21st Century Vision

Iranian Atom

Once the suffering is packed away the strategic matters resurface.  Israel, feeling bruised and less than omnipotent after its tussle with Hezbollah, is raising its sights again to Iran and the dreaded nuclear equation. In an online article in Haaretz, Avner Cohen says; “Israel's inability to defeat Hezbollah contributed significantly to the atmosphere of powerlessness that has reigned in the international community over the Iranian nuclear issue…The American fiasco in Iraq and the 34 days of pointless fighting in Lebanon have engendered fatigue over the use of force in the United States.”

Today the Security Council will start to deliberate whether Iran should face sanctions for continuing uranium enrichment or whether diplomacy will continue.  For Israel this leaves a deep uncertainty.  Will this “dithering” approach by the US and the EU allow China and Russia to protect their client and allow a bomb to emerge?  Whilst Iran and the Arab nations have had to live with an Israeli bomb there seems little possibility that Israel would accept an Iranian bomb.   

Alon Ben-Meir, Professor of International Relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU writes in the United Press International's Outside View; “From the Israeli perspective, the Iranian threat is terribly real: the international community must open its eyes and act in concert to avert a catastrophe of epic proportions.”

Ben-Meir considers it would be inevitable, (and I suspect acceptable), that Israel will attack Iran rather than allow a nuclear capacity and that this is a bit of reality that the West must wake up to.  His prescription is that, “the conditions under which negotiations should be conducted must leave Iran with no uncertainty that the failure to reach agreement will not simply lead to crippling economic sanctions but to the use of other coercive tactics, including blockades and other unspecified measures with the potential of producing a devastating effect.”

Was the disproportionate response by Israel against Hezbollah an assessment of what price it might pay for a military strike against Iran?  Let us hope they have been dissuaded.  Of course in 1981 Israel destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq, with little immediate repercussion; but can we seriously believe that Israel can attack Iran now with impunity?

Meanwhile UPI reports; “Iran's foreign minister met with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing to try and resolve Iran's nuclear standoff with the United Nations…the two ministers stressed the matter should be properly resolved through diplomatic negotiations.”  Reporting on the Islamic Republic News Agency, Majlis Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel expressed the hope Iran's response to the package of incentives offered by the world's six powers would encourage parties to the nuclear issue to return to the negotiating table.

Last year Al-Jazeera reported President Ahmadinejad saying, “Israel must be wiped off the map”; yesterday in mellower mood he portrayed Iran as “powerful and peace-loving”. Meanwhile President Bush is up for the fight: “We've made our choice - we will continue to work closely with our allies to make a diplomatic solution, but there must be consequences for Iran's defiance and we must not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.”  

This matter cannot be resolved through military action. Twenty five years after Osirak Iraq presents an even greater threat to the region. Things may be slowed down but the nuclear genie is out and we must find peace through some mutual respect, not through the rantings of Presidents.

There is a dreadful scenario facing this part of the world which increasingly includes nuclear weapons, an assured destruction, perhaps not yet mutual.  The awful suffering we have seen for decades now from the middle-east will be as nothing.  Even if Israel could give back the land it took in 1967 and seek peace, this may not be enough. This dispute is not just about Israel and Palestine, or about religion, it is about exploitation, decades of double dealing and cheating to get oil and power; the worst aspects of human nature on all sides.

It is surely time for cool heads.

Torturers, assassins and character assasssins

One theory of the peculiarity of the British state has it that its threefold origin created a democratically dysfunctional structure which is in urgent need of reform. This is nothing to do with its multi-national past as the fusion of  Scottish, Irish and English/Welsh states, but instead the result of its colonial history. The triune British state grew up on the basis of the colonial states, each with its relative independence in the dominions and possessions, the island British state, with its slow advance to universal suffrage if not democracy, and - linking them all together - the imperial state. The problem was, and to some extent still is, that while the colonial states have withered away, and the British state is at least to some extent publicly accountable, the imperial state marches on unchecked and unchallenged. Exercising those "prerogative powers" which the monarchic fiction preserves from normal scrutiny, it comprises military, intelligence, diplomatic and other functions which are not normally discussed before the servants, i.e. ourselves.

Of course we like to think of the assorted officers, spooks, uniformed ambassadors and other inhabitants of this self-governing demi-monde as motivated only by patriotic concern for the good of the country, tempered these days by a sense of European values and a regard for the rule of law in general and human rights in particular. OK, they get it wrong, but Suez was a terrible lesson and the mandarins and generals saw through WMD in Iraq and were extremely unenthusiastic about following the US in its rampage through the Muslim world. Like more or less everyone else they are waiting for better political times and an end to the increasingly bizarre leadership they get from Downing Street. Our recent post of an article by Oliver Miles (see below, 3rd August ) makes the point.

