The righteous garden. Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies. www,daviesart.com

How low can Bush go? As Simon Crean refuses to ask Howard the big questions on Iraq and presses Labor MPs to give Bush a standing ovation next week – for what, exactly? – Bush’s regime hawks pro-war form letters to his long-suffering troops in Iraq and sends them to home town newspapers.

The power of the net exposed Bush’s latest fraud on the American people and their soldiers after US newspaper The Olympian received identical letters from two soldiers and a news service searched the net for more and contacted confused soldiers and their families. A taste:

The letter talks about the soldiers’ mission, saying, “one thousand of my fellow soldiers and I parachuted from ten jumbo jets.” It describes Kirkuk as “a hot and dusty city of just over a million people.” It tells about the progress they have made.

“The fruits of all our soldiers’ efforts are clearly visible in the streets of Kirkuk today. There is very little trash in the streets, many more people in the markets and shops, and children have returned to school,” the letter reads. “I am proud of the work we are doing here in Iraq and I hope all of your readers are as well.”

Sgt. Shawn Grueser of Poca, W.Va., said he spoke to a military public affairs officer whose name he couldn’t remember about his accomplishments in Iraq for what he thought was a news release to be sent to his hometown paper in Charleston, W.Va. But the 2nd Battalion soldier said he did not sign any letter. Although Grueser said he agrees with the letter’s sentiments, he was uncomfortable that a letter with his signature did not contain his own words or spell out his own accomplishments.

“It makes it look like you cheated on a test, and everybody got the same grade,” Grueser said by phone from a base in Italy where he had just arrived from Iraq.

The ‘letters’ arrived just before the Pentagon began studying why so many US soldiers were committing suicide in Iraq.

Melody Kemp found US Soldiers to America: “Bring us home now; were dying for oil and corporate greed!”, an interview with an American soldier who served in Iraq. An extract:

USA (nom de plume): I would like to thank Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Congress for is that nice huge cut they made to Veterans Benefits as soon as the war started. I am in the Reserves after years of active duty and now I cannot get PTSD counselling or many medical benefits I used to take for granted. I knew I would have the benefits because I was laying my life down for my country. Now my benefits are cut by around 2/3 and I have to go to either group therapy or pay for a private counsellor out of my own pocket. What happens when someone like me has been through enormous battle stress and combat fatigue and then comes home to no counselling?

I’ll tell you what is going to happen, he will either kill himself or take a bunch of people with him. Some of the guys coming back are going to have gone through the worst time of their lives with their buddies dying and getting hurt, and then they’ll find out they got screwed out of any counselling. It is the greatest disservice America is committing against soldiers who fought for this country and may come back wounded or horribly scarred. Medical services, school aid to dependents, school aid for the vets, all slashed to the bare bones; mental health and drug and alcohol counselling are being eliminated or the waiting lists will be years long for whatever services manage to survive.

That is one thing the American people still have not really caught on to is the fact that while they were screaming out Support Our Troops the current regime makers were fu..ing the military and veterans out of almost every social program and non essential service that would make life easier. Bush really fu..ked us while we were gone. We found out about it after being in the middle of heavy fighting for several weeks. It was one of the first things I read in Stars and Stripes, and I thought it was a joke because it was just to hard to believe Congress and our leaders would screw us that bad while we were fighting and dying.

Peter Funnell wrote: “Noticed the steadily, ever increasing number of US soldiers being killed in Iraq? There is no let up. How long can Bush keep the lid on this? And here we are, our niche military capability having done its job and returned home and as good as no military presence of note in Iraq to deal with the ongoing but deadly low level conflict. I never thought we should have been involved in this mess and my view has not changed. But we have been part of causing the mess and are nowhere in sight to help finish it all. The whole thing just stinks. Where to next?

Marilyn Shepherd sent The Guardian list of Coalition casualties since Bush dressed up as a soldier and declared victor. War without end.

