Issue 256 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published October 2001 Copyright © Socialist Review

Dear George Bush and Tony Blair,
You have been at the forefront of the cry of anger and grief, and the calls for revenge, since the horrendous events of 11 September. You tell us that those who are not with you are against you, and therefore by implication care little or nothing for the human tragedy and suffering that took place on that day.

Yet there are those of us who genuinely recoiled in horror, tried to imagine the fear and anguish of those airline passengers, the horrific confusion and mayhem in the towers, the grieving of loved ones. We too grieved for the slaughter of innocents but, unlike yours, our grief is not so selective.

We grieve for slain American children, but grieve no less for starved, diseased and bombed Iraqi children. How about you?

We grieve the death and destruction just as we did the death and destruction rained on Belgrade. You too?

We look in horror at the death toll just as we did when Israel and its allies massacred thousands in Sabra and Shatilla. Where was your rage then?

Much is said about Palestinians dancing in the streets, yet were we in Britain not asked to 'rejoice' at the pointless killing of young Argentinian men in the Falklands War?

I personally could not rejoice at either event. I will not mark 11 September each year as a chance to commemorate the day the US finally got what's coming to it. But then I wouldn't pluck a day out of history branded by the infamy of dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and call it VJ Day.

I won't even take satisfaction from the deaths of those inside the Pentagon, a building that has probably been as responsible as any in the world for spreading human misery. Many civilians will have died in there, and even those who have chosen a military life do not deserve to die in such a way. Nor, however, did those Iraqi soldiers butchered on the road between Basra and Baghdad, slaughtered from the air as they were retreating in what became a convoy of death. Were you shouting with rage then?

While we grieved for the victims of the death squads of Honduras and El Salvador, what were you and your predecessors doing--grieving with us or supplying them with the weapons of murder?

When we wailed for the dead and tortured in Argentina, or the horrors of the Santiago football stadium, where was your outrage? It didn't exist. Instead you put these regimes in power and made sure they stayed there.

We wonder, George, before you go around denouncing all and sundry and declaring 'war on terrorism', whether you will sit at the breakfast table and ask daddy a few pertinent questions. Like why he and Ronnie Reagan were so keen to arm Bin Laden and the Taliban. Why were they so keen to sponsor the 'terrorist' Contras in Nicaragua?

Cowardly, without warning, without declaration, you say of the attacks. Any more cowardly, without warning or justification than the bombing of Cambodia? If both acts are equally despicable, then both deserve equal wrath. Let us see Henry Kissinger alongside Bin Laden in your chamber of horrors.

We still grieve for the dead and destroyed of your south east Asian war, whilst you continue to harbour the terrorists of that war.

Unlike us, your grief is selective. The 'sanctity of human life' in your morality appears to depend on whether the dead are Americans, westerners or allies from the 'civilised world'.

Now we are told we have to prove our grief by handing you a blank cheque and sanctioning in advance any action you take, which will allow more death, more destruction, more innocent men, women and children to die. We can then all puff out our chests and say, didn't we do well?

For death and destruction in one place is meant to elicit grief and international mourning. In another it should produce rejoicing, celebrating and the giant 'nobody's going to kick our ass' swagger.

'What are we meant to do?' you ask. 'Let them impose all this suffering and get away with it?' Precisely the question so many in the Middle East, particularly Palestinians and Iraqis, ask themselves. For their anger is real.

The peoples of the Middle East feel the impact of your policies every day. Their hatred of you is based on real suffering, dispossession, repression, hunger and horror caused by you, your policies, and those of your rottweiler in the region, the state of Israel.

Unfortunately they have lashed out in a way that has brought horror to innocent citizens of the US, will likely bring horror to citizens of their own region, and goodness knows where else by the time you've finished--and which has surely brought an opportunist smile to the face of the war criminal Sharon.

Selective grief and crocodile tears do little to reassure those of us who genuinely recoil at the horror but so dread the thought of more horror. For we know that your disapproval of indiscriminate violence is highly selective. If the friendly state or the superpower authorises it then it is fine--if the oppressed fight back then it is crime.

Like yours, our politics are selective. We side with the oppressed, you with the oppressor. Unlike you, our grief in the face of human tragedy is not selective. We don't rejoice at one horror only to condemn another.

If we are not with you, you tell us, we are against you. Well, we won't sign up to this hypocrisy, we won't sign your blank cheque.

We are with the victims of this tragedy, but in no way are we with you.