It is this unthinking assumption of the basic decency of the people who run the shadowy institutions of the imperial state which takes such a body blow from Craig Murray's Murder in Samarkand (published last month by Mainstream). No need to rehearse the whole story here of how as ambassador to Uzbekistan Murray took the UK's human rights agenda seriously and - with great persistence and courage - drove it forward in a country where legal, political and civil freedoms were and are almost non-existent and where extreme forms of torture are normal instruments of government (see our photograph). In 2003, however, Uzbekistan was being built up by the US as a bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism and an ally in the "war on terror", and Murray's very public pronouncements were not welcome. Nor was his forthright rejection of the policy of using information obtained under torture.

It is by now unsurprising that Downing Street moved immediately to rid itself of the embarrassment, but what does come as an unpleasant revelation is the extent to which senior figures in the Foreign and Colonial Office engaged willingly in every form of pressure, falsehood and character assassination to give the appearance of  due process. Their methods might be described as Stalinism without the Lubyanka, but when one considers that in stifling Murray they were in fact buttressing US cover for Uzbek and other torture chambers, the phrase is too kind.

The book is valuable in a number of ways. First it shows the extent to which when the Bush administration says so the UK's human rights rhetoric is just that, rhetoric. Second, it provides material of relevance to that eternally unanswerable question of how far, like Vichy France, the British would have collaborated with a Nazi occupation in the 1940s.

Finally, it shows the need for reform in the structures of the British state, with no more reserved areas beyond the reach of open parliamentary scrutiny.

Theresa Villiers Stresses Importance Of Road Map

I am extremely concerned by the events currently unfolding in the Middle East. The tragic loss of civilian life on both sides is a deeply troubling.

Indiscriminate rocket attacks against Israeli citizens are not acceptable. Nor is incursion on to Israeli territory to kill and kidnap soldiers justified. We should not be surprised that Israel chose to exercise her right to protect her citizens and defend her territory.

It is a huge relief to all of us that a ceasefire is now in operation. It is vitally important that the international community shows an intense, co-ordinated and powerful effort to maintain the ceasefire and bring about a lasting resolution to the crisis.

I believe that the release of the Israeli hostages, the end of rocket attacks on Israel and a future for Lebanon without armed militias are the key conditions necessary for implementation of an enduring ceasefire.

Only by addressing the long term causes of this crisis will we achieve lasting peace. This involves re-starting the ‘Road Map’ to peace; it is now imperative that we find a route to the resumption of dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians. It is crucial that negotiations on the basis of a two-state solution are resumed as soon as possible.

The international community also needs to address Iran's nuclear ambitions and Syria’s involvement in Lebanon. Everyone can now clearly see that the involvement of Iran and Syria in Hamas and Hezbollah is deeply destructive and must be addressed.

The international community also needs to secure implementation of UN

Resolution 1559 which requires the disbandment of the militias and the restoration of full control to the Lebanese government.

Aids: Progress, but not enough

The XVI International Aids Conference finished recently in Toronto, so now that Lebanon is no longer taking all our attention (pace the post of Aug 9th) it seems a good moment to focus again on that disease.

The signals from the conference are mixed. On the one hand, there is more funding available for tackling Aids and its attendant scourge TB than ever before. On the other, there is still far less than is needed, and the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria is still all but skint.  Attention has shifted away from Aids and TB since the Gleneagles summit last year - unless you have a particular interest in the subject you are unlikely to have noticed that the conference was going on. The Canadian Prime Minister did not come, even though it's not very far from Ottawa to Totonto, nor does our Department for International Development seem to have thought it a sufficient priority for Hilary Benn, the Secretary of State to attend - indeed, I'm not at all sure that anybody from DfID attended.

The one thing that might have caught your attention from the conference was the attendance of the two Bills: Clinton and Gates. You can see a video of the session at which they first addressed a plenary session then answered questions, or read the transcript, or even get a podcast, here. Also worth listening to is a session including Stephen Lewis, the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy on Aids to Africa (always worth hearing, but relatively muted this time - though he still lays into the G8 governments), Richard Feachem of the Global Fund, Paul Farmer of Partners in Health, and several others. Click here for that one.