Don’t you feel safer these days? The US didn’t want Turkish troops before the war, but now they’re begging for them, against the unanimous resolution of the Iraqi Governing Council and the wishes of most Turks (seekurdistanobserver). Democracy, Bush-style. Israel’s launched a preemptive strike on Syria with US approval (The painful truths that now confront Syria’s reformists) and has reportedly put nuclear warheads in its submarines (Israel won’t confirm or deny it has nuclear weapons and international inspectors aren’t allowed to find out.) Russia has signed up to Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive strikes, warning that it “must be prepared for a growing number of conflicts – such as the US-led war in Iraq – waged outside the authority of the United Nations, and wars increasingly motivated as much by economics or the interests of what it termed ‘big transnational companies’ as by national security” (Moscow prepared to stage pre-emptive strikes).

Brian McKinlay writes:

Watching Tony Jones on ‘Lateline’ last Thursday night I must have nodded off. When I awoke he was talking about journalists receiving top secret info from the government in breach of the criminal law, and I guessed he was talking about the big Washington Scandal – how ‘conservative’ columnist Bob Novak named Valerie Plame, wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, as a CIA operative, thereby blowing her cover and her career (see A Q&A on Leakgate). This has led to charges that Novak has breached National Security regulations and acted as a conduit for a vengeful White House which wanted to hurt Wilson because he wouldn’t come to the party on the White House’s false claims that Iraq had bought Yellowcake from Niger. All old hat, I thought, as I woke from my power-nap. But no! Jones was asking Alexander Downer how the Federal police investigation was coming along into the leaking of a top secret document written by Andrew Wilkie, the former ONA analyst who has been such a burr under Howard’s saddle, to columnist Andrew Bolt, government supporter and friend of right-wing causes. Downer hadn’t spotted any activity to date from the AFP. At least in Washington, Bush is going through the motions of an investigation. Stay awake, Brian, and don’t confuse Canberra with Washington – despite the similarities!

I saw that interview, and boy oh boy did Downer squirm when Tony popped the leak question at the end. It came as no surprise that the AFP STILL haven’t got around to questioning him or his staff – we’re talking a seriously compromised AFP here, just like the Government wants its police/defence force/public service to be. I reported on September 14 in Howard on the ropes: Labor’s three chances for a knockout blow that the AFP sat on ONA’s reference of the leak for NINE WEEKS without interviewing Bolt and only decided to actually investigate after the scandal got top billing in question time:

The leak of intelligence whistleblower Andrew Wilkie’s top secret ONA report on Iraq to Government-friendly journalist Andrew Bolt in June began to haunt Howard last week after his government brazenly briefed government backbencher Sandy Macdonald on its contents to hit Wilkie over the head with in the parliamentary inquiry into Howard’s pre-war intelligence.

The leak of Wilkie’s report is a serious breach of security and a criminal offence which went unnoticed back in June. The Macdonald drama lifted the lid on the scandal, revealing that ONA had referred the leak to the Australian Federal Police for investigation on July 4. NINE WEEKS later, the AFP had not interviewed Bolt! The AFP now joins Australian Electoral Commission as an ‘independent’ body under strong suspicion of having been so politicised under John Howard that it no longer performs its duty without fear or favour.

I rang the AFP last week to ask when the investigation began and why Bolt had not been interviewed. The reply: “Following a thorough evaluation, the AFP moved into investigation phase YESTERDAY.” The AFP said it was also investigating the use of top secret material by Macdonald. In other words, a government MP is under criminal investigation and the leaker could well be a government staffer or minister guilty of a serious crime and a serious breach of security in a security-conscious Australia.

I was the subject of an AFP investigation many years ago when I was leaked a Simon Crean Cabinet submission. These types of leaks – unlike leaks of classified security documents like Wilkie’s – are usually ignored, because often it’s politicians doing the leaking. I was interviewed at the Canberra headquarters of the AFP within days of Crean’s referral, and said “no comment” to all questions asked because my source was confidential. But the police had good reason to interview me. I could have got the document anonymously in the mail or found it in a rubbish bin, and in either case could and would have been frank with the AFP. So why wasn’t Andrew Bolt interviewed? Two reasons spring to mind – either the police already knew who leaked it and didn’t want to pursue the matter, or had decided not to investigate at all.

This is an intolerable situation and, as other writers have pointed out, makes a despicable comparison with Australian defence force officer Merv Jenkins, who took his own life in Washington after vicious government retaliation for his failure to obey a directive not to give US intelligence contacts information on East Timor prior to the independence vote despite government-to-government agreements to do so (see Mike Carlton’s A leak by the bucketful and Michelle Grattan’s It’s no secret: let he who is without spin…).

