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	The war of unintended consequences by AFP / The Guardian / Canadian Press   November 5, 2005.   “Iraq war "fuelled terrorism": former British ambassador”. (AFP)   Britain”s involvement in the Iraq war has "partly radicalised and fuelled" the rise of home-grown terrorism, London”s former ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, said on Saturday.   Prime Minister Tony Blair has repeatedly denied that the US and British invasion of Iraq in March 2003 has led to an increase in Islamic extremism and that it played a part in the July 7 attacks in London which left 56 dead.   But in an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Sir Christopher said: "There is plenty of evidence around at the moment that home-grown terrorism was partly radicalised and fuelled by what is going on in Iraq. There is no way we can credibly get up and say it has nothing to do with it. Don”t tell me that being in Iraq has got nothing to do with it. Of course it does," he said.   Sir Christopher - a key aide to Mr Blair in crucial talks between London and Washington in the months and weeks leading up to military action - said the continued US-British presence in the Gulf was aiding Iraqi insurgents.   Sir Christopher”s memoirs of the decision-making that led to the Iraq war, DC Confidential, is to be serialised in the Guardian and the Daily Mail newspapers. The book reportedly singles out Mr Blair and a number of British cabinet members for criticism, and reveals that in the build-up to war the Prime Minister had few dealings with the Foreign Office, where diplomats raised doubts about the conflict”s legitimacy. He expressed concern about how it was conducted and the apparent lack of a coherent strategy following victory. "One of the things that came to me when writing was how political the war was," he told The Guardian, which editorially opposed the invasion. "This wasn”t just a war, it was a political war."   Montreal, 20 October 2005   “War in Iraq may be fuelling Global Insecurity, Canadian Spy Chief Warns”, by Jim Bronskill. (The Canadian Press)   The head of Canada"s spy agency strongly suggested Thursday the US-led war in Iraq is making the world a less secure place.   "Diplomacy is not my field, security and intelligence is," CSIS director Jim Judd said at a conference on intelligence studies. "And I think from a security and intelligence perspective, the conflict in Iraq may be creating longer-term problems, not just for Iraq but other jurisdictions as well."   The head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said Iraq is becoming a "kind of a test bed for new techniques" for Islamic extremists, such as suicide attacks and the use of improvised explosives.   A number of radicals from Canada - fewer than 10 - have slipped across borders to join the fighting in Iraq, Judd said during a break in the annual gathering of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies. "We know of others who may be planning to," he added. "I don"t think there"s anything we can do legally to prevent this."   Judd expressed concern about the dangers extremists from North America, Europe and the Middle East pose once they leave Iraq. "It raises the longer-term question of what do they bode for the future?" Judd said.   Journalist and author Peter Bergen warned that the war in Iraq could spawn a new generation of trained warriors - the "shock troops of the new international jihad" - determined to carry out terrorist attacks against the West. Osama bin Laden"s al-Qaida network has proven alluring to wayward extremists partly because western societies have done a poor job of challenging his arguments, terrorism experts told the conference.   Young students who attend the most radical Muslim schools are presented with a violent world view and taught to despise "corrupting western influences" from an early age, said Karin von Hippel of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "We"ve lost the moral high ground to the wrong people, and we need to get it back," von Hippel said.   Bergen, a commentator for cable news network CNN, said the next time a westerner is beheaded by Islamic extremists, those who oppose terrorism should stress that the Koran in no way endorses such violence.   Both von Hippel and Bergen took issue with the notion that poverty is a driving force behind terrorism. "If poverty were really a true cause of terrorism, more terrorists would come from the poorest parts of world, such as sub-Saharan Africa, and thus far this is not the case," von Hippel said.   Presenters pointed to history in an effort to put the terrorist threat in perspective. Stephane Leman-Langlois of the University of Montreal dismissed the assertion, voiced last year by Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan, that the world is more dangerous than at any time in collective memory. He argued the threat of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War amounted to "a far more scary time" than the possible fallout of the post-9/11 era.   The conference has attracted about 360 security officials, academics and commentators, including well-known American journalist Seymour Hersh.   Hersh, who has reported extensively about the abuse of prisoners in Iraq, said he has become fascinated by what he sees as a neo-conservative coup in the corridors of US power. He believes the Americans should pull out of Iraq immediately. "The faster out of there, the better it is," Hersh said.   September 12, 2005 (The Guardian)   What real progress can the US and its allies honestly claim for the war on terror?   During the past century the United States has faced two brutal assaults. Within four years of the first, on December 7 1941, the US and its allies had mobilized, taken on and defeated two powerful enemies, Japan and Germany. Four years after the second, on September 11 2001, what real progress can the US and its allies honestly claim for the war on terror?   The answer, tragically and alarmingly, is that they have not made enough. Not only is terror very much still with us, it is also on the increase. Last year, the US state department reported 651 "significant terrorist attacks" around the world, three times the total for 2003 and the highest annual number since Washington began to collect such statistics two decades ago. Around a third of those attacks took place in Iraq, supposedly the central front of the war on terror, in some parts of which terrorist killings have now reached pandemic levels. Since April, more than 4,000 Iraqis have been killed by terrorists in Baghdad alone. But the killing is in no way confined to Iraq. No one in London needs any reminder of that. And Britain, like the US and many others, is wrestling to balance established liberties and ways of life with the danger that another 9/11, or another 7/7, may occur at any time.   The assault on America four years ago this week was in every way as infamous a deed as the one committed by Japan in 1941. Much of the response to it, however, was not just ineffective but counter-productive. Faced with 9/11, George Bush"s initial response was briefly both brainy and belligerent. But the initial advantages were quickly squandered under pressure from the ideological right. By choosing to rid the world of evil - above all in Iraq - rather than to hunt down, take out and politically disable al-Qaida, Mr Bush set his country on a path which continues to dismay America"s friends and to delight its enemies.   In effect, though, he also did Osama bin Laden"s job for him. The war on terror, with its rhetoric of a battle between good and evil and its talk of a fight that will last for generations, depended for credibility upon the efficacy of American power and upon the accuracy of the US neocon prescription of a "democratic revolution" across the Middle East. In reality, both have proved to be wishful thinking - the real surprise being the limits of the US military effort. America has fought and occupied, but it has not shown that it can rebuild. The idea that Iraq would set off a domino democratic effect across the Middle East now seems even more preposterous than ever - if Iraq is exporting anything to its neighbors, it is violence not democracy. Faced with a ruthless insurgency, American public opinion is faltering as the gulf on the ground between reality and objectives widens. Post-Katrina, the question is not whether the US will begin to withdraw - but when, how and, above all, with what damage.   Politically this may be inevitable and even desirable - but we will all live with the consequences. The most damning charge against the war on terror is that it has been a recruiting sergeant for the very forces it sought to destroy.
