The four synchronised attacks that brought unimaginable horror to London’s rush hour, was one of England’s worst attacks. At least 55 people were killed and some 700 injured by the three bombs on the underground and one on the No 30 bus. The loss of innocent civilian lives, whether in London or Iraq, or anywhere else, is precisely the result of a world that has become less safe and peaceful, thanks mainly to the illegal war on global terror and the ill-justified invasion of both Afghanistan and Iraq.

The mass killing of innocent civilians is not a solution to change such policies. The British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s alliance with the American President George W. Bush sparked these attacks on London. The city of London has paid the price for Mr Blair’s decision to invade this Arab country, which has the world’s second largest oil reserves, without the approval of the United Nations Security Council. The 7th of July attacks, striking at the heart of a major western power, was a reaction to its involvement in Iraq. President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair stated they were going to war against Iraq and make the country a democracy, but the result is that Iraqis are being killed, and their country destroyed while the abuse of its people is unforgettable.

Terrorism has no nationality and violence begets more

violence. The American and British forces in Iraq are not such innocent parties to all of this, these troops direct their most advanced lethal military machines to kill more and more innocent Iraqi civilians. The French President Jacques Chirac, one of the most experienced world leaders, kept his country out of a disastrous and unwinnable war. France, which has more than twice as many Muslim inhabitants than Britain, has not been attacked and does not face the same home grown threat that Britain does. The Spanish Socialist government acted to remove its people from harm’s way by ending the occupation of Iraq and by turning its full attention to the development of a real solution to the wider conflicts in the Middle East.

It is hard to think of a US President so inexperienced in world foreign affairs and so insensitive to human tragedy as the current occupant of the White House is! By supporting his excessiveness in this illegal war on terror, and the ill-justified invasion of Iraq, Mr Blair has ensured that his country is in the frontline alongside the US, whether the average British citizen likes it or not. What happened in London on 7 July can be blamed on Mr Blair’s decision to wage an illegal war. This war was all about revenge for the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York.

A few months ago, 48 eminent figures including Muslim

leaders, military personnel, ex diplomats and Bishops wrote to Mr Blair urging an inquiry into the civilian deaths in Iraq, estimated to be over 165,000 people, truly a genocide, a war crime. Unfortunately Mr Blair rejected the call for an independent inquiry into Iraqi civilian deaths, stating that terrorism and insurgents were to blame. But in reality, the terrorists are those who are illegally occupying and destroying someone else’s homeland without UN approval.

Why not just pull out all American forces and its allies from the Middle East, and leave the inhabitants to solve their own problems? The answer is that the Middle East is too economically and hence strategically important to be abandoned. More than 40 per cent of crude oil is currently produced by the Middle Eastern members of OPEC, and half of this production goes to the US and UK.

The anti-US and anti-UK resentment in the Middle East will not go away with the democratisation of the Arab world, or with the modernisation of the Middle East by the promotion of Western lifestyles, or by the establishment of more Mc Donald’s or Burger King’s, or the distribution of more Coca Cola. This will simply go away when both the US and Britain turn their full attention to finding a real solution for the problems of the Middle East.

Moustafa Megawer

QAWRA