Dear Johnny,
I hope you are well as we enter the festive season.
I write to you as an ex-almost constituent of Moor View (born in Plymouth, raised in Saltash but now living in Wiltshire – close enough, right?!) in response to your article, ‘Jeremy Corbyn Vetoing UK Foreign Policy? No Thanks. I’m Out’, published in the Huffington Post dated 17/11/15. I hope that you will take the time to consider and respond to my comments on your article, which follow below.
You write:
“The attacks in Paris were not altogether a surprise. A threat is defined by a capability and intent: IS have long had the intent, and now we know they have the capability.
I keep getting asked “are we safe?” We are as safe as we could possibly be in this country. We have the finest security services in the world, from the Secret Service to the United Kingdom Special Forces Group. But there is an element that is letting us down”.
You conclude that the element, “letting us down” is Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘veto’ of “surgical foreign intervention”, intended to, “defeat threats while they remain some distance from our borders”, so that we can, “be as safe as we possibly can from these threats”.
There are several points of contention here. First, you tell us that we are, “…as safe as we could possibly be in this country”, but then directly contradict this by suggesting that, “surgical foreign intervention” – a technical term for state violence – is necessary in order to be “as safe as we possibly can”. We are either, ‘as safe as we could possibly be’, or we are not. Which is it? The ‘threat’ to the British public, as you must surely know, is greatly exaggerated in order to further the British state’s policy goals. As former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray writes:
“In the last decade, now 7/7 has dropped out of this statistic, only one person has been killed in the UK by an Islamic terrorist attack… That unfortunate death was Lee Rigby”.
Continuing, Murray observes:
“Which is why you would have to be a lunatic actually to believe MI5’s repeated claims during the last decade that there are thousands of dedicated terrorists out there, fanatical determined and organised, but in a decade of constant effort they have succeeded in killing nobody else. There were, MI5 claim, six actual terrorist plots this year but fortunately MI5 saved all of us.
If you believe MI5’s stories, there are two possibilities. The first is that we have security services of a quite incredible efficiency, able to foil random terrorism, generally regarded as near impossible. The second is that we have thousands of dedicated terrorists of such incredible ineptitude that they can’t manage to kill anybody, even when they could choose any random undefended target in the entire UK and any method from knives to poison to hit and run to shooting to bombs, and don’t mind losing their own lives in the attempt. We have rubbish terrorists.
There is of course a third possibility – that these thousands of dedicated terrorists and these scores of foiled plots in the last decade were inventions, or at least the grossest exaggerations, by the security services”.
Of course, none of that is to say that there is zero threat of terrorism to the British public. Recent horrors in Paris, Beirut and elsewhere, as well as the aforementioned 7/7 attacks and murder of Lee Rigby, are evidence enough to the contrary. These threats – large or small – have well understood roots. The most prevalent factors in the very existence of these threats is conspicuous by its absence in your article. The key contributor to the threats you discuss is the same ‘interventionism’ that you advocate as a solution – violence in the Middle East.
Assessing the likely consequences of the UK joining the US in its plans to invade Iraq, a declassified US State Department document notes:
“… [the invasion of Iraq] could bring a radicalization of British Muslims, the great majority of whom opposed the September 11 attacks but are increasingly restive about what they see as an anti-Islamic campaign.”
The ex-M15 boss, Baroness Manningham-Buller, as reported by the BBC, said that the invasion of Iraq had “substantially”, increased the terrorist threat to the UK. “Our involvement in Iraq, for want of a better word, radicalised a whole generation of young people, some of them British citizens who saw our involvement in Iraq, on top of our involvement in Afghanistan, as being an attack on Islam”.
As reported by the New York Times, the assessment of the Joint Terrorist Analysis Center, shortly prior to the 7/7 attacks, was that:
“Events in Iraq are continuing to act as motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist related activity in the U.K.”
The NYT times goes on to report that, ‘…the Royal Institute of International Affairs, an influential private research organization commonly known as Chatham House, concluded that Britain’s participation in the war in Iraq and as “pillion passenger” of American foreign policy had made it vulnerable to terrorist attack’.
Additionally, as US journalist Glenn Greenwald has documented, the long-standing and continued violence of western governments in the Muslim world is repeatedly cited by the perpetrators of both successful and attempted/would-be terrorists, from 9/11 to 7/7 to Boston and so on, as a primary motivator for their actions.
The investigative journalist, Nafeez Ahmed, in his ‘Open Letter to Britain’s Leading Violent Extremist, David Cameron‘, cites the conclusions of a joint Home Office and Foreign Office study, which concludes:
“It seems that a particularly strong cause of disillusionment amongst Muslims including young Muslims is a perceived ‘double standard’ in the foreign policy of western governments (and often those of Muslim governments), in particular Britain and the US…
Perceived Western bias in Israel’s favour over the Israel/Palestinian conflict is a key long term grievance of the international Muslim community which probably influences British Muslims.
This perception seems to have become more acute post 9/11. The perception is that passive ‘oppression’, as demonstrated in British foreign policy, eg non-action on Kashmir and Chechnya, has given way to `active oppression’ — the war on terror, and in Iraq and Afghanistan are all seen by a section of British Muslims as having been acts against Islam.
