Kenny Farquharson: Attack on America is an attack on us

LAST week I was arguing with a friend who, after reading some articles marking the tenth anniversary of 9/11, had come to a simple conclusion. His point was this: instead of hunting down al-Qaeda’s leaders to the caves of Tora Bora and beyond with all the military might at the West’s disposal, we should have just talked to them. We should have listened to their point of view, addressed their grievances and negotiated.

We parleyed a peace with the IRA, his thinking went, and we’re currently talking to the Taleban. So why not al-Qaeda? Couldn’t all the subsequent horror of the past decade – the hundreds of thousands of people killed, the occupations of two Muslim countries, the civil war in Iraq, the atrocities of Abu Ghraib, the seemingly endless parade of young men’s coffins through Wooton Bassett, the dodgy dossiers and the cynical political chicanery – couldn’t it all have been avoided if we had just talked to bin Laden and his proxies and tried to do a deal?

I understood his way of thinking, because it came from a sense of decency and a desire for compromise that reflects well on him. It was a conclusion, I think, born of a form of despair at the events of the past ten years, and of an intensely unsettling disquiet about the military action carried out in our name by British armed forces in Basra and Helmand, and elsewhere by our American allies.

I share my friend’s weariness. I share his despair at the carnage in Iraq (although we part company when it comes to the justification of war in Afghanistan). But I cannot share his conclusions about al-Qaeda. And this is perhaps as good a time as any to examine the moral perils implicit in some common attitudes to 9/11 and its aftermath.

First, let’s remember what al-Qaeda actually is, and what its aims are. In November 2002, Osama bin Laden issued a “letter to America” in which he set out al-Qaeda’s demands. Meet these demands, he said, and America would no longer have to worry about another 9/11. They make instructive reading today as we mark the tenth anniversary of the cold and calculating slaughter he inflicted on the innocent citizens of New York.

Although the letter was long, the demands on the US were clear enough: Islamic law must replace secular law; there must be a ban on alcohol, intoxicants, gambling, fornication, indecency, homosexuality and usury; there must be strict controls on jobs for women; all support for the right of the state of Israel to exist must end; and US presence in any Muslim country must be withdrawn.

Later, bin Laden would address the counties of Europe, saying al-Qaeda would not attack them if they cut their ties with the US and refused to support the United Nations-sanctioned military operation in Afghanistan. To our shame, there were plenty of people here in Britain arguing that, yes, that seemed like a pretty good deal.

There is within many of us, especially those on the left, a latent anti- Americanism. I’m not immune. As a student I marched against the presence of US nuclear subs in the Holy Loch and nodded sagely along to protest songs declaring Britain “the 51st state of the USA”. But there is a moral peril in allowing anti-Americanism to trump our solidarity with a culture that shares our freedoms – however much we may disagree with some of the ways the United States uses those freedoms.

There is a similar imperative at work on the question of war. The catastrophic mistakes we made in invading Iraq, and our subsequent failure to provide necessary security for a shift to representative government, are now truisms. But those who see no moral distinction between Osama Bin Laden, George W Bush and Tony Blair must surely be guilty of category error, at best, or at worst a calamitous failure to understand the distinction between terrorism and political mendacity.

Again I come back to a simple point. Let us remember who we are dealing with here. How can you negotiate with al-Qaeda, as my friend suggested? Which part of their demands would we be willing to concede? Maybe we could agree we’d only teach girls up to the age of ten? Or only ban women from working in shops? Obviously, we can’t turn the whole of the western world into one caliphate overnight, but maybe we could offer to test drive the idea in, say, Canada? Would persecuting gays be a good starting point, as a sign of good faith?

There is an important distinction between negotiating with the Taleban and negotiating with al-Qaeda. There is a reasonable expectation the Taleban can be offered a place in a newly plural Afghan state that respects the country’s religious, ethnic, regional and tribal differences. You cannot negotiate with a terrorist organisation set on dictating the terms of western democracy as a prelude to its destruction. We cannot parley our way out of this one. We can only try our best to protect ourselves from the increasingly imaginative ways they want to kill us, and get to them before they get to us.

Let’s not forget, since 9/11 there have been more than a dozen attacks by al-Qaeda and its proxies in places as diverse as Bali, Madrid, Istanbul, the Philippines, Khobar, London and, of course, Glasgow. That’s not to mention the foiled airline bombing attempts, of which there have been at least three.

Today’s anniversary is, primarily, a time to be humbled by stories of sacrifice, loss, struggle and redemption about those whose lives were ended or indelibly marked by the al-Qaeda attacks. But it is also a time to acknowledge that America’s enemy on 11 September 2011 was our enemy too. The attack on America’s values was also an attack on ours.