I was standing outside a Globalise Resistance meeting when the news arrived that America had bombed Afghanistan. In the meeting itself, comrades asked whether Genoa people should oppose this war?"You don't understand", explained one German Green, "It's different this time. There will be no attack, no bombing of innocent civilians. The American government has learned form the past." Faced with such certainty, our peacenik appeals came to nothing. Not one of us knew that the B-52s were airborne.
Yet even before the first bomber flew, this war had begun. Two processes were already at work. First, a number of British and American special forces were in Afghanistan, taking part in "covert operations". The corpulent broadsheets will not describe the details of this work -- when it is underway -- but if this operation has been anything like the previous ones, then we can know that the troops were sent to scout for targets, fixing on what little remained of the country's electricity, water and transport systems. The desire was to destabilise the Afghani people, and thus destroy the Taliban regime. Second, the United States and its allies were also already fighting through more subtle means -- using the press, arguing with the neighbouring countries to close their borders to refugees. Their success will be gauged in the numbers of Afghans who flee. The UN estimates that one and a half million people will leave their homes. Another six million people have been detached, at least temporarily, from the means of securing clothes, shelter and sanitation. The promised aid would not feed these people for a day.
All four of the horsemen of the Apocalypse ride through Afghanistan, for now that the bombing has begun we can add to the grim register of those who are dying from famine and pestilence the names of those killed in the war. We should have seen it coming. When George Bush promised to find the world's terrorists "dead or alive", we should have known that this was mere talk. The man to fear was Blair. His message has been that the West would remove the pain which provides the fundamentalists, by feeding the world's poor and intervening to secure justice in the Middle East. These words were designed to make the war appear fair.
In another incarnation, Tony Blair promised to be both tough on crime and tough on its causes. His concern for the urban poor was as enduring then as Margaret Thatcher's similar promise -- spoken on the night of her third election victory -- to end the pain of the inner cities. In neither case, did the champagne words last even until the morning after. Does any one believe that Blair will keep his promises any longer this time?
Outside the meeting, a group chose to head straight to Downing Street. We were the third, fourth, fifth and sixth protesters to arrive there in the rain. Others came -- some new faces, some more familiar. There was only one megaphone, and few chants. Had people seen the news? Did the media know any more than we did? As we spoke, the conversation returned again and again to another question. "Are the Taliban fascists?"
What struck me then was the gulf between the emotions felt by the long-term advocates of the left, and those feelings experienced by people new to this anti-war movement. I sought words to fill that space, and in the effort of speaking them -- it seemed to me that I became like the cartoon leftist Buzz affectionately portrayed in Tim Robbins' magnificent Bob Roberts. So many previous wars to describe, so many words, and no time to tell them.
Here, if nowhere else, I want to record my reasons for opposing this war.
I do not know whether the Taliban are fascists.
I do believe that Bin Laden is a monster -- and I would shed no tears if he were tried by those same international courts that were blocked by Bush.
What I reject is that simple racism which states that "our ways" are better than "theirs", and that the people to spread democracy are the ones who fiddle elections back home.
If all Afghans sheltered Bin Laden in their hearts, then why was not one of the New York hijackers born in that country?
We should trust the Afghan people to remove their own tyrants.
Bombing innocents -- in New York or in Kabul -- is equally a crime.
