NICK GRIFFIN

BACK TO THE FUTURE   NICK GRIFFIN, Chairman of the British National Party www.bnp.org.uk Examines the parallels between Blair's Iraq adventure and August 1914

"It will all be over by Christmas," was the expert view at the start of the First World War. As the bands played and the boys in smart new uniforms paraded past cheering crowds to the train stations, the rulers of every European country except Switzerland thought of honour and glory, commercial advantage and increased profits, and the 'need' to thrash 'enemies' with whom they had no fundamental quarrel.

So the civilised world marched happily to war, totally unaware of the fact that the ensuing carnage would not only claim millions of lives, but also destroy most of the regimes responsible. In August 1914 the whole of Europe was dominated by monarchies, Christianity and deference; but the old certainties were about to be cut down by the new warfare. Four years later the Crowned heads lay broken in the mud and the established order was swept aside. Even for the 'victors', the world was changed forever.

MODERN DAY PARALLEL

Nearly one hundred years later, the modern rulers of the Western world are sleep-walking into another world war, absent-mindedly cheered on by the busy shoppers whose manic credit-financed consumerism is the only thing propping up the crumbling world economy. Once again, from the point of view of the ruling 'elite', there are good reasons for a War-to-End - All- ('Terrorist')-Wars: The economic benefits to be had from knocking out key competitors are now mirrored by the prospect of dirt-cheap oil from a puppet regime in Iraq. Where the bosses of Krupps and ICI saw the chance for extra profits then, high-tech companies and US oil giants see the same glittering opportunity today. A quick victory abroad will also, as always, shift popular attention from politically embarrassing problems at home. Under cover of a war against evil, Imperially minded leaders will be able to expand and consolidate their empires. Then it was a matter of kicking the Germans out of "Britain's" Africa, this time it's going to be kicking the Palestinians out of Sharon's Greater Israel. And, for all the key players, there's the prospect of getting themselves into the history books. Greed, stupidity and vanity - human nature being what it is, the rulers who sign the death warrants of the young generation haven't changed in the slightest. Watch Tony Blair and George W Bush puff up their chests and the mass media whip up the war fever. Here we are, right back in August 1914.

NEW RULES AND REALITIES

Of course, the coming war won't be anything like the First World War in tactical terms. That's the whole point of how huge and uncontrollable conflicts catch out those who start them so eagerly. They're all ready to fight the last war, but changed enemies and the new technologies and tactics at their disposal mean that things rarely work out as expected. This is invariably the case even when the devastating form of the new warfare has already been tried and tested. In 1914 the rulers and their generals had already seen rapid-fire rifles and machine guns at work from the Sudan to South Africa. In 2002 we've already seen nerve gas attacks on crowded underground trains and what vans packed with explosives can do to civilian targets. The slaughter of British soldiers by Boer marksmen on Spion Kop showed anyone prepared to think things through what would happen on the Somme. The Twin Towers and Bali are, likewise, the shape of the war to come. Just as the Kaiser and the Prime Minister should have known what hell it would be on the front line, so Bush and Blair should know that - this time around - there isn't going to be a front line at all, but that this generation will still get its grandstand view of hell.

To compare November 2002 with August 1914 is not to predict massive Western casualties in any big push against Saddam Hussein. The odds are that overwhelming US airpower will destroy Iraq's army every bit as easily as it crushed the Taliban in Afghanistan. This isn't certain, of course; indeed, the news that Ukraine has recently supplied Iraq with a $100 million state-of-the-art ground-to-air defence system seems to have contributed to President Bush's last minute reversion to diplomacy and suggestion that Saddam Hussein might not have to go after all, as long as he complies with all sorts of demands. A desire to stamp on its elite's 'enemies', coupled with a reluctance to take any casualties, is making America look less and less like a would-be International Policeman for the New World Order, and more and more like a Global Bully - plenty of threats but no action.

