www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/jul/08/july7.development7 July London attacks
The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military
means
The G8 must seize the opportunity to address the wider
issues at the root of such atrocities
Robin Cook
Friday 8 July 2005 15.00 BST
First published on Friday 8 July 2005 15.00 BST
I have rarely seen the Commons so full and so silent as
when it met yesterday to hear of the London bombings. A
forum that often is raucous and rowdy was solemn and
grave. A chamber that normally is a bear pit of partisan
emotions was united in shock and sorrow. Even Ian Paisley
made a humane plea to the press not to repeat the offence
that occurred in Northern Ireland when journalists
demanded comment from relatives before they were informed
that their loved ones were dead.
The immediate response to such human tragedy must be
empathy with the pain of those injured and the grief of
those bereaved. We recoil more deeply from loss of life
in such an atrocity because we know the unexpected
disappearance of partners, children and parents must be
even harder to bear than a natural death. It is sudden,
and therefore there is no farewell or preparation for the
blow. Across London today there are relatives whose pain
may be more acute because they never had the chance to
offer or hear last words of affection.
It is arbitrary and therefore an event that changes whole
lives, which turn on the accident of momentary decisions.
How many people this morning ask themselves how different
it might have been if their partner had taken the next
bus or caught an earlier tube?
But perhaps the loss is hardest to bear because it is so
difficult to answer the question why it should have
happened. This weekend we will salute the heroism of the
generation that defended Britain in the last war. In
advance of the commemoration there have been many stories
told of the courage of those who risked their lives and
sometimes lost their lives to defeat fascism. They
provide moving, humbling examples of what the human
spirit is capable, but at least the relatives of the men
and women who died then knew what they were fighting for.
What purpose is there to yesterday's senseless murders?
Who could possibly imagine that they have a cause that
might profit from such pointless carnage?
At the time of writing, no group has surfaced even to
explain why they launched the assault. Sometime over the
next few days we may be offered a website entry or a
video message attempting to justify the impossible, but
there is no language that can supply a rational basis for
such arbitrary slaughter. The explanation, when it is
offered, is likely to rely not on reason but on the
declaration of an obsessive fundamentalist identity that
leaves no room for pity for victims who do not share that
identity.
Yesterday the prime minister described the bombings as an
attack on our values as a society. In the next few days
we should remember that among those values are tolerance
and mutual respect for those from different cultural and
ethnic backgrounds. Only the day before, London was
celebrating its coup in winning the Olympic Games, partly
through demonstrating to the world the success of our
multicultural credentials. Nothing would please better
those who planted yesterday's bombs than for the atrocity
to breed suspicion and hostility to minorities in our own
community. Defeating the terrorists also means defeating
their poisonous belief that peoples of different faiths
and ethnic origins cannot coexist.
In the absence of anyone else owning up to yesterday's
crimes, we will be subjected to a spate of articles
analysing the threat of militant Islam. Ironically they
will fall in the same week that we recall the tenth
anniversary of the massacre at Srebrenica, when the
powerful nations of Europe failed to protect 8,000
Muslims from being annihilated in the worst terrorist act
in Europe of the past generation.
Osama bin Laden is no more a true representative of Islam
than General Mladic, who commanded the Serbian forces,
could be held up as an example of Christianity. After
all, it is written in the Qur'an that we were made into
different peoples not that we might despise each other,
but that we might understand each other.
Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental
miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout
the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis
to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of
Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was
originally the computer file of the thousands of
mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from
the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with
disastrous consequences, it never appears to have
occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the
way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to
the west.
The danger now is that the west's current response to the
terrorist threat compounds that original error. So long
as the struggle against terrorism is conceived as a war
that can be won by military means, it is doomed to fail.
The more the west emphasises confrontation, the more it
silences moderate voices in the Muslim world who want to
speak up for cooperation. Success will only come from
isolating the terrorists and denying them support, funds
and recruits, which means focusing more on our common
ground with the Muslim world than on what divides us.
The G8 summit is not the best-designed forum in which to
launch such a dialogue with Muslim countries, as none of
them is included in the core membership. Nor do any of
them make up the outer circle of select emerging
economies, such as China, Brazil and India, which are
also invited to Gleneagles. We are not going to address
the sense of marginalisation among Muslim countries if we
do not make more of an effort to be inclusive of them in
the architecture of global governance.
But the G8 does have the opportunity in its communique
today to give a forceful response to the latest terrorist
attack. That should include a statement of their joint
resolve to hunt down those who bear responsibility for
yesterday's crimes. But it must seize the opportunity to
address the wider issues at the root of terrorism.
In particular, it would be perverse if the focus of the
G8 on making poverty history was now obscured by
yesterday's bombings. The breeding grounds of terrorism
are to be found in the poverty of back streets, where
fundamentalism offers a false, easy sense of pride and
identity to young men who feel denied of any hope or any
economic opportunity for themselves. A war on world
poverty may well do more for the security of the west
than a war on terror.
And in the privacy of their extensive suites, yesterday's
atrocities should prompt heart-searching among some of
those present. President Bush is given to justifying the
invasion of Iraq on the grounds that by fighting
terrorism abroad, it protects the west from having to
fight terrorists at home. Whatever else can be said in
defence of the war in Iraq today, it cannot be claimed
that it has protected us from terrorism on our soil.
r.cook@theguardian.com
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_CookRobert Finlayson "Robin" Cook (28 February 1946 – 6 August 2005) was a British Labour Party politician, who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Livingston from 1983 until his death, and served in the Cabinet as Foreign Secretary from 1997 until 2001; when he was replaced by Jack Straw.