But the significance of the Government’s Bolt play is much greater than further proof of its entrenched double standards and dangerous politicisation of Australia’s core democratic institutions. If it’s OK to leak intelligence to discredit the whistleblower, why isn’t it OK to release intelligence to refute Wilkie’s accusations that Howard lied about his reasons for invading Iraq? Why not declassify the intelligence which would prove Howard’s constant claims in arguing the case for war that invading Iraq would REDUCE the risk of terrorism, REDUCE the risk of WMDs finding their way into the hands of terrorists, and make the world a SAFER place forAustralians? Why won’t Howard disprove Wilkie’s assertions by proving his own case?

See Wilkie-v-Howard: who’s the villain, who’s the hero? for the Senate debate last month – meant as a warning by Labor that it would expect answers from the AFP at Senate estimates committee hearings next month. But has Labor got the backbone for it?

In many ways, on many things – economic, environmental, social, political – Bush and Blair are soul mates. Breach national security for a cheap trick? Sure. They play dirty, these two. And so does Blair – his denials of involvement in the outing of scientist David Kelly blew away after the head of the defence ministry revealed Blair had chaired the meeting which decided to throw him to the wolves (Blair chaired meeting that led to unmasking of Kelly, inquiry told). Truth? These three think truth is for suckers. Their endless lies and relentless, casually unethical attempts to ruin honest people who don’t sing their corrupt tune are starting to look pathological.

Here’s the transcript extract:

TONY JONES: Finally, another issue related more distantly to Iraq, and it relates to the question of whether you or any of your staff members passed Andrew Wilkie’s ONA assessment or information contained within it over to the journalist Andrew Bolt. Have you or any of your staff been questioned on this matter or provided statements to the Federal Police?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, no, not at this stage. But obviously we’re happy to cooperate. And you know, if the Federal Police have questions to ask us and any other ministers’ offices or officers of my department or ONA, everyone will cooperate with them on that.

 

TONY JONES: Can you state to us right now that to your knowledge no-one in your office passed on any such material?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, look to the best of my knowledge no-one gave the document to Andrew Bolt. But, look –

TONY JONES: Or information related to the document, taken from the document in some detail and then passed on?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, look, you know, in the end I think the best thing to do here is to allow people in my office to talk to the Federal Police and in my department and in other ministers’ offices … it’s the best way to handle it.

See CIA scandal tars everybody, In (partial) praise of Robert Novak and Does administration want to find leaker? for a taste of the intense media discussion in the US about Novak’s position and that of the media in general. There’s been virtually no discussion of Bolt’s role or the medias dilemmas on this issue in the Australian media. Our media is much too clubby and timid for that.

Chris Murphy in Southport, Queensland, discovered that vice-president keeps lying even after Bush admitted there was no line to Saddam and Osama before the war.

“Twelve years of diplomacy, more than a dozen Security Council resolutions, hundreds of U.N. weapons inspectors, thousands of flights to enforce the no-fly zones and even strikes and against military targets in Iraq, all of these measures were tried to compel Saddam Hussein’s compliance with the terms of the 1991 Gulf War cease-fire. All of these measured failed.” U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, addressing the Heritage Foundation on 10 October 2003 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8205-2003Oct10.html, registration required.)

Chris writes:

Funny that. Sanctions and inspections “failed”, did they? So where’s the proof that they failed, Dick? No weapons of mass destruction have been found. Not a hint. Not a whiff. This means one of two things: either Hussein had in fact destroyed all his WMD or they have now been dispersed to parts and to people unknown. In either case, it is the United States who has “failed”. If the WMD did not exist, then America has inflicted appalling damage on itself (destruction of lives, financial cost, national morale) in a futile campaign that may well become another Vietnam. If the WMD did exist, then the United States has only succeeded in making the world one hell of a lot scarier than it was before the nutters in the White House, including Dick, summarily set upon Saddam Hussein in their insane “war on terror”.