PLAN FOR AMERICAN GLOBAL DOMINATION

That said, the sheer political and media clout of the 'American' war party is such that the odds are that they'll quickly roast Bush's cold feet. The war against Iraq, after all, isn't a spur of the moment whim, but part of a long established plan which some very powerful people are determined will be put into practice - and soon. The 'war party' around Bush drew up its blueprint for the creation of a global 'Pax Americana' - the first stage of which is to be an attack on Iraq - in September 2000, before its man even became President. The document, entitled 'Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century', was drawn up by the neoconservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows that Bush and his chief cronies, including Dick Cheney (vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary) and Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), have intended all along to take military control of the Gulf region, whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: "The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

The PNAC report also refers to the use of key allies such as the UK as "the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership." Properly translated this means: "We want cheap oil and to deal with the Middle Eastern enemies of Israel. But even our stupid voters won't be too keen to have their sons brought home in body bags, but fortunately we can rely on Tony Blair to pay the 'blood price' with British lives."

ZIONIST INFLUENCE

To refer to Israel in this context is, of course, not considered polite, but it is a fact nevertheless. It most certainly is not 'anti-Semitic' to make this point, not least because there have been massive demonstrations in Israel itself by ordinary Jews who oppose their own government's brutal suppression of the Palestinians as well as the threatened war against Iraq. Jewish civil rights activists such as Israel Shamir have been at the forefront of the campaign to expose the role of the Zionist cabal around President Bush in pushing for an attack on Saddam Hussein. The extent of the influence of the White House Zionist lobby was exposed in The Guardian on 3rd September, in an article entitled 'Playing Skittles With Saddam': "The 'skittles theory' of the Middle East - that one ball aimed at Iraq can knock down several regimes - has been around for some time on the wilder fringes of politics but has come to the fore in the United States on the back of the 'war against terrorism'. \ "Its roots can be traced, at least in part, to a paper published in 1996 by an Israeli think-tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. Entitled 'A clean break: a new strategy for securing the realm', it was intended as a political blueprint for the incoming government of Binyamin Netanyahu. "The paper set out a plan by which Israel would 'shape its strategic environment', beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein . To succeed, the paper stressed, Israel would have to win broad American support."

Furthermore, the paper made it clear that Iraq was only the first of a number of Middle Eastern skittles that Israel should aim to knock down; it explained how Syria and Lebanon would also be dealt with once Saddam Hussein had gone.

The full significance of the document, however, isn't so much what it said, as who produced it. The Guardian explains: "The leader of the 'prominent opinion makers' who wrote it was Richard Perle - now chairman of the Defence Policy Board at the Pentagon. Also among the eight-person team was Douglas Feith, a neo-conservative lawyer, who now holds one of the top four posts at the Pentagon." Two other opinion-makers in the team were David Wurmser and his wife, Meyrav. David Wurmser is now at the State Department, as a special assistant to John Bolton, the under-secretary for arms control and international security. "With several of the 'Clean Break paper's authors now holding key positions in Washington, the plan for Israel to 'transcend' its foes by reshaping the Middle East looks a good deal more achievable today than it did in 1996. Americans may even be persuaded to give up their lives to achieve it. "The six-year-old plan for Israel's 'strategic environment' remains more or less intact, though two extra skittles - Saudi Arabia and Iran - have joined Iraq, Syria and Lebanon on the hit list."

Another well-known and very influential neo-conservative, Norman Podhoretz, goes even further: "The regimes that richly deserve to be overthrown . are not confined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil (Iraq, Iran, North Korea). At a minimum, the axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as 'friends' of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority."

PLAYING WITH FIRE

If this is the 'minimum', one dreads to think of what the warmongers around Bush would regard as the 'ideal'! The ordinary public may think that an attack on Iraq over alleged support for terrorism won't signal the beginning of a new World War, but the ordinary public in 1914 didn't understand the significance of Austria's attack on the Serbs over the assassination of an obscure Archduke either. Whatever happens in the next Iraq war - and, as already noted, it is quite likely to be a turkey shoot for the US air force - it will only be the beginning. For a start, Bush and Co have already drawn up plans for the military occupation of Iraq. This, it is envisaged, will not be "over by Christmas," but will last for up to six years, during which time a combination of sticks and carrots would be used to "impose a new political culture" on the defeated nation, just as was done on Germany and Japan after WW2.