This disillusionment may contribute to a sense of helplessness with regard to the situation of Muslims in the world, with a lack of any tangible ‘pressure valves,’ in order to vent frustrations, anger or dissent.
Hence this may lead to a desire for a simple ‘Islamic’ solution to the perceived oppression/problems faced by the ‘Ummah’ — Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya, Kashmir and Afghanistan.”
As you are well aware, the ‘bias’ in favour of Israel is not merely a ‘perception’. The government, of which you are a part of, approved £4m worth of arms sales in the months proceeding Israel’s brutal military assault on occupied Gaza in the summer of 2014. The British state, already up to its neck in violence, terror and war crimes, can also add deep complicity to Israel’s terrorising of Palestinians to its list of overseas horrors.
I haven’t mentioned Cameron’s cheerleading of the NATO destruction of Libya, nor have I mentioned Britain’s long held and continuing support for various brutal, dictatorial regimes – subservient to western strategic and economic goals – across the globe, which makes the only appropriate response to government claims of “supporting democracy”, hysterical fits of laughter. In the words of the researcher and author, Mark Curtis, who has written several books on British Foreign Policy post-1945 with extensive use of the declassified documentary record:
“What the record shows is that, more than anything, we don’t like independent, popular governments, nationalist governments who want to do things their own way, using their own resources – look at Nasser in Egypt, look at Mossadeq in Iran, look at Jagan in Guyana.”
Conveniently (but unsurprisingly), your article in the HP makes no reference to any of this – and this is merely the tip of the iceberg. You also make no mention of Britain and its allies longstanding support for various radical Islamic groups for the furthering of its own strategic goals. Those goals were discussed in a meeting held in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 5 December 1957 (document T234/768) as:
‘…(i) maintenance of our position as a world power, (ii) the strength of sterling, (iii) ensuring continued United States participation in world affairs, (iv) the importance of our trade, (v) safeguarding our oil interests’.
Those goals have not changed – at least not significantly – in the time passed. An MOD publication titled, ‘Future Character of Conflict’, first published in 2010, states that:
‘The UK has significant global interests and will therefore wish to remain a leading actor on the international stage as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), a nuclear power, a key member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union (EU) and other international institutions, irrespective of the potential for its power base to decline’.
The paper goes on to make the following observations:
‘The UK will act with others where shared interests and values coincide. We will routinely operate with allies and partners, in particular as a supporting partner in a US-led coalition…
The access to resources (energy, food or water) will drive states’ security interests; control over these resources and their methods of distribution through the global commons will be a critical feature of conflict in the international system. It may dictate why we fight, where we fight and thus how we fight…
The UK will retain multiple global interests with inextricable ties to Europe and North America…’
And finally, as is consistent with the US State Department’s acknowledging of our policies bringing about a “radicalization of British Muslims”:
‘Within the UK, a changing demographic balance towards a more multi-ethnic society means that some conflicts will create risks, including extremism, within our own communities.’
In your article, you pose the question, “if we cannot cross this threshold and contribute in this instance, what does the future look like for Britain on the world stage?”. The answer, as should be obvious at this point, is that the future security of British people (rather than vested interest groups), should be plainly improved. It is surely no coincidence that we do not ask these kinds of questions of Iceland, Estonia or Liechtenstein. To continue engaging in military aggression and violence with the stated goal of decreasing the threat of reprisals is demonstrably nonsense, as I have evidenced here, and can only be deployed if the actual goals are quite different from the publicly stated goals.
If you do, however, harbour any genuine aspirations for decreasing the threat of terror on these shores, you will support those constituents and members of both the public and parliament (regardless of party) who are against state-sponsored terrorism (bombing, by definition, is the textbook definition of terrorism), rather than promoting it, backing it and implementing it.
There are of course other contributory factors beyond British foreign policy that feed into the threat of terrorism, but it is quite clear, as the record shows, that our longstanding policies are the greatest factor.
I want to finish by reminding you of the most basic (yet important) elementary moral principle; The most important consideration to make when faced with any decision is, ‘What are the likely and predictable consequences of my actions?’.
The consequences of bombing – “surgical” or otherwise – are well understood and practiced. Bombing will result in the deaths and suffering of humans (and animals). It will lead to the displacement of people. It will lead to the destruction of civilian infrastructure and it will lead to the further creation and facilitation of conditions that aid, rather than ameliorate, extremism and reprisals.
On the other hand, Jeremy Corbyn’s focus on the funding of these radical groups such as ISIS, the arming of them and the creation of conditions that are ripe for the growth of extremism are quite clearly rational, sensible approaches to the issue, supported by the best available evidence and conform with international law, common decency and diplomacy.
Given the weight of evidence that shows that our militaristic, aggressive foreign policy is at the heart of the threats to the security and well-being of British people (and, of course, those on the receiving end of ‘our’ violence), how is it that you can advocate more of the same policies? That is the question I would like you to address, with recourse to the evidence provided.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Best wishes,
Ryan
Words Beyond Meaning 