Cheney also persists with the claim that Saddam Hussein was connected with Al Qaeda:

“Saddam had a lengthy history of reckless and sudden aggression. He cultivated ties to terror, hosting the Abu Nidal organization, supporting terrorists, making payments to the families of suicide bombers in Israel. He also had an established relationship with Al Qaida, providing training to Al Qaida members in the areas of poisons, gases, making conventional bombs.”

This last sentence is a blatant lie, an assertion disproven time and again and even disowned by the President himself, yet Cheney repeats it whenever possible. It is, in large part, the reason a majority of Americans continue to believe that Hussein was involved in the attacks of 11 September 2003.

The Kay reports rejected Howard’s last-ditch defence of his claims on WMDs – “the trailers”. Scott Burchill notes this line from the Kay Report:

“Kay had to back down from a claim that two mobile trailers found in Iraq were intended for making weapons. Now he says they were not well suited for that purpose.”

Crean has not asked ONE QUESTION of Howard about the Kay report’s findings. Not one.

How many lies, and how big? See Yes, Bush lied. Former Webdiarist Tim Dunlop, now in Washington, does a great job regularly recording the Bush regime’s daily lies about its lies at roadtosurfdom.

Jacob A. Stam in Narre Warren, Victoria has been tracking civilian deaths. He writes:

I’ve pasted below some notes I’ve made on the topic of civilian casualties of the Iraq war. Being a survey from notes and clippings I’d amassed over the period and have been meaning to boil down for some time, you might find something of interest.

I don’t know about you, but I’m still working through my feelings of disgust, rage, etc. etc. etc. regarding our country’s part in the bloodbath. All the ins and outs have been argued and re-argued ad nauseam, yet after all we’re still left with 5-10 thousand needless dead, with untold thousands maimed and brutalised, and with a humanitarian nightmare still remaining in Iraq with no end in sight. While all that was going down, I remember going into work every day where none of this was mentioned, as if nothing was happening over there, and yet we all knew in our bloody trembling hearts that THE COUNTRY IS AT WAR. (I work for the government, by the way.)

Such was the division in our country, produced in large part by a mendacious national leadership and its failure to honestly and morally map out this country’s war aims (they still haven’t quite made up their minds what these were!!), we could not even discuss it in our workplaces in order to find meaning and strength from each other in such a terrible and momentous time. This, after the war crimes against a helpless people, is the Howard crew’s most egregious moral failure.

Was it all worth it? I’m so grateful for those fellow citizens who have the superior moral compass to tell me: Yes, of course, put your mind to rest, sleep easy.

In a just world, the Bush-Blair-Howard Axis of Egos would be hauled before a tribunal at The Hague for their commission of an illegal war of aggression against the people of Iraq. Yet even assuming that the legal and moral underpinnings of the decision to go to war may be defensible, even if only in a qualified sense, the conduct of the war cannot. (Margo: The war was illegal. For the latest evidence see Goldsmith ‘scraped the legal barrel’ over Iraq war, reporting a leading legal peer labelling the British Attorney-General’s opinion that the war was legal “risible”.)

Amnesty International raised the spectre of war crimes charges in a news release of early April:

Amnesty International is deeply concerned about the high toll of civilian casualties and the use of cluster bombs in US military attacks in heavily populated areas. On 1 April, at least 33 civilians including many children were reportedly killed and around 300 injured in US attacks on the town of al-Hilla. Amnesty International is particularly disturbed by reports that cluster bombs were used in the attacks and may have been responsible for some of the civilian deaths. “The use of cluster bombs in an attack on a civilian area of al-Hilla constitutes an indiscriminate attack and a grave violation of international humanitarian law,” Amnesty International emphasized today.

AI has identified an “indiscriminate attack” that constitutes a “grave violation of international humanitarian law” in short, a war crime. Being undoubtedly cognisant of the nature of the world in which it must operate, AI stopped well short of suggesting that charges should be laid, let alone prosecuted.

We all know, however, with whom the buck stops it stops with thee, George, Tony and John! The “coalition of the willing” ignored repeated calls by AI and other organisations such as Medicins Sans Frontieres for a total moratorium on the use of cluster bombs, depleted uranium armaments, landmines and other indiscriminate weapons. For such conduct alone, a dock awaits the Axis of Egos in The Hague at least, in an ideal world, perhaps in some parallel universe…

Although John Howard has cunningly managed to suppress discussion on the topic, his reinvention of himself as “the great wartime leader” has come at the cost of the lives of five- to ten-thousand Iraqi civilians. (We’ll arbitrarily leave aside the matter of perhaps as many as 30,000 dead Iraqi soldiers many of them teenage conscripts.)