An interesting aspect was that Bill Gates wound himself up to criticise PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, which is run on right-wing evangelical Christian lines: no condoms, and if your organisation has ever mentioned abortion you won't see any money from PEPFAR. Gates praised it with faint damns, but it still represented a new departure for him. US Presidents tend to be beyond criticism - particularly when they're giving money away (which this one does particularly infrequently!). The problem he pointed to is one of empowerment, or rather the lack of it: women in Africa rarely get a say even in whether or not to have sex, let alone in whether or not to use a condom. As Gates memorably put it: "a woman should not have to ask permission to save her own life".

The overall impression of the conference, though, is of the chronic insufficiency of funding. The WHO's "3 by 5" campaign (to have 3 million people receiveng ARV treatment by 2005) failed on account of it. Children are particularly badly hit: nobody has bothered to make child-sized doses of any of the treatments, so they have to take broken-up pills. Only 6% of those receiving drugs are children, though 14% of patients are. We are going to need new drugs soon, as the virus develops resistance to the old ones, and microbicides to help women avoid infection, and ultimately either a cure or a vaccine or preferably both. Gates is putting his considerable financial resources into the search for all of them, but even he can't do it alone.

Where are the governments when you need them?

Poles apart

With the Daily Express urging its readers to get ready for the “Romanian Invasion”, the Daily Mail asks “How many more immigrants can Britain take?”

Immigration is one of those dividing topics, like the Middle East.   Sitting with what appears to be a progressive group of people, immigration comes up like an electrical storm.  All reason flies away and we are literally poles apart.

On the one side are the selfish sentiments of “they are taking our jobs, our money, our school places, our benefits etc etc.” Not racist but certainly xenophobic… On the other hand some reasoned platitudes about balance and benefits to the community or even the whacky idea of open borders.

This issue strikes to the core of what it is to be human.  Who belongs?

Why not open borders?  One hundred years ago there were no border controls, people could travel as they pleased.  Of course only a few privileged could travel.  Now even the most desperate can travel, (if they have money).  To  be trafficked with an agent and papers costs about £7,000 from the DRC, maybe £5,000 from Iran, a few thousand more for tutorials on the immigration system.  For £93.50 you can fly from Bydgoszcz or 65.20 from Gdansk and it’s legal to stay.

What would happen if everyone could stay, work here, bring their family here?  What would happen if all borders were free and open...  I suppose our schools would get fuller, our hospital queues would get longer.  There would be a lot of poor people on the streets, more begging…  Some of that poverty and suffering kept out of the way, occasionally seen on the TV, might find its way here.

Aren’t open borders part of free trade?  If there is free movement of goods and capital as the free-traders want, shouldn’t there be free movement of labour?  Isn’t it quite against the rules of free trade to prevent this? Isn’t immoral when you think about it… Get on your bike... but not a ferry.

Of course it is impossible.  The answer to who belongs is the endless political game of who gets a slice of the cake; how do we share the resources.  Currently quite unequally, with a billion people on less than a dollar a day.  We are not ready to share our wealth to that degree.

So the 600,000 Poles and others from Eastern Europe have contributed to our economy says Tony McNulty; 27,000 have claimed child benefits (they are after all paying taxes!).  Interestingly the Daily Mail says that more than 40,000 migrants are claiming benefits…  I wonder where they got that figure???  Made it up???

But this is fine from my middle class vantage point, what about those in social housing, where jobs are less available.  Again we are poles apart.  Theirs is a very different experience.  I was told recently, by someone who would know, that pay on building sites is £1.50 an hour. £15 a day for six days is almost three times the weekly allowance for an asylum seeker…

So another facet of immigration, especially the illegal, is the driving down of wages.  This is the UK free market finding ways round the minimum wage.  What are we doing to regulate this?  Is there a local angle?  What of the local sweatshops, gang bosses etc…

So where do you stand on this.  Is it Poles apart or welcome to the Bulgars and the Romanians?

Left illusions

To many Labour MPs it came as a relief when John Prescott privately described President Bush's Middle East policy, and in particular the failure to obtain a just settlement for the Palestinians, as "crap". A true stalwart of the party had called something by its name, and once again it was possible to be proud of being a member. Underneath the hype and double talk there was a bedrock of traditional values waiting to resurface when the long Blairite nightmare was over.

