judgement

Another clipping from the Melbourne Age

[link|http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/10/15/1034561158546.html|"Right wants us to leave our brains at the door"]

Don't allow 'Forrest Gumpism' to blind your judgment
October 16 2002




There are reasons why the right wants patriotic dumbness to rule in the debate on our response to terrorism, writes Guy Rundle.


A couple enter a restaurant in Tel Aviv. The man hands the woman a flower. There's a loud bang and they both dive for the floor. A suicide bomber? No, it's the waiter pouring the champagne.

That's not a sick joke from an Internet hate-site but a comedy sketch from the Israeli TV show Only in Israel, a program watched regularly by one in four Israeli viewers and which - whatever its politics - gives new meaning to the word "fearless satire" (its most scarifying item was a parody of a Sesame Street-style show about road safety complete with a singing school bus that blew up at regular intervals).

How would such cool-headed satire fare in Australia? Not well, I would guess.

After the Bali bombing we are once again being asked to choose between the heart and the head, as though any form of analysis of the conditions within which terrorist groups form is callous and unthinking. In particular, any sort of analysis that looks at Western political behaviour that the terrorists may be targeting is seen as tantamount to giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Age columnist Gerard Henderson, writing on this page yesterday ("Now we know how the US feels"), argues that academic Scott Burchill's analysis of terror as an "unintended consequence" of Western government actions is tantamount to saying that it is our "fault", while Angela Shanahan in The Australian says the bombing of a nightclub on a Pacific rim island has convinced her of the need to go to war - against Iraq, an Arab nation with no significant connection to Indonesia and no proven political links with the likely culprits.



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To be fair, the left has given such commentators some useful ammunition. There is a difference between suggesting a link between the Australian Government's extreme pro-US policy and terror, and suggesting that the occurrence of terror invalidates that policy.

The Howard Government's foreign policy should be rejected on its own grounds - because it's immoral and supports a repressive neo-imperial vision, not because it might anger ruthless people. After all, the Kuta bombing may be in response to our role in East Timor, which was - very belatedly - an honourable cause. Were that the case, it would scarcely invalidate our involvement in East Timor.

The Kuta bombing demands more analysis, not less, but sections of the right are deeply reluctant to countenance this for one big reason - the possible involvement of sections of the Indonesian military (TNI) in the atrocity and their links with Islamic fundamentalist paramilitary groups. We know there are links between the TNI and Laskar Jihad and there may be links with others. We know the military is furious and humiliated over Australia's role in East Timor. We know elements in the power elite make a speciality of using bombs to get people's attention - Tommy Suharto is doing time for just such a crime.

For decades our governments have supported the repressive role of the military in Indonesian life and helped to forestall the emergence of full civil society. We supported the kleptocratic Suharto family, whose chauvinist pro-Javanese internal policies contributed to the rise of separatist armed groups. Our military trained not only regular soldiers but the thugs and torturers of Kopassus, the Indonesian Army's special forces. It is not inconceivable that we trained those associated with the Kuta bombing, as the US armed and trained Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

No wonder the right wants us to leave our brains at the door. People are beginning to notice that most terrorists are former clients of Western powers - people may even draw the conclusion that an ethical foreign policy, rather than a realpolitik, may be our greatest guarantor of long-term stability.

Militant Islamic fundamentalism is a potent ideology for people battered and humiliated by the extension of Western power and money into every area of global social life. Because it gives meaning to lives thrown into disarray by these forces, people are willing to die for it. The further extension of unjust and unilateral power will simply increase the numbers of willing martyrs exponentially.

We have never had a greater need for cool and calm reflection on our place in the world. Instead, we are being asked to subscribe to Forrest Gumpism - patriotic dumbness. Only in Australia.

[link|http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/10/17/1034561266864.html|From The Melbourne Age & Also mentioned in SCMP]

Excerpted from 2nd half ...

Mr Suyatmo said the probe was focusing on a group of eight people - seven Indonesians and one foreigner - who were being "intensively questioned".

The Australian Federal Police are saying little about the inquiry for fear of offending their Indonesian counterparts.

No group has claimed responsibility for the blasts, but suspicion has fallen on Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda and an Indonesian-based group, Jemaah Islamiah, which some link to al Qaeda.

Mr Saaf said the explosives that demolished the Sari nightclub were packed into a Mitsubishi L300 van. "That car was left on the street. That is from analysis because there was no human flesh found inside it," he said.

Investigators have said the C4 plastic explosives that were used were not made in Indonesia.

An Indonesian newspaper reported yesterday that seven foreigners, led by a Yemeni and a Malaysian, masterminded and carried out the Bali bombings.

The foreign group, which entered the country through Semarang, the main city in central Java on October 10, also included a European and two with links to a series of bombings in the Philippines, the Jakarta Post said.

The group is believed to have prepared the explosives in Semarang before using them to blow up the two bars in Kuta.

The Jakarta Post said that among the clues gathered by the intelligence services were phone calls to the Middle East from a house in Surakarta, a city 80 kilometres south-east of Semarang.

Surakarta is one of the main bases of hardline Muslim groups.

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More murk for us to wade through ...

Doug M