In early April, Howard was asked by Lateline’s Kerry OBrien what he considered an “acceptable number” of civilian deaths, at least as regards the Iraq adventure. Howard replied:

Kerry, I can’t ever put a figure on that. Any death is tragic, and I also said that last week. I note, by way of an independent observation, that a spokesman for the International Red Cross said on the ABC AM program this morning that the hospital system in Baghdad appeared to be coping quite well with the level of civilian casualties. Now, I thought that was an interesting comment, because the International Red Cross is a respected, neutral organisation; it can’t be accused of painting it one way or the other. I do know the efforts being taken by the coalition to avoid casualties is quite unprecedented. I believe those efforts should go on, and certainly, as far as Australia is concerned, the targeting policies that we have adopted in relation to the bombing we’ve participated in, those policies are going to be maintained; and I would expect the Americans and the British would stick to their approach, because there are ethics of war and they do need to be maintained.

Thus, his only specific reference to civilian casualties – buried amid the dross of bland reassurance and the crocodile tears of “any death is tragic” cant – was given a positive spin in that Baghdad’s hospital system appeared “to be coping quite well”. As Alan Ramsey commented at the time, Howard seemed to be suggesting that “it matters less how many civilians are killed or maimed, just so long as the Iraqi medical system and its hospitals can cope with the casualty lists”.

Getting a realistic accounting of civilian deaths in the Iraq war is difficult enough, but arriving at a count upon which all the “players” can agree is probably impossible. Staunchly pro-war commentators predictably have tended to avoid any mention of actual numbers, preferring to obfuscate with vacuous, alternately triumphal or dismissive statements about “relatively few civilian casualties”.

At the sceptical or critical end of debate, the web project iraqbodycount currently tallies a minimum 7,377 and a maximum 9,179 civilian deaths from the outset of the war to the present.

In the UK in early April, ‘The Independent’ reeled off the following facts and figures:

130,000 British and American troops are in action in Iraq from a total force of 250,000 in the Gulf. The Allies have launched 725 Tomahawk cruise missiles, flown 18,000 sorties, dropped 50 cluster bombs and discharged 12,000 precision-guided munitions. There have been an estimated 1,252 Iraqi civilian deaths, 57 Kurdish deaths and 5,103 civilian injuries. 88 Allied troops have been killed in the conflict, 27 of whom are British. At least 12 Allied soldiers are missing, 34 Allied soldiers have been killed in ‘friendly fire’ incidents or battlefield accidents. 9 journalists have been killed or are unaccounted for. There have been 2 suicide attacks on US troops, killing 7 soldiers. 8,023 Iraqi combatants have been taken prisoner of war. So far, 0 weapons of mass destruction have been found. 1,500,000 people in southern Iraq have no access to clean water. 200,000 children in southern Iraq are at risk of death from diarrhoea. 17,000,000 Iraqis are reliant on food aid, which has now been stopped. 600 oil wells and refineries are now under British and American control. 80bn dollars has been set aside by US Congress to meet the cost of war. A capital city of 5,000,000 people now stands between the Allied forces and their objective: the removal of Saddam Hussein.

Locally in a mid-April column, Alan Ramsey reeled off a bunch of facts and figures:

When Baghdad fell on the 22nd day of the Anglo-American invasion, with Australias tiny force no more than the military tea lady, the outcome in numbers, as reported from US central command at Doha, Qatar: US forces 255,000; British forces 45,000; Australian forces 2,000. Casualties: US 101 dead, 11 missing, seven captured; British 30 dead; Australian nil. Iraqi military, between 5, 000 and 10,000 dead (estimate); Iraq civilians, 600 dead and 4000 wounded (estimate).

The air “campaign”: 30,000 sorties flown by 2000 US/British aircraft from five aircraft carriers and 30 land bases dropped 20,000 “total munitions” on Iraqs cities, infrastructure, its military and its civilian population. There is, and was, no Iraqi air force. The US/British aircraft were unopposed. To call what this aerial armada did a “war”, as distinct from unchallenged slaughter, is to debauch language.

