Seumas Milne, a reporter for The Guardian, argues that it is folly for the Blair government to deny the links of the bombings with British policy towards Iraq. Two thirds of the British public accept that link. However, the Blair government is out of touch the people on this issue.
One of the few British political parties that gets it is the Respect Party. After the bombings, they finished a strong third in a by-election. They can expect to see continued growth, as they are one of the few parties which accepts the link between the London bombings and the War in Iraq. They reflect the worries of the UK public that the government has gone too far in its desire to suck up to the Bush administration.
The Liberal Democrats tepidly accept the link; they gained seats in the general election. However, what is needed is a clear and forceful declaration from British leaders that the War in Iraq was a bad idea from the start. That is what George Galloway provides.
But if you speak out against the policies of the government, you are somehow being unpatriotic. Witness these examples:
But when the newly elected Respect MP George Galloway - who might be thought to have some locus on the subject, having overturned a substantial New Labour majority over Iraq in a London constituency with a large Muslim population - declared that Londoners had paid the price of a "despicable act" for the government's failure to heed those warnings, he was accused by defence minister Adam Ingram of "dipping his poisonous tongue in a pool of blood". Yesterday, the Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy was in the dock for a far more tentative attempt to question this suffocating consensus. Even Ken Livingstone, who had himself warned of the danger posed to London by an invasion of Iraq, has now claimed the bombings were nothing to do with the war - something he clearly does not believe.
And what does Al-Qaeda want?
The central goal of the al-Qaida-inspired campaign, as its statements have regularly spelled out, is the withdrawal of US and other western forces from the Arab and Muslim world, an end to support for Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and a halt to support for oil-lubricated despots throughout the region. Those are also goals that unite an overwhelming majority of Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere and give al-Qaida and its allies the chance to recruit and operate - in a way that their extreme religious conservatism or dreams of restoring the medieval caliphate never would. As even Osama bin Laden asked in his US election-timed video: if it was western freedom al-Qaida hated, "Why do we not strike Sweden?"
Does our failure to meet these demands justify 9/11 or 7/7? No; two wrongs do not make a right, and the killing of innocent civilians is just as wrong if Al-Qaeda does it as when we do it.
It is clear that our policies in the Middle East are failing. The flypaper argument has been exposed as a sham; Bin Laden has the resources to strike at will. In business, if something is not working, then a shake-up is necessary. Instead of a "war on terror," what we need is a strategy of isolation. What I am advocating is not a strategy of capitulation or an admission of defeat; it is a strategy to deny Bin Laden the resources he needs to continue his evil actions.
We should withdraw completely from the Middle East, tie our military aid to Israel on its treatment of the Palestinians, and spend the money that used to be spent on the War in Iraq on alternative fuels. We should send a clear warning that if Bin Laden ever comes out of his hiding spot in Pakistan, we will arrest him and try him for the murders of 3,000 civilians in the US. We should work with law enforcement and intelligence agencies all over the world to identify and break up terrorist cells around the globe.
The Muslim world, convinced of our new policy of evenhandedness, will quit funding Bin Laden's campaign of hatred and violence. Clerics will not view suicide bombings as "self-defense" and convince idealistic young men to leave their friends and families behind and become suicide bombers. People will ridicule Bin Laden if he continues to claim that we are trying to take over the Middle East. Governments will take responsibility for their own security. Israel will be forced to deal with the Palestinian Authority as equals rather than a rebellious slave.
Galloway makes the important point in a recent op-ed that our goal is not to negotiate with Bin Laden; our goal is to negotiate with those in the Muslim world who have not joined Bin Laden's group. You do not negotiate with people by going into their country with guns, bombs, tanks, and planes, and kill hundreds of thousands of their civilians. Furhtermore, you do not assume that people are terrorists unless they tell you otherwise; if you assume, you make something out of yourself. It's in the first three letters of the word. You negotiate with people by asking them what they want. That is what Galloway did; that is how he won the election in a heavily Muslim district.
And what do they want? Galloway again:
If we can persuade it that we know what wrongs we have done in Palestine, in Iraq.
If we can show that we have stopped propping up the corrupt cruel kings and the puerile puppet presidents of the Muslim world and will let them fall before their people.
If we stop doing what we are doing and start to reverse what we have done, we can win this constituency to peaceful coexistence.
If we do not, indeed if we do as Blair and Bush, backed by their little echoes in the media, say they will do -- more of the same -- then we truly are in trouble.
There will indeed be war without end and war throughout the world.