The crucial difference, of course, is that defeated Germany and Japan had no allies. They had no friendly states in which resistance fighters could regroup and plan to fight on. They didn't have any of the weapons - tanks, ships and planes - with which advanced industrial states wage conventional war. And members of the broken German and Japanese armed forces were not at liberty to jet around the world and merge into German and Japanese communities in London, Paris, Moscow or Washington DC, so terrorist attacks in the victors' own cities weren't an option either.

With their plans to bully and invade a string of weak Middle Eastern states, however, Bush, Blair & Co. are opening up a whole new can of worms. Whatever they say about this being essentially political, a "War on Terror", that's not how it will be seen from the top of the world's minarets. In picking a fight with the world's one billion Muslims, the current ruling elite of the West are taking on a very different kind of enemy and dragging us into a very different and very unconventional war.

ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE

That doesn't mean, however, that it isn't possible to take an educated guess at what form the war will take. Just as several far-sighted British and German military theorists after World War One dreamt up the blitzkrieg tactics of the coming rematch, so military theorists have already proposed ways in which 'asymmetrical warfare' can be used even by weak countries to defeat the world's last Superpower, the USA. The key predictive text for the tactics of the coming World War was written in 1999 by two Senior Colonels in the Chinese Army, and published with the endorsement of the Chinese government. The resulting book, 'Unrestricted Warfare', has one basic aim: to offer China and other 'weak' countries a strategy to break the United States, without a full-scale invasion, by using unusual or 'asymmetrical' warfare.

Among the 'new' tactics proposed for 21st century war are the manipulation of Western media outlets, suicide bombings, cyber attacks on critical high-tech infrastructure and using immigrants as a fifth column. Most striking of all, however, is the prediction that an attack by Osama bin Laden on the World Trade Center would be the kind of 'unrestricted warfare' tactic that could bring America to its knees.

That was written back in 1999, but asked about their uncanny prediction after the event, the Colonels agreed that the unconventional assaults of September 11th were straight from the pages of their book and prove that their theory is correct: "The attacks demonstrated the United State's fragility and weakness and showed that essentially it is unable to stand attacks . The United States, a giant tiger, has been dealing with mice; unexpectedly, this time it was bitten by mice - it has been wielding a large hammer but has been unable to find the flea."

Having predicted such problems for the USA, the Colonels were equally blunt in analysing their long-term impact: "September 11th, 2001, very likely is the beginning of the decline of the United States as a Superpower." American military experts are inclined to agree. Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, former Chief of Staff of US Forces Korea, a man with direct experience of dealing with the Chinese military in action, warns that: "The 9/11 attacks may be just the beginning. Many terrorist nations and groups will try to imitate this operation. China's war book 'Unrestricted Warfare' will be their text."

THE CLASH OF CIVILISATIONS

The fiery bloodbath in Bali rolled several benefits of such 'unconventional' warfare into one: It was a further devastating blow to the airlines and tourist industry which form an important part of the modern Western economy; it will inflict serious damage on the Indonesian economy, and hence on the chances of that unstable collection of ethnic and religious groups remaining under the control of a pro-Western government; and it made it clear to both the Australians and British that their governments' insistence on backing America in the Middle East puts them directly in the firing line.

This last point is the most important. Although the initial impact of the atrocity was to swing public opinion in both countries more in favour of war, the long-term effect of such terrorism, repeated over and over again, will be to sap the will of the soft-minded, selfish West to continue the fight, and to turn people against the governments that refuse to sue for peace.

But this isn't the biggest problem facing our masters. The real danger of their decision to provoke the Clash of Civilisations predicted by Samuel Huntington is that, while they are unlikely to lose militarily, they cannot do other than lose politically. Win or lose on the battlefield, the liberal Establishment will lose on the home front. The fatal flaw in their plan to impose Western ways on the Islamic world at gunpoint is that they have allowed a significant and growing Muslim minority into the Western world. In the short term, this raises the possibility that the kind of xenophobic war hysteria being whipped up by the likes of the Daily Express and 'Panorama' might create the kind of mob violence suffered by German and Italian shopkeepers in British cities in 1914 and 1939.

