Firestorm coming provoked by Mr Bush

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Robert Fisk: There is a firestorm coming, and it is being provoked by Mr Bush
More and more, President Bush's rhetoric sounds like the crazed videotapes of
Osama bin Laden
25 May 2002
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Robert Fisk: There is a firestorm coming, and it is being provoked by Mr Bush
So now Osama bin Laden is Hitler. And Saddam Hussein is Hitler. And George Bush
is fighting the Nazis. Not since Menachem Begin fantasised to President Reagan
that he felt he was attacking Hitler in Berlin – his Israeli army was actually
besieging Beirut, killing thousands of civilians, "Hitler" being the pathetic
Arafat – have we had to listen to claptrap like this. But the fact that we
Europeans had to do so in the Bundestag on Thursday – and, for the most part,
in respectful silence – was extraordinary.

I'm reminded of the Israeli columnist who, tired of the wearying invocation of
the Second World War to justify yet more Israeli brutality, began an article
with the words: "Mr Prime Minister, Hitler is dead." Must we, forever, live
under the shadow of a war that was fought and won before most of us were born?
Do we have to live forever with living, diminutive politicians playing
Churchill (Thatcher and, of course, Blair) or Roosevelt? "He's a dictator who
gassed his own people," Mr Bush reminded us for the two thousandth time,
omitting as always to mention that the Kurds whom Saddam viciously gassed were
fighting for Iran and that the United States, at the time, was on Saddam's side.

But there is a much more serious side to this. Mr Bush is hoping to corner the
Russian President, Vladimir Putin, into a new policy of threatening Iran. He
wants the Russians to lean on the northern bit of the "axis of evil", the
infantile phrase which he still trots out to the masses. More and more, indeed,
Mr Bush's rhetoric sounds like the crazed videotapes of Mr bin Laden. And still
he tries to lie about the motives for the crimes against humanity of 11
September. Yet again, in the Bundestag, he insisted that the West's enemies
hated "justice and democracy", even though most of America's Muslim enemies
wouldn't know what democracy was.

In the United States, the Bush administration is busy terrorising Americans.
There will be nuclear attacks, bombs in high-rise apartment blocks, on the
Brooklyn bridge, men with exploding belts – note how carefully the ruthless
Palestinian war against Israeli colonisation of the West Bank is being strapped
to America's ever weirder "war on terror" – and yet more aircraft suiciders. If
you read the words of President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and the
ridiculous national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, over the past three
days, you'll find they've issued more threats against Americans than Mr bin
Laden.

But let's get back to the point. The growing evidence that Israel's policies
are America's policies in the Middle East – or, more accurately, vice versa –
is now being played out for real in statements from Congress and on American
television. First, we have the chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations
Committee announcing that Hizbollah – the Lebanese guerrilla force that drove
Israel's demoralised army out of Lebanon in the year 2000 – is planning attacks
in the US. After that, we had an American television network "revealing" that
Hizbollah, Hamas and al- Qa'ida – Mr bin Laden's organisation – have held a
secret meeting in Lebanon to plot attacks on the US.

American journalists insist on quoting "sources" but there was, of course, no
sourcing for this balderdash, which is now repeated ad nauseam in the American
media. Then take the "Syrian Accountability Act" that was introduced into the
US Senate by Israel's friends on18 April. This includes the falsity uttered
earlier by Israel's Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, that Iranian Revolutionary
Guards "operate freely" on the southern Lebanese border. Now there haven't been
Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon – let alone the south of the country –
for 18 years. So why is this lie repeated yet again?

Iran is under threat. Lebanon is under threat. Syria is under threat –
its "terrorism" status has been heightened by the State Department – and so is
Iraq. But Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister held personally responsible
by Israel's own enquiry for the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 1,700
Palestinians in Beirut in 1982, is – according to Mr Bush – "a man of peace".
How much further can this go? A long way, I fear.

The anti-American feeling throughout the Middle East is palpable. Arab
newspaper editorials don't come near to expressing public opinion. In Damascus,
Majida Tabbaa has become famous as the lady who threw the US Consul Roberto
Powers out of her husband's downtown restaurant on 7 April . "I went over to
him," she said, "and told him, 'Mr Roberto, tell your George Bush that all of
you are not welcome – please get out'." Across the Arab world, boycotts of
American goods have begun in earnest.

How much longer can this go on? America praises Pakistani President Musharraf
for his support in the "war on terror", but remains silent when he arranges a
dictatorial "referendum" to keep him in power. America's enemies, remember,
hate the US for its "democracy". So is General Musharraf going to feel the
heat? Forget it. My guess is that Pakistan's importance in the famous "war on
terror" – or "war for civilisation" as, we should remember, it was originally
called – is far more important. If Pakistan and India go to war, I'll wager a
lot that Washington will come down for undemocratic Pakistan against democratic
India.

Across the former Soviet southern Muslim republics, America is building air
bases, helping to pursue the "war on terror" against any violent Muslim
Islamist groups that dare to challenge the local dictators. Please do not
believe that this is about oil. Do not for a moment think that these oil and
gas-rich lands have any economic importance for the oil-fuelled Bush
administration. Nor the pipelines that could run from northern Afghanistan to
the Pakistani coast if only that pesky Afghan loya jirga could elect a
government that would give concessions to Unocal, the oddly named concession
whose former boss just happens to be a chief Bush "adviser" to Afghanistan.

Now here's pause for thought. Abdelrahman al-Rashed writes in the international
Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat that if anyone had said prior to 11 September that
Arabs were plotting a vast scheme to murder thousands of Americans in the US,
no one would have believed them. "We would have charged that this was an
attempt to incite the American people against Arabs and Muslims," he wrote. And
rightly so.

But Arabs did commit the crimes against humanity of 11 September. And many
Arabs greatly fear that we have yet to see the encore from the same
organisation. In the meantime, Mr Bush goes on to do exactly what his enemies
want; to provoke Muslims and Arabs, to praise their enemies and demonise their
countries, to bomb and starve Iraq and give uncritical support to Israel and
maintain his support for the dictators of the Middle East.

Each morning now, I awake beside the Mediterranean in Beirut with a feeling of
great foreboding. There is a firestorm coming. And we are blissfully ignoring
its arrival; indeed, we are provoking it.