Isn’t It Important To Realise Who Our Enemies Really Are? ---Robert Fisk

[KoKo]

Isn’t It Important To Realise Who Our Enemies Really Are?

Children are so often the forgotten victims of conflict – regardless of the perpetrators

By Robert Fisk

December 07, 2014 "ICH" - "The Independent" - Well, heaven preserve us: the most useless “peacemaker” on earth has just used an Arabic acronym for the greatest threat to civilisation since the last greatest threat. Yup, ol’ John Kerry called it “Daesh”, which is what the Arabs call it. It stands for the “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant”. We prefer Isis or Isil or the Islamic State or Islamic Caliphate. Most journos prefer Isis because – I suspect – it’s easier to remember. It’s the name of an Egyptian goddess, after all. It’s the name of a university city’s river. And of course, it’s the name of Lord Grantham’s dog in Downton Abbey.
Many an American scribe has questioned why Kerry should be using this goddam Arabic lingo – although we use Fatah for the PLO. It, too, is an acronym which, translated, means “the Party for Palestinian Liberation”. And in 2011 we called Tahrir Square in Cairo “Tahrir”, only occasionally reminding readers and viewers that it, too, meant “liberation”. None explained why the place was important: because this was the square mile of Cairo in which was based the largest British barracks and into which the Brits – during their much loved occupation of Egypt – refused to allow any Egyptian to walk without permission. That’s why it was called Tahrir – liberation – when the Brits left. That’s why Hosni Mubarak’s attempt to prevent the protesters entering the square in 2011 placed him firmly in the shadow of Egypt’s former colonial masters.

But why do we care what the great leaders of the West (or the East for that matter) actually say, when we all know it’s the kind of material that comes out of the rear end of a bull? Let me give you an example from Canada, where I’ve just spent the last three days. Two years ago, the country’s Foreign Affairs minister, John Baird, closed Canada’s embassy in Tehran because he feared his diplomats might be harmed. “Canada views the government of Iran as the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today,” he quoth then – although CBC broadcasters have dug up a Foreign Ministry report which reported the biggest threat to the Tehran embassy was an geophysical earthquake.

Since then, as the Toronto Star’s pesky columnist Thomas Walkom has pointed out, the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper – whose pro-Israeli policies might earn him a seat in the Israeli Knesset – has discovered more threats. Russia under Vladimir Putin, Harper says, “represents a significant threat to the peace and security of the world”. The aforesaid Baird – taking his cue, no doubt from our own beloved Prince Charles – compared Putin’s Russia to Hitler’s Third Reich. More recently, Canada’s defence minister, Rob Nicholson, described the men of Isis (or Isil, or the Islamic State, or the Islamic Caliphate, or Daesh) as “a real and growing threat to civilisation itself”. The war against Isis/Isil/IS/IC/Daesh, he informed the people of Abu Dhabi, was “the greatest struggle of our generation”.

But what the hell … Don’t we live in a world where Save the Children (American branch only, you understand) gave an award to the same former British prime minister quoted above? Having given a prize to the man who encouraged George W Bush to embark on an Iraqi invasion which cost the lives of tens of thousands of children, surely this fine charity (again, the American branch only) must reinvent and re-name itself “Abandon the Children”. And by the way, one of the ex-PM’s supporters blandly told Channel 4 not long ago that our British “peace envoy” had travelled to the Middle East more than 160 times. Which means, doesn’t it, that our Middle East envoy had left his station in the Middle East more than 160 times!

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40408.htm