From Mr J. Ciliberti

I refer to Moustafa Megawer’s letter of 24 July and would like to express my views regarding the assumptions and conclusions as to why Britain, and more specifically London, was attacked by at least four Muslim men.

In his lame attempt to discredit one of Britain’s most successful prime ministers, Mr Megawer states: “The city of London has paid the price for Mr Blair’s decision to invade this Arab country”.

Each coin has two sides to it and I would say that Mr Blair was bold enough to get rid of yet another dictator in the region. Now if Mr Megawer is perfectly happy to have dictators run his beloved Muslim world, then it’s fine with me as long as his happiness does not result in even more terrorist attacks on innocent civilian targets in cities that have developed much faster than anywhere else in the world, including New York and London. The same two cities where so many Muslims dream to live and which quite a few thousands, sometimes millions, call home.

Mr Megawer adds, referring to US and British forces, “these troops direct their most advanced lethal military machines to kill more and more innocent Iraqi civilians”.

I am not aware of any US or British troops killing children and their mothers since the end of the Saddam era. It’s Muslims, belonging to different tribes who are killing innocent Iraqis, as was the case a few weeks ago when a Sunni Muslim drove his bomb-laden car into the middle of a group of Iraqi children receiving sweets from US troops. There is now an Iraqi government running the country and all violence is being done by Muslims to other Muslims and not by ‘foreign troops’.

Mr Megawer also adds: “… French President J. Chirac, one of the most experienced world leaders, kept his country out of a disastrous and unwinnable war”.

France did the same thing in World War Two by not fighting the Nazi regime, and it was only the proud and very brave French Resistance that continued to fight the Nazis until the final victory. I see a lot of similarities today because I firmly believe that everything comes at a price, and the price of terrorism today will result in a better future for mankind, especially for most of the Muslim world which is run by extreme clerics and dictators.

Who could have foreseen the fall of the Soviet Union, and yet, two great leaders, Ronald Reagan of the United States and Margaret Thatcher of Britain, brought the Soviet leaders to their senses, culminating in the fall of the Berlin Wall and freedom for so many millions around the world, especially in the countries under Soviet rule.

Mr Chirac, leading one of the world’s finest countries, is indeed a very experienced leader but he will never be as experienced as most Muslim presidents because while Mr Chirac has to hold a democratic election every four or five years, most Muslim presidents lead their countries for far more years, including some who have been ruling for over 35 years. If we have to go for experience, then most Arab leaders will win hands down, no doubt about that at all.

Mr Megawer refers to President George W. Bush as “so inexperienced in world foreign affairs and so insensitive to human tragedy”. While reiterating that Mr Bush can never be as experienced as most Arab leaders for the reasons stated above, I ask Mr Megawer if he prefers to have the likes of Saddam Hussein running Iraq, with all his experience and “sensitivity” towards his own people, including the Kurds and Sh’ites.

Whether Mr Megawer likes it or not, Mr Bush is the democratically-elected President of the United States of America and he was recently re-elected with a clear majority to lead his country for the next three-and-a-half years.

Perhaps Mr Megawer can provide a list of all the democratically-elected presidents and prime ministers in the Muslim world. In the then Czechoslovakia, Poland Gdansk etc, democracy has come at a price. And so is the case in Iraq, where millions looked fellow-Muslim suicide bombers in the eye and queued to vote to elect the first democratically-elected government in many decades.

Dozens died in that fateful election, but Iraq now has a democratically-elected government, which is seemingly irritating a lot of extremists who just cannot accept the outcome and continue to kill and maim a high number of fellow Iraqis every single day.

The ‘Western’ world has no reason to change any system in any other region of the world as long as the system does not directly affect how life is lived in the ‘Western’ world. Each time we go through airports and sea-ports, we have to take off our belts, our wallets, our pens, our cell phones etc and each time we do that it’s because there have been so many hijacks over the years that security had to be tightened, which is understandable.

Now Mr Megawer can perhaps also provide readers of The Malta Independent on Sunday with the list of hijackers and terrorist attacks at airports. I can start by one hijack in Malta in 1984. No points for whoever guesses who seized command of the aircraft and the subsequent deaths of so many innocent passengers flying on that ill-fated Egyptair flight one Sunday afternoon at Luqa airport. There was no Bush or Blair then, no ‘invading’ forces in Iraq, and Malta was so staunchly in favour of the Arab world at the time too. So why was Malta the destination chosen for that attack?

I end my letter by yet another quote from Mr Megawer’s letter, which refers to the resentment felt by Muslims: “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”.

And my contribution ends with this question: “Why should the US and Britain find a solution to the Middle East? Why not the governments in the Middle East solve their own problems without expecting anyone to do it for them?

The world would be a much safer place if problems were solved by the Middle East countries themselves.

Joe Ciliberti