	Survey reveals global dissatisfaction with national leadership by Paul Reynolds BBC News   Published: 15 September 2005,   I do not find it surprising that the main result of a survey of world public opinion suggests that only 30% of people feel that their country is governed by the will of the people.   This in my view indicates a healthy disrespect for governments in those countries which are governed reasonably well and an understandable lack of trust in those which are not. Take the two trends together and you have a global picture showing a gap between the governors and the governed.   So what else is new? What is new these days perhaps is that more people around the world can actually express an honest opinion. It would have been an even worse sign if the results had been otherwise. We do not want any of those referendums in totalitarian and dictatorial countries which regularly showed over 90% government approval and, in Saddam Hussein's case, over 100%.   Some examples of the levels of dissatisfaction with modern government: 65% in Western Europe, 73% in Eastern and Central Europe (worrying that post-communist governments have not done that well), 60% in North America, 61% in Africa, 65% in Asia-Pacific, 69% in Latin America. It is obviously an uneasy time for governments worldwide.   Only in Scandinavia, South Africa and Israel did citizens think their countries were governed in line with popular demands. But, with exceptions, of which al-Qaeda is an example, it is not generally a revolutionary era. Perhaps governments should take heed, in this quiet time, of the underlying problems. Otherwise discontent might grow.   It is one of the quirks of these surveys that some results are a bit contradictory. They suggest that world citizens, who decisively dislike their governments it seems, are evenly divided on whether those same governments were elected freely and fairly.   Of those polled, 47% said elections were free and fair and 48% said they were not. In some countries - the UK for example - you find 70% of people saying the elections were OK, but 66% saying the government is not by the will of the people.   Of such contradictions one might say, as Churchill noted:"Democracy is the worst system of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."   The survey is an annual trawl through world opinion by the Gallup organisation, called "Voice of the People".   It was undertaken in 68 countries, though there are some notable gaps. China is not included and the Arab world is notably absent apart from Egypt.   The reason for this is that the survey is paid for by Gallup's clients. Many are commercial and they presumably do not think that China is as yet a promising market. To my personal regret, they have also left out the English-speaking Caribbean. The islands there might have upped the count of satisfied citizens.   At this time of religious fervour in some parts of the world, it is worth looking at whether religious leaders are trusted and whether people think they should get more power. It turns out that they come top of the global list of trusted groups, scoring mostly strongly in south-east Asia, Africa and North America.   In south-east Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) the poll suggests they have a high trust rating of 68%, in Africa a huge 74% and in North America a sturdy 49%. In happily governed Scandinavia by contrast, religious leaders are most trusted by only 12%. Muslims and Protestants are most likely to trust their religious leaders and to want to give them more power.   However, religious leaders do not come top of the global list of groups which should have more power. One of the curiosities of the survey is that "intellectuals" (defined as writers, academics etc) do best here. They win with a global figure of 35%, religious leaders come second at 25%, military, business and journalists are all on 20% and politicians are way behind.   Only in some areas do a majority think that religious figures should have more power - narrowly in North America (what happened to the separation of church and state?), more heavily in south-east Asia and overwhelmingly in Africa. Perhaps the last figure reflects the unhappiness expressed by Africans (apart from South Africans) about their governments.   And nationalism still counts. It is the defining factor of identity for 32% of those surveyed globally, with religion in second place. But religion is the most important factor for people in South Asia and parts of Africa.   I was a bit disappointed that journalists were not included in the definition of intellectuals but one has to take comfort that in some parts of the world (west Africa, south-east Asia) journalists are rather admired! Not, however, in the UK - where journalists fall behind even politicians...   Military and police leaders do well in North America and western Europe, very well in orderly Scandinavia and unsurprisingly badly in Latin America and Africa, reflections presumably of the record of military dictatorships in those continents.   In fact, the whole survey is rather unsurprising, nowhere more so than in the finding that it is family which most influences people's decisions. In that we are all much alike.
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