The Eve of the War

Although too alarmist in parts, I think I was pretty much on the money when I talked of how one side wanted this war to polarise the world into 2 camps. Unfortunately, I wasn't pessimistic enough in saying that only one side wanted that outcome.




So, the war has started. We all looked forward to it with an increasingly resigned sense of dread and so it is no big surprise. There remains only one main question to be answered; will this war be televised?

Jesus, am I really that jaded about the onset of what may develop into WWIII? Well, pretty much so if I'm honest. America is rather less comfortable with being at war since Sept. 11th as they now have to face the very real prospect of terrorist retaliation at any time and in any place. We as their foremost allies must face that same prospect. However, at the risk of sounding smug, we've had to live with the prospect of terrorism for 30 years and so it has caused fewer ripples here. After all, the IRA were (and still probably are to a lesser extent) funded by America for years (The terrorist group ETA must be kicking themselves for not having more Basque's in America than there are in the whole of Spain; it certainly worked a treat for the IRA). Osama Bin Laden was trained by the CIA, as were many of the Mujahadin groups in Afghanistan. In effect we've simply swapped one US created problem for another. At least this time we know that we're not the only country who will have to push that fear of terrorism to the back of our minds in order to get on with our day. (Incidentally, what exactly is "State Sponsored Terrorism"? Does a man knock on the door of a country's embassy with an sponsorship form asking for money for little Achmed's sponsored suicide bombing?)

Anyway, after the 4 weeks of hype and building up of tension the air assaults were launched and were met with a reaction of...well, I think it was best summed up when somebody said that "...it's not as good as the Gulf War is it? I mean, there's hardly anything about it on the TV and the pictures aren't very good." All in all the effect thus far has been of a public who, having had the onset of hostilities hyped up as much as Titanic, have found that what is on their screens is more like Battlefield: Earth. Besides, the US and UK airforce's regularly drop bombs all over Iraq and those events form little more than a footnote on page 12 of the newspaper. Isn't this just a case of "Same shit, different country"?

No. No it damn well isn't. This little war-ette has the potential to become something quite remarkably frightening. Granted, it also has the possibility of fizzling out and sweeping the board at the Razzie Awards (perhaps winning the coveted titles of "Most Unjustifiably Hyped War", "War least likely to lead to Nuclear Holocaust", and "Most Welcome distraction from the Recession"). But this conflict could be the spark that polarises the world into two opposing camps, and that is something that the Gulf War never realistically threatened to do.

Seeing as I've started out with the Gulf War comparison, I may as well continue with the theme. Firstly I'll deal with my most frivolous point; the Televised War. Pretty much everybody remembers the TV coverage of the Gulf War. Entertaining wasn't it? It was like being an observer to the world's biggest video game! Coupled with the extraordinarily low amount of Allied casualties over the course of the war (the US army killed more allied soldiers than the Iraqi's...) the TV helped to reassure the West that we were still the big kids in the playground. We knew that we were winning because we could see exactly where the missiles were landing. All the missile-mounted camera's failed to do was flash up the address of the target in the corner of the screen! The TV was our friend.

I don't think it will be this time round. Afghanistan has no infrastructure worth speaking of, nor does it have much in the way of industry. Therefore, our fireworks display will be a lot less spectacular this time round (who wants to see footage of a cruise missile destroying a 4x4 with mounted machine gun when we've already seen one blowing up a Baghdad airfield?). Secondly, the ground war is not the foregone conclusion that it was in the Gulf. The Iraqi army was bombed and carpet-bombed for weeks, and they weren't exactly a credible threat to allied ground forces in the first place. The Taliban have scattered to an extent anyway and so are less vulnerable to bombing, and they will almost certainly do what they did when the USSR rolled in; disperse to the mountains and cause mayhem from there. So this time the US will have competition in the contest to see who can kill the most allied soldiers. I doubt that the TV will show the undoubtedly bloody and ferocious fighting that will be the norm after the ground war commences. It's one thing to watch a war that one has little danger of losing. It's quite another to watch, say, the aftermath of a massacre in a valley which would see almost 100 allied soldiers lying butchered whilst the Taliban guerrillas whoop victoriously in their village.

Then we have the religious angle to consider. Bin Laden claims to be acting in the best interests of Islam when he urges Moslems everywhere to rise up against the Great Satan. He's not of course, but that is by the by. He wants to see the world split into two camps; believers and infidels. There is no half way house here. You are either with him or against him (a phrase which I shall come back to later). He has also built up large-scale international support amongst the people of the Middle East simply because he opposes America. Saddam Hussein was an altogether different prospect; here was a nationalist dictator who had little or no time for religion. He didn't much care for what one's religious background, just as long as his orders were carried out. When he may a brief and desperate call for a Jihad against America and the UK he was pretty much universally ignored despite the fact that he had launched missiles against Israel (normally a pretty safe bet if one wishes to gain the support of fanatics who claim to be Moslem). Unlike Hussein, Bin Laden has a proven record for fighting in the name of Islam so who is to say that he will not become a rallying point for all of those who despise America (and there are a lot of them, make no mistake)?

When the Gulf War began, the world was pretty much united in it's support of the liberation of Kuwait (although perhaps we should ignore the fact that the only reason that they did it was to safeguard the flow of oil from the region). The same cannot be said today. Iran is schizophrenic in it's approach as it has a Prime Minister who seems to support the action against the Taliban and a Supreme Leader who wants to keep it firmly mired in it's USA-hating past (it's probably best to think of it in terms of what would happen in the UK if Blair was still PM and Thatcher was Queen; not a very pretty picture really so let us move on...). Malaysia has come out in opposition to the attacks, and the Moslems of Indonesia seem less than happy. The remaining Moslem nations who support the bombing are all lead by autocratic governments. What they say and what the people of those nations say is not necessarily the same thing. Bin Laden is doing his best to encourage support among the fanatical Islamic groups in Saudi Arabia, Egypt etc. It may well turn out that those nations have to start denouncing the US and UK in order to keep their own people happy (and save their own skin of course).

Do we think that the US, UK, and whomever else have joined the party by then will simply stop? Can anyone see Bush or Blair making a broadly cheered speech where they make it clear that "...due to the opposition to this war that has sprung up among our allies, we shall withdraw from Afghanistan and rely on the UN to bring Bin Laden to justice"? Especially if they haven't captured or killed Bin Laden? It's not going to happen really, is it? And as has been said by numerous American politicians, "If you're not with us, you're against us!" (Told you I'd come back to it). So it's not beyond the realms of possibility to find a large portion of the Middle East withdrawing support from the US, which could in turn lead to them being cast in the same light as the Taliban. In other words, we could find ourselves facing a war between the Western and Moslem worlds. This is what Bin Laden wants in the first place, so you can bet he won't miss the chance to try and make it happen.