One would think that after the implosion of 1983 - when a leftist programme brought Labour to its lowest electoral ebb since it became a major party - there would be no more room for illusions:  Labour's role was to manage capitalism not to tame it, to equip working people to serve the market rather than to control the market for the benefit of working people. But this realism has itself turned out to be an illusion, as backbenchers' enthusiasm for Prescott's comment shows. They are only too anxious to believe that Blairite subservience to Washington is an aberration, and Washington's performance in the Middle East the result of incompetence. Neither is true.

A bungled mission to bring a just peace to the Middle East? The broader picture is one where the US - if possible with UN cover, if necessary without - has sought regional domination from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. In pursuit of these goals there is a great deal of talk about "democracy", but none about free and independent states deciding for themselves on what terms to do business with the West. In the words of the seminal neoconservative Project for a New American Century, "America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of US military forces". Its success has been mixed, and there has been a good deal of bungling. Maybe the Bush Administration's performance has been "crap", but if so it is not because it has failed to achieve a stable and viable state for the Palestinians and secure borders for Israel, but on the contrary because it has not succeeded in impressing its dominance on the countries of the region.

In Britain New Labour's uncritical alignment with the Bush strategy has exposed the fault lines in our society. Young Muslim men nightly witnessing the scenes of extraordinary violence the US and its allies have visited on the Middle East were never going to remain unmoved. That some have resorted to acts of criminal terrorism has created a cycle of suspicion and repression which threatens the 40-year long and partially successful effort we have made to overcome the crude racism of the Powell period. As Arabic-speaking passengers are excluded from international flights at the behest of vigilante passengers - and even from the London Eye - we are on the verge of a downward spiral which it will be difficult to stop.

But as the enthusiasm for penalising asylum seekers of whatever origin or creed and the general curtailment of civil liberties shows, this attempt to contain reactions to its foreign adventures is part of what our government now stands for. The human rights act is treated as a liberal conspiracy against the state, and the judges as dangerous subversives, at least when they disagree with the likes of John Reid. Surveillance is universal, ID cards essential and jury trial a luxury. The pattern is one in which undebated commitments are made - to the White House, to the Daily Mail or to corporate interests (think nuclear power) - and the state then manages the consequences. Increasingly the government exists to control the people, not to serve them.

Labour backbenchers ought to realise that what they have watched and allowed to happen over the last few years is no aberration, any more than US policy in Palestine is incompetent. Spare us the illusions.

Good New From The USA

Not all is bas news in the USA. The Seattle United Nations Association is a very active one and has come out strongly against confirming the position of John Bolton as the US Ambassador to the UN. They say,

John Bolton was named as U.N. Ambassador in 2005 as a recess appointment by the President, despite Senate opposition.  This opposition was based on the assessment that John Bolton had neither the temperament nor the diplomatic skills necessary for a U.N. ambassador and that he was, in fact, contemptuous of the U.N.  Senator Voinovich, was, at the time, outspoken in his criticism of Bolton's capacity to serve.  Now, Senator Voinovich claims that he will support Bolton's confirmation because his performance during his year at the U.N. has been satisfactory and has not borne out earlier criticism.  We believe that Senator Voinovich is incorrect in this appraisal.  Analysis of Bolton's performance and behavior at the U.N. during his year of tenure has confirmed his unsuitability to continue as U.N. Ambassador.  He has been combative and disdainful of his colleagues and high-level U.N. officials.  He has impeded the process of U.N. reform and even acted against current administration policy, requiring intervention by the Secretary of State and even the President.  This has led to the growing suspicion, untenable for a U.N. ambassador, that his public statements may not always be trusted to represent the policies of his own Secretary of State or his President. 

The following constitute examples of this deleterious behavior.

1. Ambassador Bolton has made public statements contemptuous of the U.N., including assertions that it did not really exist, that the U.S., not the U.N., was the only real global power, and the derisive remark that the U.N. building in New York could be reduced in size without affecting productivity.

2. Ambassador Bolton has sabotaged constructive U.N. reform by insisting on over 300 last minute changes in a laboriously crafted U.N. reform document, causing confusion and anger among U.N. delegates, and resulting in a watered down plan which he has later disingenuously cited as evidence of an organizational failure.

3. Ambassador Bolton has opposed the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, requiring both Secretary of State Rice and President Bush to intervene to reassert U.S. commitment to these goals.

4. Ambassador Bolton has been undiplomatic and arrogant in his public criticism of high-level U.N. officials including Louise Arbour, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Mark Malloch-Brown, the U.N. Deputy Secretary General.

