Blow up
The going-ons in London over the last few weeks have had echoes that should inform the debate in Australia on matters terroristic and multicultural. The most obvious thing is that the first set of bombers, the 'successful' homicide bombers, were largely born in the UK. None arrived in a leaky boat or by claiming refugee status as a result of their fleeing intolerant Islamist (or secular west Asian) governments. (It is still not clear who the second set of bombers were - the ones whose bombs all failed to go off - or why they appear to have replicated the pattern of 7/7 with three train and a bus bomb, none of which detonated the explosive they carried. This cannot be a coincidence, so I find it strange that they are still referred to as 'failed' bombers. They appear to be successful non-bombers. They also seem to be British citizens of African origin who intended that their bombs not kill anyone but create an atmosphere of dread that would replicate what they saw as the situation in places like Baghdad. But, with many arrests and little in the way of genuine information on their motives and operations, there is still much to play out before we know the answers to these questions.)
I am tempted to say, facetiously, that the timing of the two attacks demonstrated the contempt with which the bombers hold the very fabric of Anglo-Celtic society: the first coincided with the start of the England-Australia one-day cricket series and the second with the first day of the Ashes Test series. To greet the start of major cricket series with such blasts is to indicate their disdain for the basic tenets of British culture. On a more serious note, the blasts demonstrated a number of things, some really scary and others more in the I-told-you-so category. The bombers showed that it is almost impossible to stop a determined killer in a metropolitan area without changing our society to the extent that we wouldn't recognise it - and to the extent that the terrorists would have won. They also showed that the way the Coalition of the Wallies is fighting 'the war on terror' is just not working. The bombs have forced both the UK and the Australian governments to recognise that the coalition that must be formed is not with the USA but with moderate Islamic opinion-makers in their own countries. It is increasingly clear that the attack on Iraq has been counter-productive: it did not lead to a lessening of terrorist infrastructure in the country because there wasn't any (apart from Saddam's token payments to families of Palestinian homicide bombers) but has in fact created such an infrastructure. Even the Howard government has now admitted that Afghanistan was (and is) terrorism-central and the Wallies should not have taken their eye off that ball to attack Saddam. For those reasons, the war in Iraq was a reason for the bombs: not the sole reason, but an additional incentive to plant the bombs where damage could be inflicted on those inflicting damage on the men, women and children of Iraq.
But, before using London as an excuse for even more draconian anti-terrorist activities, as the Howard gang appear to be doing, it needs to be stressed that there are large differences between the UK and Australia in their treatment of the children of Islamic immigrants. Australia does not have the football hooligan culture that encourages antithetical feelings towards "them". When I heard that three of the killers were first generation descendants of Pakistani migrants, I immediately thought of the stands full of northern English football 'fans' singing their club songs, such as 'If you want to kill a Paki, clap your hands'. Inter-racial violence in those crowded northern cities is endemic; so is the feeling of isolation and impotence among the unemployed young men of Pakistani heritage. No wonder these children of the post-war immigrants living in Leeds were so alienated from their adopted culture. Perhaps the lesson to be learned is to cherish the contribution that such people can make to our culture and ensure, through the active pursuit of a truly multicultural Australia, that we don't breed a similarly alienated youth culture. And that won't be done through draconian legislation, ASIO raids and fridge magnets, but by a more sensible and sensitive government policy that addresses socio-economic dislocation among such communities.
Of course the Howard gang's response is to flag an increasingly restrictive regime that will, if pursued, indicate a surrenrder to the terrorists. When the 'war on terror' started we were assured that the bombings would not change our way of life. We were to be alert, but not alarmed. Not any more, apparently. Now we are to take actions that appear diametrically at odds with what we used to see as our way of life. The government is contemplating detention without charge and withdrawl of citizenship for those proposing violence. This apparently means those proposing violence against us and ours, not those proposing violence against the citizens of Iraq or Afghanistan. Or those proposing inter-communal violence aimed at Muslim Australians. Included in the proposals is the possibility of identity cards for all Australians - something the Tories characterised as monstrously dangerous when it was floated by the Hawke government in the late 1980s. Hypocrisy is nothing new to these people.
The attacks have again raised the issue of nomenclature: how exactly do we describe the people who blow up trains in the cities of the Coalition? Or, indeed, those who explode devices in the streets of Iraq. Is one man's 'terrorist' another's 'freedom fighter'? Many media outlets are not using the term 'terrorist' but euphemisms like 'activist' or 'insurgent' to describe the latter. I'm fairly sure that 'terrorist' is an adequate description for the 7/7 London bombers but I'm not quite so sure about those in Baghdad. If it is 'terrorism' to plant bombs in an attempt to disrupt the activities of 'liberators' then we're going to have to revisit some history. The Maquis, the French Resistance in WW2, will now have to be classed as terrorists. After all the German occupiers had invaded France with a view to neutralising its weapons of mass destruction and freeing it from the dictatorship of democracy, bringing the benefits of National Socialism to its citizens, only to be confronted by the rise of an insurgent infrastructure that used bombs and terror as a way of murdering its soldiers and those Frenchmen who co-operated with them. In what way is what is happening in Iraq different? Oh yeah, I remember: it's 'us' and 'them' again.
First written: August 2005
return to Raves/Essays index