Ramsey also noted that the Red Cross was by then contradicting Howards faith in Iraqs hospital system, that in fact hospitals “are struggling to cope with a deluge of wounded that is causing growing chaos”. This was also noted by Carmen Lawrence, who wrote that “the Red Cross reported this week that the number of casualties in Iraq is so high that the medical staff have stopped counting and the hospitals are overwhelmed”. These statements, it should be noted, do not seem to distinguish between civilian and military casualties.

With regard to Iraqi military casualties, Robert Manne remarked (early April): “Even though the protection of ones own troops and the destruction of the enemy is an inescapable dimension of waging war, the deaths of so many young Iraqi men, in such technologically uneven battles, seems to me tragic and pitiful in the extreme.”

In early May came the following report from Associated Press:

The battle for Baghdad cost the lives of at least 1,101 Iraqi civilians, many of them women and children, according to records at the city’s 19 largest hospitals. The civilian death toll was almost certainly higher. The hospital records say that another 1,255 dead were “probably” civilians, including many women and children. Uncounted others who died never made it to hospitals and now are buried in shallow graves that have been dug throughout the city in cemeteries, back yards, hospital gardens, city parks and mosque grounds. More than 6,800 civilians were wounded, the hospital records show.

In early July the ABCs 7.30 Report carried a report from the BBCs Newsnight program featuring a project called “Survey of Civilian Deaths in Iraq”, founded by 26-year-old Marla Ruzicka. The project has 150 volunteers “working all across Iraq to scrupulously document” civilian deaths during the war. Presenting the report, the BBCs Paul Wood reported that so far “the volunteers have counted 2,652 deaths”. He added that these are “preliminary findings” and that “the final number will probably be a little over 4,000”.

In an interview Ms Ruzicka stated, “We go door to door, we go neighbourhood to neighbourhood and we check hospital records, we get death certificates to verify. Our work is very accurate. We know that, if we’re trying to get assistance to people and we have one false claim, it could throw out all of our claims.” While Ruzickas project is undoubtedly a worthy endeavour with apparently impeccable methodology, the question remains of how many civilians will remain unaccounted for, whose fate was not recorded owing to the chaos and confusion of war, and hence for whom no death certificates or gravestones exist to trace their brutal end.

George, Tony, John we’d love to see you at The Hague. Given, however, that we do not live in a just world but in a quite different one of your creation, we won’t hold our breaths.

Brian McKinlay sent me a recent BBC on Afghanistan. For yet more proof that the earnest Blair many of us once believed was in good faith is just another snake oil salesman, see his solemn promise to the people of Afghanistan just before the war on October 22, 2001 in a speech that gave me hope then and now makes me feel sick. Up yours to the Iraqi people, and to the people of the world who want us to work for peace, not endless war:

To the Afghan people we make this commitment. The conflict will not be the end. We will not walk away, as the outside world has done so many times before. If the Taliban regime changes, we will work with you to make sure its successor is one that is broad-based, that unites all ethnic groups, and that offers some way out of the miserable poverty that is your present existence.

… So I believe this is a fight for freedom. And I want to make it a fight for justice too. Justice not only to punish the guilty. But justice to bring those same values of democracy and freedom to people round the world. And I mean: freedom, not only in the narrow sense of personal liberty but in the broader sense of each individual having the economic and social freedom to develop their potential to the full. That is what community means, founded on the equal worth of all. The starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the deserts of Northern Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan: they too are our cause.

And now?

Afghanistan ‘out of control’ (BBC)

Britain should be doing more to restore law and order to Afghanistan, the government has been warned. Large swathes of the country are under the control of warlords where people live under the daily threat of violence, said Christian Aid. The charity, which is running aid projects in the country, wrote to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw warning him conditions were only getting worse. Nato takes command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the capital Kabul on Monday, but that security should be extended to the whole of the nation, says the charity. And the push for a change in Nato and United Nations policy towards the war torn country should come from Britain, it adds. Growing criminality is further compounding the insecurity felt by the Afghan population.

