It looks as if the hawks are winning. It'll soon be time to end the coalition

Summary: While Tony Blair and Colin Powell try to promote a diplomatic agenda, the Hawks in the US, Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfovitz and their friend Ariel Sharon are deliberately destroying it by provocations in occupied Palestine and the creation of a humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan. Blair should withdraw the UK from the coalition now.

Tony Blair is asking us to recall September 11. He wants to remind us of the twin towers atrocity and perhaps pay a little less attention to the ensuing bombs on Afghanistan. But Blair's memory of the phony war period is itself selective. What about the struggle for justice worldwide, what about the coalition against terrorism that was to be the centre piece of the civilised world's response, whatever became of the new kind of war?

As Rumsfeld's bombs continue to rain down on Afghanistan, bringing ever closer a humanitarian disaster, the new kind of war is beginning to look more like Kossovo without the targets and the Islamic world is increasingly conspicuous by its absence from the coalition against terror. What went wrong?

Osama Bin Laden had caught the hawkish isolationist administration in Washington by surprise, but Blair acted like lightning to build the coalition against terrorism. He offered a beleaguered Bush a way out and Bush seemed to be taking it.

Blair's brilliant move combined compassion for the victims in New York with protection for the potential victims of revenge. US isolationism was no longer sustainable, Blair and Powell would surely outmanoevre Rumsfeld and Wolfovitz in the coalition, the US needed Saudi oil if nothing else from the arab world.

Everything went smoothly for the first few weeks. James Rubin's angry denials that Islamic terrorism had anything to do with Israel were disregarded, Sharon was disciplined by Powell, the Middle Eastern states came on side, there was no rash bombing of either sand or civilians in Afghanistan. Claire Short said bombing Afghanistan would be too much to bear. An avuncular bespectacled Rumsfeld explained that this would be a different sort of war.

Now however sand, civilians and the Northern Alliance have all been targets of the ever more destructive bombing sorties, Sharon's reoccupation of parts of the West Bank is looking increasingly permanent and Saudi Arabia and Oman are in almost open rebellion, angry conversations are reported with Bush. Iraq is certain that they are to be attacked well before Tony Blair's odd criterion of `100 percent proof` is met and indeed Tony Blair seems to be a lot more active on the PR side than he is in Washington these days. A forty minute conversation with Bush is deemed to be news.

Let's forget our obsession with Tony Blair for a second and listen a little more closely to Richard Perle, the godfather of the American Right, the man who says in public what Wolfovitz and perhaps Cheney, Rumsfeld and even Rice are saying in private. Perhaps we should take a look too at the views and track record of Ariel Sharon, their close friend and ally.

Sharon's strategy is the simple one of radicals everywhere, especially if they have the physical power to back it up: if in doubt attack. If you're forced back you can always attack again later, Sharon knows there will always be pretexts to do that because his policy of assassination and outrageous oppression of Palestinians is bound to create them.

Sharon is indeed the cancer at the heart of the Middle East, a cancer with secondary tumors well established in Washington, slowly and inexorably destroying the coalition and snubbing Blair and Powell. Is anything going to stop him? Even independent observers have been ruled out by Bush unless, laughably, Sharon agrees to them.

Sharon will only be stopped by an equal and opposite set of facts, a cutoff of the money and arms supply from Washington. But that is mostly determined by Congress, where Christian fundamentalist Republicans are in alliance with Jewish fundamentalists and many Democrats are bankrolled by money recycled from the foreign aid they vote so willingly to Israel.

There is the option of invoking international law in the form of UN Resolution 242 which declares the occupation of the West Bank illegal. Blair and Bush are inching towards that (current code for this is a viable Palestinian state) but the pressure is intense in Congress and so far they haven't defied it even with Bush's popularity as high as it will ever be.

Over in Afghanistan, Perle has always said the coalition is unnecessary. This is not a secret. He explained to Jeremy Paxman that he supports a series of ad hoc coalitions. Why should anyone care what the arabs think about the Afghan war, when all you need along with the most powerful flotilla ever assembled in the Indian Ocean is discreet help from Pakistan and the ex-Soviet republics (rich with oil that could be flowing down to Karachi if only the Taliban were not there), and unlimited use of Tony Blair's Diego Garcia as a land base.

Underlying the Perle/Sharon approach is the belief that the arabs don't matter very much. The arabs on the street could try overthrowing their governments, but how many times have they succeeded at that? The governments could try attacking Israel, but Israel has nuclear weapons. They could try denying America its oil, but America has troops in Saudi Arabia now. As Professor Fred Halliday (sp?) explained on Newsnight, the oilfields are concentrated in southern Saudi Arabia and would be quite easy to occupy and hold.

The irony is that arab opinion can be sidelined precisely because, despite the rather limited demonstrations on the street and despite the Islamophobia of some western liberals, too much arab opinion recognises Bin Laden for what he is - a grotesque quasi fascist who wants to return them to the middle ages. Like the Germans in the 1920's the arabs are squeezed between a ruthless West and fascism, they have nowhere to go and few weapons beyond oil and terrorism.

Number Ten has briefed at least one aid agency that they have no say in the bombing any more. If true, this should be grounds for panic, certainly not a time to sell the policy to the British people all over again. The constituency that matters is moderate opinion in the Middle East, the one that Perle and Sharon have little interest in. While Blair and Powell criss-cross the world, Rumsfeld and Wolfovitz are daily shredding their strategy from the air in Afghanistan. General Winter will soon finish the job, say the relief agencies.

The way things are going, by the end of the winter the grand coalition and with it the global struggle for justice might just be another Blair aspiration that never came to pass. US politicians will be thinking about the midterm elections and who will fund them and the war in Afghanistan might be half forgotten, like the bombing right now in Iraq, going nowhere. Barring miracles, Ariel Sharon will probably still be arguing about whether peace talks should even start. His new subtext will be that with the arab world alienated anyway, Palestine doesn't matter any more.

The big winners will be the burgeoning anti-terrorism industry, the missile manufacturers and the new Homeland Defence empire, currently training up to 100,000 State Troopers and National Guard. Complicit in the mess in Afghanistan, how easy will it be for Blair or anyone else in Europe to say no to the next items on the hardliners' agenda or indeed to contest that we are in a war against Islam?

There is a fast track alternative. Even the threat of it would probably work miracles. Tony Blair could abandon the co-alition of war and join the coalition of pity. Europe would follow. America and Israel would be isolated. If that's not enough, give Perle what he wants and expel America from the UN. Tell the truth to Americans. Threaten the US media corporations with sanctions if they refuse to pass it on. Above all, withdraw facilites from Diego Garcia, the vital UK owned military staging post which America stole at the height of the Cold War.

It's clear to many people now that Richard Perle's war is going to be a disaster, the war games analysts are talking not about not bombs but nukes on Baghdad (see Sarah Riddell's excellent articles in The Observer). All these measures are possible - we do live under the rule of law, don't we?. If Blair won't do them he may find himself in a position where the rest of the British people will do it for him.