"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear" - George Orwell
 

Time for more plain speaking
 
The transparent double-standards of in particular the United States and Britain are never better highlighted than by their respective Middle Eastern policies. Based on often temporary political expediency and a confused and forever shifting group of alliances, the West has stumbled into a quagmire of duplicity, watching your supposed enemies, but watching your friends even more closely.
 
Israel, a state built on the very effective use of terrorism, selective assassination and nearly 55 years of often aggressive first use of military action, adopts a coy attitude to such comments. Why not be honest and be proud that they have not been afraid to get their hands dirty? Israel has killed in both war and peace many more of its Arab inhabitants or neighbours than Israelis killed by the combined Arab armed forces and a multitude of terrorist groups. Are those comments a criticism of Israel or merely an honest acceptance that Israel has always been prepared to do anything it believes necessary to survive when faced with Arab hostility?
The denial of the right of the Palestinians to use whatever methods they can to recover their territory from an occupying army sits rather unhappily alongside the Irgun and Stern Gangs use of terrorism against the British and Palestinians or the wholehearted US support for the Afghans against the Soviet Army, the French resistance's use of terror tactics and assassination against the German forces in WW2 or for that matter the Kosovan Muslim revolt in a sovereign area of Serbia.
 
Washington and London either openly support or at worst ignore Israel's actions against the Muslim threat and yet the double-standards soon re-appear when Christian Serbia is condemned and heavily bombed for trying to eradicate a Muslim terrorist  campaign in its own territory. Albanian and Kosovan Islamic terrorists were supported and armed by both Iran and Osama Bin-Laden, along with and at times apparently at the behest of the USA and the CIA.  Indeed these same terrorists now pose a considerable threat to large parts of Europe both by acting as agents for Al Qa'ida and through their open involvement in multinational crime organizations. Again the US, NATO and the European nations have only themselves to blame, for had they helped Serbia to cope with the Islamic terrorists in the first place many lives might have been saved, particularly those of the Kosovan Muslims who were to die at the hands of Serbia's genocidal dictator.
 
Some observers have expressed more than a little surprise that the United States should have so willingly used Islamic terrorists to kill Europeans for Washington's own particular hidden agenda. This and the long term use of terrorists like Bin-Laden against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan was to 'blowback' in a terrible fashion on 9-11. However much we may disapprove of this perversion of diplomacy, isn't it rather hypocritical to complain when it is being conducted by Governments democratically elected and of our own choosing? Probably yes, much safer to turn on the TV sports channel or hide behind the mask of patriotism. After all what we don't know about can't trouble what passes for a collective conscience.
 
Saddam a friend or a foe?
 
Saddam Hussein was supplied with the manufacturing equipment to produce Weapons of Mass Destruction by US companies with the full approval of Washington, indeed the USA helpfully provided samples of Anthrax for Iraq's germ warfare program. Iraq developed and used chemical weapons against Kurdish civilian targets and against the Iranian Army. Britain helped with technology and the super gun project which would have been capable of lobbing shells full of bacteriological warfare agents into Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey or even perhaps the heart of Israel. But then of course, Saddam Hussein was seen as a friend of the West, a bulwark against the approaching evils of Iran's fundamentalist Islamic revolution.
 
It would be very easy to take to the moral high ground usually reserved for the intellectual coward at this point. However, the fact remains that international diplomacy and the approach to areas of strategic importance have never been governed by anything other than self interest. They are not a playground for justice, compassion, equality, fairness or at times even common sense. Like Israel, the USA and Britain will and indeed must look after what they believe to be the best interests of their own nations at any given time. That they will get it wrong as often as getting it right comes with the territory and other political beliefs and the nations founded upon them, have proved time and time again just how fragile political judgement can be.
 
A divided Islam is own worst enemy
 
The Islamic world can have little to genuinely complain about either. The bleeding-heart Liberals who constantly complain about the foul injustice done to the Muslims apparently put little stock in the evidence of a thousand years of internal conflict, injustice, prejudice, slavery and invasion of foreign lands that have been carried out in the name of Islam. Much of Europe took nearly 600 years to rid itself of Ottoman occupation and the scars still show in the ethnic hatreds of the Balkans. The Arab peoples have had independence and the massive advantage of oil and gas-rich resources in abundance for 60 years and used wisely many of today's seemingly insuperable problems may well have been avoided.
 
The Arab nations also had a huge numerical advantage over Israel and could either have organized effectively for war, armed to the teeth by Soviet Russia or more sensibly negotiated from this position of strength an honourable deal for both Israel and an independent Palestinian State. Instead they have spent several generations fighting amongst themselves, in numerous failed wars with Israel and frittered away much of the Oil revenue on wasted weapons, self-indulgence or supporting international terrorism.
 
Politics and diplomacy, or for that matter the News Media, would be no worse for a lot more plain speaking. AFI Research has been assailed at times for being pro-Arab, pro-Israeli, anti-American, pro-American, pro-Pakistan and pro-India. Indeed our coverage of Afghanistan and the War on terrorism, though more often correct and at times exclusive has drawn accusations of being both soft on terrorism and of promoting US military action. This is a price that all our writers are prepared to pay, if nothing else it proves we have a very wide international readership and that we still maintain both our independence and the wish to speak plainly at all times and on all subjects.
 
Richard M. Bennett
 
 
 

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Richard M. Bennett is the author of FIGHTING FORCES a review of the worlds leading Armies, including many in the Middle East, published in September 2001 and is available from Barrons of New York  www.barronseduc.com  ISBN 0-7641-5343-9  and the forthcoming ESPIONAGE An encyclopedia of Spies and Secrets, which will be available from Virgin Books later this year.

Richard Bennett Media also provides coverage of specialist domestic Political, Social, and Law & Order issues and acts as consultants for international Film and TV Companies on military and espionage history. If quoting from this Media Briefing in anyway, please ensure that you credit Richard Bennett Media at all times

The AFI Research website lists many of our Associates and Contributors including  'America goes to War' at Orbat.com  and the defence coverage of Milnet.com.

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