CAABU letter in Sunday Times on war on terror
DIGGING DEEPER: More than a year since July 7, we still lack even a half-decent assessment of the causes of the bombings in London. Like Donald Rumsfeld, Gove does not do nuance. He lumps all Islamist groups as one, from Hezbollah to Al-Qaeda. Gove can only muster one criticism of the Iraq fiasco, that the US did not send enough troops. He also repeats the lazy defence that because terrorism pre-dated 9/11, increasing extremism has nothing to do with Iraq. The anger and ensuing extremism at US and UK policies on Iraq, Palestine, Iran, Afghanistan among other issues, has been building up for decades. Bush and Tony Blair have taken us to a new low point, and sadly, they are just digging deeper. The trend in bypassing experts is much wider, however, than Dalrymple suggests. Half of Blair's problems in Iraq were as a result of his refusal to listen to those who knew the country best. The much-derided Arabists were again proved right. That Iraq has acted as recruiting sergeant is now surely beyond question after the publication of the collective views of 16 US intelligence agencies claiming that the war is now a cause célèbre for jihadists. Chris Doyle
Director, CAABU (Council for Arab-British Understanding) To see other letters on the same issue - click here To see William Dalrymple's review of Michael Gove's and Lawrence Wright's books in the Sunday Times - click here Further reading:- From Private Eye No. 1169 (13th-26th October 2006) "JUST FANCY THAT! Following William Dalrymple's epic demolition of Michael Gove's new book Celsius 7/7 in the Sunday Times - he termed it "a confused epic of simplistic incomprehension, riddled with more factual errors and misconceptions than any other text I have come across in two decades" and complained that "Gove has never lived in the Middle East, indeed has barely set foot in a Muslim country" - admirers of the author and Tory MP rushed to his defence. "Mr Dalrymple's tone is intimidating. He gives the impression he knows a lot," mused Frank Johnson in the Spectator. "But we must dare to question him. Churchill did not know German and never lived in a Germanic country; indeed barely set foot in one. But many believe he was right about Germany." Three days later, biographer William Shawcross added his own ha'pennyworth in a letter to the Sunday Times. "Dalrymple seems to think that because Gove does not speak Islamic languages he (and I suppose almost everyone else in the west) is unqualified to analyse the Islamist threat. What nonsense," he observed. How so? "Churchill was no German scholar but he knew exactly what was going on in Germany in the 1930s..."" ===================================
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