He studied at the University of Edinburgh before becoming being elected as the Member of Parliament for Edinburgh Central in 1974. In Parliament he was known for his debating ability and rapidly rose through the political ranks and ultimately into the Cabinet.
He resigned from his positions as Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons on 17 March 2003 in protest against the invasion of Iraq. At the time of his death, he was President of the Foreign Policy Centre and a Vice-President of the America All Party Parliamentary Group and the Global Security and Non-Proliferation All Party Parliamentary Group.
On 26 February 1996, following the publication of the Scott Report into the 'Arms-to-Iraq' affair, he made a famous speech in response to the then President of the Board of Trade Ian Lang in which he said "this is not just a Government which does not know how to accept blame; it is a Government which knows no shame". His parliamentary performance on the occasion of the publication of the five-volume, 2,000-page Scott Report—which he claimed he was given just two hours to read before the relevant debate, thus giving him three seconds to read every page—was widely praised on both sides of the House as one of the best performances the Commons had seen in years, and one of Cook's finest hours. The government won the vote by a majority of one.[citation needed]
As Joint Chairman (alongside Liberal Democrat MP Robert Maclennan) of the Labour-Liberal Democrat Joint Consultative Committee on Constitutional Reform, Cook brokered the 'Cook-Maclennan Agreement' that laid the basis for the fundamental reshaping of the British constitution outlined in Labour's 1997 General Election manifesto. This led to legislation for major reforms including Scottish and Welsh devolution, the Human Rights Act and removing the majority of hereditary peers from the House of Lords.
His term as Foreign Secretary was marked by British interventions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone. Both of these were controversial, the former because it was not sanctioned by the UN Security Council, and the latter because of allegations that the British company Sandline International had supplied arms to supporters of the deposed president in contravention of a United Nations embargo.[3] Cook was also embarrassed when his apparent offer to mediate in the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir was rebuffed. The ethical dimension of his policies was subject to inevitable scrutiny, leading to criticism at times.
Cook was responsible for achieving the agreement between Britain and Iran that ended the Iranian death threat against author Salman Rushdie, allowing both nations to normalize diplomatic relations. He is also credited with having helped resolve the eight-year impasse over the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial by getting Libya to agree to hand over the two accused (Megrahi and Fhimah) in 1999, for trial in the Netherlands according to Scots law.
In March 1998, a diplomatic rift ensued with Israel when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled a dinner with Cook, while Cook was visiting Israel and had demonstrated opposition to the expansion of Israeli settlements.
Resignation over Iraq war
In early 2003 he was reported to be one of the cabinet's chief opponents of military action against Iraq, and on 17 March he resigned from the Cabinet. In a statement giving his reasons for resigning he said, "I can't accept collective responsibility for the decision to commit Britain now to military action in Iraq without international agreement or domestic support." He also praised Blair's "heroic efforts" in pushing for the so-called second resolution regarding the Iraq disarmament crisis, but lamented "The reality is that Britain is being asked to embark on a war without agreement in any of the international bodies of which we are a leading partner—not NATO, not the European Union and, now, not the Security Council". Cook's resignation speech[9] in the House of Commons received an unprecedented standing ovation by fellow MPs, was described by the BBC's Andrew Marr as "without doubt one of the most effective, brilliant resignation speeches in modern British politics."[10] Most unusually for the British parliament, Cook's speech was met with growing applause from all sides of the House and from the public gallery. According to The Economist's obituary, that was the first speech ever to receive a standing ovation in the history of the House.
After his 2003 resignation from the Cabinet, Cook remained an active backbench Member of Parliament until his death. After leaving the Government, Cook was a leading analyst of the decision to go to war in Iraq, giving evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee which was later relevant during the Hutton and Butler inquiries. He was sceptical of the proposals contained in the Government's Higher Education Bill, and abstained on its Second Reading.[12] He also took strong positions in favour of both the proposed European Constitution,[13] and the reform of the House of Lords to create a majority-elected second chamber,[14][15] about which he said (while he was Leader of the Commons), "I do not see how [the House of Lords] can be a democratic second Chamber if it is also an election-free zone".
Some commentators and senior politicians said that Cook seemed destined for a senior Cabinet post under a Brown premiership
Death
In early August 2005, Cook and his wife, Gaynor, took a two-week holiday in the Highlands of Scotland. At around 2:20 pm on 6 August 2005, while he walked down Ben Stack[27] in Sutherland, Cook suddenly suffered a severe heart attack, collapsed, lost consciousness and fell about 8 feet (2.4 m) down a ridge. He was assisted after his fall by another hill-walker who refused all publicity and was granted anonymity. A helicopter containing paramedics arrived 30 minutes after a 999 call was made. Cook then was flown to Raigmore Hospital, Inverness. Gaynor did not get in the helicopter, and walked down the mountain. Despite efforts made by the medical team to revive Cook in the helicopter, he was already beyond recovery, and at 4:05pm, minutes after arrival at the hospital, was pronounced dead. Two days later, a post mortem examination found that Cook had died of hypertensive heart disease.
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