| OPINION
| July 12, 2005
Who’s
To Blame?
Before pointing fingers, options
should be weighed in response to last week’s attacks on London
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| The Shorthorn: Quyen Dong |
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The Group of Eight summit gathers the leaders
of the wealthiest eight countries in the world
to discuss world issues. During a demonstration against the assembly
in Scotland, the summit’s location, I was surprised to see
a huge banner that read “9/11 inside job to frame the world.”
After four years of relentless American propaganda, there are still
people in this world capable of thinking outside the box that
President Bush and his crew wanted to stick the world in.
Given the sensitivity of the issue, I am not going to comment on
that banner’s claim, but in the shadow of the tragic incidents
in London last week, it may help to view the world from another
perspective if we consider the following:
During the weeks leading to the G8 summit, a rift surfaced between
the U.S. and its allies, mainly the United Kingdom. President Bush
wanted to use this venue as another opportunity to recreate a rapidly
declining support for his morally corrupt wars and gather more efforts
for his adventures and crusades. Tony Blair, among others, wanted
to focus on poverty in Africa and global warming instead.
A clear message through the “coincidental” incident
pushed the alleged war on terror to the top of the G8’s agenda,
while the global warming issue was officially moved to be discussed
in November.
Factor the latest polls showing the decline in the American public
support of Bush’s wars, the decline in the Armed Forces’
recruitment numbers and the president’s latest televised address,
in which he
continued to hide the war facts from the public (there is no official
count of Iraqi casualties during the war or occupation yet —
due to government policy) without predicting an end to the massacre.
Obviously the American people needed a reminder.
An indirect message was sent and emphasized with the way the American
media handled the London attack. Within two hours of the incident,
American officials were on television alleging Muslim extremist
affiliation. Without sparing a minute, the incident was declared
another episode of the war on terror, which by now we know is the
“war against Islam,” or more kindly, extreme Islam.
Within hours, the poll readings are different, and a whole post-Sept.
11 feeling is created.
But seriously since the investigation has not started yet, couldn’t
that be the Irish Republican Army renouncing its truce? Couldn’t
the incident be associated with the Catholic-protestant issues in
the U.K.? Couldn’t that be a nationalist group unhappy with
the British stance toward the European Union? Heck, couldn’t
it be the French, unhappy about losing the 2012 Olympics hosting
honors to London?
After four years, the Arab and Muslim communities in the U.S. and
Europe are still trying to rebuild their image as an integral part
of the societies they live in and also trying to show that they
appreciate and value the opportunity to build successful lives in
the West. Such incidents affect that community collectively more
than any other, by resetting them as outcasts, unwelcome intruders
and targets for hate groups, especially in a notoriously foreigners-unfriendly
European setting.
So, in conclusion, and without conspiracy theories overtaking the
rational thinking, all I am asking is to take a deeper look.
— Musa Alshuqairi, mechanical engineering graduate student
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