, powerful rallying points, and the fact that the country has been invaded, and they are sitting pretty. Since this is also the information war, we do not hear much of what the opposition does. But, as the Vietnamese showed, it does not matter. This time, in Iraq, the street view is broadcast by Al Jazeera, which became even closer to the Arab street by supporting one of its reporters who has gone to jail in Madrid for interviewing Osama bin Laden. We are now told that all journalists the West has in Iraq do not report as they see fit, but only report what the West want it to report. It is us versus them all over again. And it is them that will wil the war in Iraq. That is why Abu Musab's top lieutenants being killed, as the US generals say, has no effect on the war in Iraq.

M.G.G.Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com