Author: Ophelia Benson

I was planning, in the spirit of ‘sod you,’ to return to regular programming. I was planning to say more on that Noam Chomsky article, as I had intended to do yesterday until I turned the radio on; then once I started reading, I was planning to say something about that interview with Judith Butler. But now instead I’m going to say something about Tariq Ali, because there he is again, and I find I can’t just ignore him. It’s not my nature. (I wonder if, if I started taking Prozac, or some other brain-chemistry-tweaking drug, I would find myself able to ignore things like articles by Tari Ali. No doubt I would. What a horrible prospect.)

First let’s look at some idiosyncratic logic.

The bombers who targeted London yesterday are anonymous. It is assumed that those who carried out these attacks are linked to al-Qaida. We simply do not know. Al-Qaida is not the only terrorist group in existence. It has rivals within the Muslim diaspora. But it is safe to assume that the cause of these bombs is the unstinting support given by New Labour and its prime minister to the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So we simply do not know (whether those who carried out these attacks are linked to al-Qaida). I take that to mean (though it’s not explicitly said) that it is therefore wrong to assume that they are. However, it is ‘safe to assume that the cause of these bombs is the unstinting support given by New Labour and its prime minister to the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.’ Why? Why is that safe to assume while the other (apparently, though it’s not explicit) is not?

But on to a more basic point.

Most Londoners (as the rest of the country) were opposed to the Iraq war. Tragically, they have suffered the blow and paid the price for the re-election of Blair and a continuation of the war.

So it’s ‘safe to assume’ that the bombing wouldn’t have happened if the Tories had won the election? Is it safe to assume that? Is it safe to assume that that’s the only ‘reason’ the bombers put their backpacks where they did? It seems more tottery than safe, to me.

Ever since 9/11, I have been arguing that the “war against terror” is immoral and counterproductive. It sanctions the use of state terror – bombing raids, torture, countless civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq – against Islamo-anarchists whose numbers are small, but whose reach is deadly. The solution then, as now, is political, not military. The British ruling elite understood this perfectly well in the case of Ireland.

The solution is political. Is it. Meaning what? Meet and negotiate with whatever group or party or government-in-exile planted the bombs? Well, first, to do that one has to know who that is, which means whoever it is has to say: ‘We are the group who did this.’ One group has done that so far; opinions differ on how credible the claim is, but perhaps they could be invited to a diplomatic meeting anyway. Would that work? Does Tariq Ali think it would work? Would the group accept the invitation, would it offer proposals that anyone could agree to? Would, say, Blair and various other heads of states agree to impose Sharia on all the relevant countries? Would they agree to impose Talibanization on all the relevant countries? Would the group in question accept anything less?

But T.A. apparently doesn’t mean exactly that. Negotiations and meetings aren’t part of the package, it seems.

The real solution lies in immediately ending the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine…The principal cause of this violence is the violence being inflicted on the people of the Muslim world. And unless this is recognised, the horrors will continue.

The ‘Muslim world’? What’s that? But more to the point, which violence? In many places in the ‘Muslim world’ most or all of the violence being inflicted is by Muslims on other Muslims – men on women, Islamists on non-Islamists, ‘guardians’ on people who wish they would piss off and leave them alone. But that’s not the violence he has in mind, if I understand him correctly. Well – why does he ‘assume’ that only one kind of violence breeds resentment?

I’m still quivering like a struck gong. As I was on September 11. I take it personally, I suppose. (Which sounds narcissistic and infantile, but bear with me for a minute.) I love London, and I love New York – both of them. In a very basic, in the bone way, that goes back to childhood and adolescence. Both cities stand to me for freedom – for escape, adventure, independence, self-fashioning, possibilities. (What comes into my head – this is very absurd and hokey, but I’m going to be absurd and hokey today – is that moment in the [absurd and hokey] movie ‘The Electric Horseman’ when Redford is just about to set free his stallion in a hidden valley to join [and rule] a herd of wild horses. Just before he pulls the bridle off, he tells the horse, ‘Make something of yourself, now.’ Then off comes the bridle and away goes the horse. ‘Make something of yourself, now’ – that’s what New York and London tell us – at least in my personal mythology.) I grew up about 50 miles from New York, so of course it was our Golden City, our Oz, the place where everything was going on. It was an immense part of my growing up to be able (both allowed and competent) to navigate around New York on my own. I liked going with a friend – especially with my eccentric amusing clever cousin Steve – but I loved going alone. The freedom I felt! I can’t even explain it, because it seems to be more than the sum of the parts. It wasn’t just that I was off on my own in a big city with no one knowing exactly where I was. (Sometimes no one even knew vaguely: I would occasionally go without telling my mother, partly just so that…no one would know. Disappearing. Disappearing into freedom. I didn’t do anything scandalous or stupid – just escaped.) It was something more, and I take it that the something more was New York. Cleveland or St Louis probably wouldn’t have done it.

And London was the next stage of that, when I was seventeen. I spent two weeks there on my own – and it was like the freedom of New York squared, or cubed. Because I’d never been there before, never been out of North America before, wasn’t going back to Princeton on the bus at the end of the day – and because it was London. London’s not just any old city, you know. And it got into my bloodstream then and has been there ever since.

So I take it personally. And then, as I mentioned, I was just there, I know people there. I’m wondering if the nice people at Souvenir Press will be able to get home (but buses are running in Zone One again so they’re all right unless they left early). But even without all that, it’s just London itself. It upsets me, somebody bashing at it. And that’s narcissistic, but it’s not entirely narcissistic, because the people who did the bashing did it precisely so that people like me can never ever have that kind of freedom. In fact they did it to punish New York and London for allowing people like me to have that kind of freedom. In the world they would establish, people like me would, far from being allowed to roam strange cities at age seventeen, would be locked up for their entire lives, and never even allowed to know what freedom is. Death and immurement, that’s their Golden City. Well no to that.

Funny. Just last night I turned on the radio for a few minutes and heard Tariq Ali telling Seattle about Iraq, oil, one thing and another. Then he went a bit sarcastic about al-Qaeda – saying it’s a tiny organization, it’s a few thousand people at most, what can it do? Well that’s a fucking stupid question, I thought; it can do a lot; thanks to advanced technology and communications it can do a lot. Then he went on to say (near exact quote) ‘These things don’t happen every day.’ ‘Well it only takes one, Bub!’ I shouted furiously. And that was last night. Two hours before the first bomb went off.

No, these things don’t happen every day. That’s fine then. Not a problem.

I’m six thousand miles away but I don’t feel six thousand miles away. Comes of having friends, acquaintances, readers there – not to mention having recently spent time there. Tavistock Square, Russell Square…

Say a word if you have a moment, those of you in London, so that B&W won’t worry about you.