“As we are sure you are aware, the security situation in Afghanistan has shown a marked deterioration in recent months,” said the letter, which was backed by other aid agencies. Only a properly trained Afghan National Army and police force can bring stability and security but they are years away, the agencies say. “In the meantime, radical elements seek to undermine both the transitional government and the reconstruction process,” the letter states. “In addition, local struggles for power, fuelled in some areas by the opium trade, are leading to a growing fragmentation of the country. While efforts to create a national army, police force and judiciary remain at an embryonic stage, the ongoing climate of impunity means that there is no protection for the individual from the arbitrary use of power. Growing criminality is further compounding the insecurity felt by the Afghan population; there are numerous examples of robberies, thefts and assaults even in (supposedly) one of the most secure regions, Herat.”

The multinational Nato force should be in place before the next Loya Jirga gathering of tribal chiefs discusses a constitution in October, according to the agencies. The letter was signed by Martin Kyndt, Christian Aid’s acting director, along with AfghanAid’s UK director Fraser Mackay, Care International UK’s programme director Raja Jarrah, Ken Caldwell of Save the Children and TearFund’s Graham Fairburn.

What the are the values our ‘liberal democracies’ stand for? Whatever they are, they’re not what Bush, Blair and Howard are championing. To end, Webdiarist Mike Lyvers responds to the extract of Paul Berman’s examination of the values of fundamentalist Islam in We open our eyes, keep loving and go on. Berman wrote:

The followers of (Islamic revolutionary philosopher) Qutb speak, in their wild fashion, of enormous human problems, and they urge one another to death and to murder. But the enemies of these people speak of United Nations resolutions, of unilateralism, of multilateralism, of weapons inspectors, of co-ercion and non-coercion.

This is no answer to the terrorists. The terrorists speak insanely of deep things. The anti-terrorists had better speak sanely of deep things.

Presidents will not do this. Presidents will dispatch armies, for better or worse.

But who will speak of the sacred and the secular, of the physical world and the spiritual world? Who will defend liberal ideas against the enemy of liberal ideas? Who will defend liberal principles in spite of liberal society’s failures?

President George W Bush, in his speech to Congress a few days after the September 11 attacks, announced that he was going to wage a war of ideas. He has done no such thing. He is not the man for that.

Philosophers and religious leaders will have to do that on their own. Are they doing so? Armies are in motion, but are the philosophers and religious leaders, the liberal thinkers, likewise in motion?

There is something to worry about here, an aspect of the war that liberal society seems to have trouble understanding – one more worry, on top of all the others, and possibly the greatest worry of all.

Mike Lyvers

Margo, thanks for including that piece by Paul Berman in Webdiary. I found it fascinating and could comment extensively on various aspects of it – but I’ll spare you that. Permit me one comment though.

The split between religion and science that has occurred in European culture – and which ultimately allowed that culture to become so much more successful than any other – has put the West in closer touch with reality than ever before, but at the expense (for some) of satisfying spiritual yearnings. I think a closer examination of exactly what “spiritual yearnings” really are is called for.

For some people, spiritual yearnings boil down to the loss described in the story of Adam’s fall. With his metaphorical coming of age, Adam enjoyed freedom and independence but lost the comfort and security of the loving parent symbolized by an anthropomorphic God. In Western culture the Church once satisfied these yearnings and kept existential angst at bay by telling fables about a loving father-figure in the sky who watches over us at all times, and warded off the inevitable fear of death by positing a heavenly afterlife in eternity. These days, such fables are unconvincing to most thinking people in the West.

However, there is a deeper dimension to spiritual yearnings in some people, and that is a yearning for transcendence, or knowledge of ultimate Reality. This yearning goes beyond the simple need for an anthropomorphic father – figure; rather, it goes to the very core of our being. Several religious traditions have evolved various practices aimed at addressing this deeper dimension of spirituality (eg., sufism in Islam, kabbalah in Judaism, Zen in Buddhism, Vedanta in Hinduism) and thus it is no surprise that Westerners are turning to such practices in ever-increasing numbers.

On the other hand, those who suffer the simpler type of spiritual yearning are turning in increasing numbers to fundamentalism, both in the West and in the Islamic world.

Fundamentalism is ultimately a life-denying philosophy that rejects Reality in all its aspects, esoteric and exoteric, and its increasing popularity constitutes a very sad development indeed.