5. Ambassador Bolton has shown contempt for the U.N. Human Rights Council by missing all but one of 35 negotiating sessions on its development, and then by being one of only 4 U.N. ambassadors voting against its creation.  This led to the Swiss U.N. ambassador to characterize his behavior as "intransigent and maximalist."

6. Ambassador Bolton has been publicly unsupportive of negotiation with Iran on its nuclear development program.  His now well known statement about not doing "carrots" has been seen as reflecting his opposition to negotiations, and, as such, contrary to Secretary of State Rice's policy to enter with other European partners, into give and take negotiations with Iran on this subject.

7.  Ambassador Bolton was instrumental in an attempt to withhold U.N. dues if the agency did not adopt his reform proposals.  He then attempted to interrupt the biennial funding cycle, which would have ended in U.N. paralysis.  Again, he had to be reined in on this issue by his own Secretary of State.

8. In the face of the genocide in Darfur, Ambassador Bolton showed callous disregard as the only Security Council member who did not accompany his 15 other Security Council colleagues on a mission to Darfur in June 2006.  Rather, he traveled to England to deliver a speech in which he criticized the U.N. Deputy Secretary General.

9. He has voiced strident opposition to the very concept of international law, thereby expressing disdain for the international courts that exist within the framework of this law.

10. Over 30 U.N. ambassadors of countries friendly to the U.S. have raised concerns about his obstructive behavior.

We believe that the above provides ample evidence, deriving from his current interim tenure at the U.N., that John Bolton does not possess the qualities essential for a U.N. ambassador.  Further, we believe that his behavior has been deleterious to effective U.N. functioning and is unworthy of being the representative of the United States.  Our country was instrumental in the creation of the United Nations, the International Declaration of Human Rights, and was a signatory to many of the international treaties and conventions, which Bolton has opposed or chosen to ignore.

Eco-terrorists rule OK

After weeks of doom and gloom over Lebanon and terrorism it's time to lighten the mood, so today this column celebrates the positive side of those stories: the massive environmental gains resulting.

The best news, of course, was the damage done by last week's alleged terror plot to the airline industry. Hundreds of flights have been cancelled, businessmen are looking seriously at the possibility of going by train or using teleconferencing so they don't need to travel at all, and many ordinary travellers will have been put off flying by the whole experience. Even now the extra searches are keeping the number of flights depressed, and it may take the industry years to recover. Thousands of tons of CO2 have not been released into the atmosphere, and the people living under the Heathrow flightpath have had a chance to snatch a bit of sleep.

The Israelis have been doing their bit too, of course. The wholesale destruction of Lebanon's road system means long-term savings in emissions from both car travel and road haulage. True there were short-term losses from the traffic jams resulting from the mass movement of refugees, and more recently from their return, and of course tanks are pretty heavy gas-guzzlers, but over time the CO2 account will be heavily in the black. Many Lebanese, too, will be reduced to cooking, if at all, over open wood fires - very ecological! The pièce de resistance, though, was the total destruction of a whole powerstation! That too had its minor downside in the massive oilslick that has devastated much of the eastern Mediterranean, but that's oil that will never be burned!

Hezbollah could not match that, but they did their best. Keeping thousands of Israelis cowering in their cellars when they would otherwise have been out in their cars or shopping (think food miles!), and I think they also managed to take out one or two of those gas-guzzling tanks. They themselves stayed firmly where they were, despite the reprehensible attempts by their opponents to get them to move north.

Even the Americans were unusually restrained, insisting that no British minister - and specially not the Prime Minister, who ought to be setting an example - go anywhere near the Middle East. Condi did go, but only once.

As an environmentalist I can only congratulate all concerned on their care of the planet, and look forward to the next round. Maybe it will even include a nuclear exchange which, while it probably won't be extensive enough to bring on a Fimbulwinter, should throw enough junk into the upper atmosphere to set back global warming a couple of decades!

Home grown Terrorists

We have been here before.  The British Isles have been one of the prime producers of terrorist groups, with the IRA in the vanguard. 

Let us be clear what we mean by terrorism; it is the use of violence on civilian populations to create fear and ultimately submission to a particular political point of view.  It is an act that most governments carry out through their monopoly of violence.  It is an act most states employ in war, and we have seen this recently in Iraq and the Lebanon.  It is an act carried out by non state groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, firing rockets into civilian areas, and by many groups in Iraq.  It means the death and injury of people who are innocent, in that they are not directly involved in any ill intent or violence towards others.  It is essentially an evil act and although it is said that many state leaders were once terrorists, this says more about the inherently violent nature of states than anything else.

