Thank God for the Guardian and the Observer: at least they are getting a debate going
STEPHEN GLOVER
There is no political debate about what happened in New York and Washington. Tony Blair and fain Duncan Smith have virtually closed that down by saying that we are all Americans now. Last Friday's reconvening of the Commons was a pretty futile exercise. But there is a vigorous media debate, and its epicentre is the comment pages of the Guardian. A succession of writers there have criticised American foreign policy and urged restraint. Some have suggested that the United States is the author of its own misfortunes. Such sentiments have provoked annoyance in several non-Guardian columnists, notably Michael Gove in the Times and Robert Harris in the Daily Telegraph. The latter paper has started a column called 'Useful Idiots' which hangs out miscreant Guardian and other writers to dry.
Bearing in mind what I have written about the Guardian in the past, particularly its readiness to see the IRA's point of view, readers might expect me to have blown several fuses when I read this stuff. It is perfectly true that I was dumbstruck by the speed and ferocity of the paper's counterattack. Last Wednesday — one day after the atrocities — the Guardian carried four articles unsympathetic to America. Martin Woollacott told us that 'Western policy may have played a part in creating the anger which led to [the attack]'. In a neighbouring piece Faisal Both, described as a Muslim writer, seized the baton and raced off with it: 'Yesterday's attacks are the chickens of America's callous abuse of others' human rights coming home to roost.' Beneath Mr Woollacott and Mr Bodi someone called Saskia Sassen was singing, if not from the same sheet, at least from the same part of the hymn book: The attacks are a language of last resort from the oppressed.' On the next page George Gallaway got his not dissimilar thoughts off his chest under the headline 'Reaping the Whirlwind'.
Wow! Four articles devoted to seeing the non-American point of view, fewer than 24 hours after the worst terrorist outrage in modern times! The next day brought another bumper crop of anti-American bile. Rana Kabbani, billed as a writer and broadcaster who lives in Paris, referred to the murder of 5,000 people as a 'painful lesson' for the Americans. On the next page Seumas Milne burnished the by now familiar theme, arguing that 'this unabashed arrogance drives anti-Americanism among swaths of the
world's population'. As the new editor of the Guardian comment pages, Mr Milne — by some accounts an unreconstructed Marxist — can take much credit for the barrage of anti-American pieces. Possibly Alan Rusbridger, the paper's judicious and moderate editor, took fright, for on Monday a very Daily Telegraph sort of piece by William Shawcross appeared on Mr Milne's pages. But the next day George Monbiot returned to the fray, his column serving to reassure us that there will be anti-American articles for as far as the eye can see.
Some readers will share the incredulity expressed by Mr Gove and Mr Harris in their respective papers, as well as by Stephen Pollard in the Daily Mail. Leaders in the New Statesman and Observer, and a piece by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the Independent, would doubtless add to the disbelief. But I am not going to get worked up. Indeed, I welcome such articles, though it goes without saying that I don't agree with much of what they say. In particular, their depiction of the United States as a psychotic bully boy is wide of the mark. Since the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy in the Gulf War, Somalia and Kosovo has been characterised by a tentativeness which partly arises from a reluctance to risk American lives. No doubt there are exceptions — the bombing of Iraq is perhaps one — but for the most part America punches below its economic and military weight.
So the Guardian writers are wrong about that. But on the whole I am glad they are making such a din. The reason is that it is better to have a debate based on a false premise than no debate at all, since false premises can at least be answered back. In the absence of a wider political debate, there is an urgent need to discuss alternative courses of action, and until or unless we are at war this process should be encouraged. And it may just be that amid all the swirling anti-American nonsense some truths emerge. Some of these Guardian writers, as well as Robert Fisk in the Independent on Sunday, plausibly argue that a wildly disproportionate retaliation is
exactly what Osama bin Laden and his cronies pray for because they want America to live up to its caricature as the Great Satan.
Some people simply do not want this debate. Mr Blair, despite his recall of Parliament, seems not to. (Correct me if I am wrong, but I do not believe that it is within his job description as hitherto understood unilaterally to declare that we are at war.) Several newspapers are also prepared to give President Bush a blank cheque and to forget that Britain is, after all, a sovereign state with interests that do not have to be identical with those of America. Both the Daily Telegraph and the Times are this way inclined. The Times ran a leader last Saturday which seemed to include a defence of torture. 'It is unlawful to inflict torture on anyone, however terrible their guilt, even when, as could be true of men such as these, severe torture has in the past and in other jurisdictions been by far the most effective deterrent.' This is far more alarming than any of the Guardian writers' anti-American ravings.
The article that has diverted me most over the past week was written by Richard Dawkins, the well-known militant atheist and, as it happens, a near neighbour of mine in Oxford. He explained in the Guardian that if you promise a young man that death is not the end, he will willingly cause disaster. 'Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.' Those who believe in heaven are evidently fodder for the terrorists' dark dreams.
I can't help wondering whether Professor Dawkins might be mistaken. After all, until about a hundred years ago almost everyone in the Christian world believed in an afterlife, and yet suicide bombing was not all that common. Nor do I see many young members of my local church — I suppose they believe in an after-life — lining up to commit hari-kin.
Let me also observe — as this has become Christian corner — how little, if at all, Christianity intruded into the coverage of last week's terrible events. Two pieces by Simon Schama and Ian McEwan, both published in the Guardian, illustrate the point. Both were rather moving personal reflections on the outrage, and arrived at a similar conclusion: our ability to love one another in the face of barbarism is our best, indeed our only, consolation. Poor God has been written out.
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