Bombing: it may be legally justified but is it wise?

Summary
Whatever happens on the military front, the movement for world reform has a historical opportunity. Let's seize it.

These are grim days for the optimists. We thought they'd learnt something about `targeted strikes` when almost the whole of the Serbian tank force returned untouched from Kossovo. We believed Blair and Bush when they said they wanted to keep the Muslim world on side. We cheered for Colin Powell as he slapped down the hawks and for Jack Straw as he spoke up for Palestine. We cheered Tony Blair's fight for justice.

Of course we had a niggling fear that these were mere softening up operations on the 70% of voters who oppose major bombing of Afghanistan. But we knew that even if they could rely on the western press and hence public opinion to fall into line, they really needed the arab world as well and they would be much more sceptical.

What a difference three days of bombs can make. It's not only the facts, which are thin on the ground, it's the mindset. The arab world? Michael Ancram is presumably speaking for the majority of the Bush team when he asserts that Iraq, Syria, Libya should be the next targets, providing only that there is incontrovertible proof. The same sort of secret incontrovertible proof, presumably, as that against Bin Laden which in the words of Anthony Scrivener QC would not be enough to convict a shoplifter? It's there already Mr Ancram, the `intelligence community` has helpfully leaked news of a meeting between an alleged hijacker and an alleged Iraqi intelligence agent six months ago in Prague.

In fact, there is another person known to associate with terrorists, someone we could take out quite easily, and it's not even Ariel Sharon. The proof is that he invited photographers to watch him parade with them, brandishing a gun. The person is Ian Paisley, the terrorists were the UDA, currently attacking the police in North Belfast. But they're not Michael Ancram's sort of terrorist. Mr Ancram would rather issue ultimata to Sinn Fein and do his best to destabilise the peace process in Northern Ireland.

We sort of got the impression, as one can so easily do, that Mr Blair had ruled this sort of warmongering nonsense out, but now we hear that attacking Iraq is a question for later. The bombing has started and we remember Mr Blair is tough as well as tender. It's tender on liberal opinion at the Labour conference, tough for the four Afghan mine clearers killed on day two of the bombing. We remember that George Bush senior had no squabble with the people of Iraq, that NATO had no quarrel with the people of Serbia.

The mindset is bad, but the facts are worse. Did NATO help repair the damage to Serbia? Don't be stupid, the voters `wouldn't understand`. The EU eventually offered some money on condition Milosevic was extradited, but the cash never came through. Were sanctions lifted against Iraq, sanctions whose original justification was to avoid the need for war? Not likely, Saddam Hussein could get into the position when he can counter Israel's nuclear blackmail against the Middle east, you see. Did the US offer compensation for what everyone now agrees was a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan blown up by cuddly Bill Clinton? Er, there's a case which might get to the Supreme Court in a few years. If I were you I'd make sure you get the money in cash and get it now, General Musharref, there's a recession on the way.

We've heard about the generous B52 food parcel drops, surely the most cynical PR gesture ever offered to that section of the American public which can't count. The other B52's were presumably used for well targeted carpet bombing from 20,000 feet as in Kossovo, but no-one is very keen to give any more details about that side of it.

We've heard about the UN mine clearance personnel killed, as reported on radio four, when their building was hit. Were they in a Taliban command centre? Who else was in the building? It seems odd that the only civilian casualties we hear of were ones that cannot be denied because they were employed by the UN.

There are, however, glimmers of hope. Maybe, under cover of war, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are going to do what they were elected to do in 1997, reclaim the railways, introduce a graduate tax instead of student loans, hit the fat cats where it hurts - in the tax havens, write off the debt - not just pretend to, introduce the Tobin tax.

But does the price of a war for justice have to be the appeasement of terrorism, the state terrorism of Ariel Sharon, the blockade of Iraq, the chemical attacks on Colombian small holdings in pursuit of that other war without end, the war against drugs. The historian EP Thompson once told me that you should not take politicians seriously, they are like thermometers. To use Clare Short's phrase, the people of goodwill should make their voices heard. It's time to turn up the heat on New Labour and demand justice. If we're serious about a war on terrorism, let's start with the state terrorism from `our` side. That should be at least easier than bombing caves in Afghanistan. After all, we do live under the rule of law in a democracy, don't we?