Why do non state groups emerge?  In the case of Hamas and Hezbollah, like the IRA, they are violently pursing political aims around the issues of states and boundaries, which they feel have been abandoned by the recognised states.  In these situations there is often a long history of violent struggle, of martyrs, of oppression.  There is usually a recognition of the underlying causes in the political domain, though disagreement with and condemnation of the violence.

In the case of this new group of UK grown terrorists, referred to as “Islamic Extremists”, there has been denial by the UK government that their political strategies are associated with the emergence of this group.  Perhaps they mean that terrorism cannot be allowed to shape foreign policy and it is a statement of “standing firm”, a favourite position of governments.  However it seems more than this.  The Muslim voice both here and abroad clearly is expressing a concern about the US right wing administration’s view of the world and the armed violence taking place along a so called arc of extremism.  To deny that this will influence thinking implies a fragility of purpose, an inability accept that actions can have both good and bad results.  This too is a favoured political position, negative views being dismissed and full discussion prevented.  However, when people’s views are dismissed as foolish or facile this adds to a sense of disrespect.    

Disrespect, humiliation and shame are major drivers of interpersonal violence and are an integral part of any terrorist group’s history; they are used by the dominant political forces to marginalise unfavoured opinion.  Being marginal is a step closer to being extreme. 

Of course the current foreign policy is not the only driver of this new terrorism.  Low income, social marginalisation, unemployment, above all the inequality that pervades our society is a driver for humiliation and shame and creates a fertile ground for anger and resentment; our young people brought up on the hopes and aspirations of the media elite, left only with designer labels and look-alike haircuts; no porsches or mansions for them. 

The links of this new group with Pakistan denote a longer history of inequality within the Empire.  The so called commonwealth, through selective migration and trade, has lead to gross inequalities between these two nations.  The generations that came over in the 50s and 60s were used by the economic machine and some of their grandchildren are having great difficulties making sense of their roots, their place and their futures.

Islamic extremism is not new, nor is Christian, Buddhist or political extremism; what is that we are growing a new group of young people who are susceptible to their influences and to deny our political responsibilities in this is facile and dangerous.

Out of the ruins of Lebanon

As the UN-brokered ceasefire takes hold in Lebanon (or perhaps does not), what are the lessons of the fourth - or is it the fifth or sixth - Arab-Israeli war?

Some things are obvious. The myth of the invincibility of the Israeli military machine expired somewhere in South Lebanon and the equally tenacious myth of the the cowardice and incompetence of Arab resistance - already weakened by the Palestinian intifada - died with it. Just as the coalition has found in Iraq, so the Israelis have learned in the last few days: asymmetric warfare cannot be won by shock and awe, and cannot be won at all by purely military means.

Likewise the moral pretentions of the Israelis and their backers in the White House and Downing Street. The civilian casualty figures in this war and the rubble of Lebanese homes, power stations, hospitals and roads show the truly disproportionate and extreme violence they were prepared to use to gain their geopolitical ends, part of a long and reprehensible history from Hanoi to Fallujah. It is of course true that Hezbollah fired rockets which killed civilians in Israeli cities, and that (perhaps deliberately) they endangered Lebanese civilians by their presence. They must be held accountable for that but, if so, the Israeli generals and politicians ought with greater reason to be looking over their shoulders when the International Criminal Court comes to call.

For this was flagrantly a war of aggression, launched by Israel on the flimsiest of pretexts and deliberately prolonged by the inaction of its supporters at the UN. That it has ended without the victory the aggressors assumed would be theirs is in one sense a cause for relief; but in another sense it is a source of horror. Once again - just as with Iraq - the anti-war movement in the West has proved wiser than their rulers. Once again what is obvious to the man or woman on the bicycle in Clapham - that relations between the West and the Arab world need to be based on respect and pursued through negotiation with the aim of achieving results recognised by more or less everyone as just - is regarded with contempt by Bush, Blair and those who endorse their project. That is the horror of it: except rhetorically they simply do not recognise the human and moral framework which lasting international settlements require.

What then is the lesson? For some it will be that the West can be defeated, for others that the "threat" of fundamentalist Islam has grown stronger. Another conclusion is less obvious but more urgent. It is that we do not have to accept the terms of this insidious "either you are with us or against us" fork which is so often thrust at us. We do not need to choose between radical Islam and brutal imperialism masquerading in the colours of Western values. Instead we can choose respect, negotiation and the rule of law.