CIVIL WAR DANGER ACROSS EUROPE

Longer term, and far more serious as a destabilising factor in a multiracial society, there is the question of how the Muslim minority will feel when they see their adopted homeland at war with their co-religionists. What the Koran tells them about the endless struggle between the Faithful and the Infidels is something about which - owing to recent additional restrictions on free speech, enacted by 'New' Labour with the eager backing of the party formerly known as the Conservatives - I am no longer at liberty to comment, so I would merely recommend that you go to your local library and find out for yourself.

But consider the options if 'we' go to war. Either the Iraqis will once again be exterminated on an industrial scale by the Yanks and the RAF, in which case the feeling of persecution and outraged helplessness that is the thing that turns young Palestinians into suicide bombers will be felt by millions of Muslims all over the world. What will happen to the diversity of places like Bradford if or when such bombs start going off in Britain?

Or they will put up a stiff house-to-house fight, in which case large numbers of British servicemen will come home in body bags, and huge numbers of ordinary Brits at home will be angry and may well be inclined to take that anger out on the nearest Muslim, even though he or she may well actually think that Saddam Hussein is a murderous old goat much better off dead. What will happen in London if Bangladeshi restaurants suffer the same fate as German-owned shops did in 1914?

In either case, the biggest casualty of the war will not, for once, be truth, but the relative peace of the liberals' glorious multicultural society. In Britain, as in France, Germany, Holland and all the other liberal-run countries populated by blocks of the 32 million Muslims now estimated to live in Europe, the Clash of Civilisations heralded by the attack on Iraq could all too easily become a civil war as well. At the very least, we will undoubtedly see the native white/Christian majority hit by the kind of low level extreme fundamentalist violence that has made us the main victims of racist attacks and led to the murders of innocents like Ross Parker and Gavin Hopley.

THE FURTHER COLLAPSE OF 'MULTICULTURALISM'

In many European countries, support for nationalist parties akin to the BNP already hovers around the 18% mark also achieved by Steve Batkin in Stoke. Establishment commentators were quick to put that stunning result, like our advances in Burnley and Oldham, down to "racial tension" in the areas in question. Whether that's true is not to be debated here, but if the liberals believe that a handful of riots last summer was all it took to turn thousands of ordinary people into BNP voters, what do they think is going to happen if an extremist handful of those rioters - let alone any of the 4,000 Al Qaeda-trained militants officially estimated as living in our country - decide to bring the war home to Britain?

This is not something that is going to happen next week, perhaps not even over the next year or so. But it will happen sooner or later. How could it be otherwise? The US government is planning to occupy Iraq with the help of 10,000 British soldiers. The people behind that plan say openly that they know that the likely result of a 'Western' victory in the Gulf will be the fall of the House of Saud, resulting in the need to march into Saudi Arabia as well in order to keep its oil wealth out of the hands of the Talibanlike regime which would otherwise take over. That in turn would make likely that other corrupt pro-American governments in the Islamic world would fall like so many dominoes: Egypt; the Magreb; Indonesia; even the narco-nuclear state of Pakistan.

With every new crisis, even a 'Western' 'victory' will produce fresh problems - a new place where young occupation soldiers will be easy terrorist targets, another puppet regime to pay for and prop up, a further load of high octane fuel thrown on the already raging fire of resentment and hatred of those who feel defeated and humiliated, wherever they happen to live. The security that most Westerners took for granted for forty years or so is over. Mr. Fear is just around the corner, and everyone knows what he looks like. And all this won't be over by Christmas, or even in six years' time like the American neoconservatives hope.

THE ALTERNATIVES

It will go on, and on, and on - Belfast on a global scale - for a generation. Apart from Armageddon, there are only three ways in which it can end:

i) The de-Islamification of hundreds of millions of people;

ii) Tensions in the multicultural West leading to the political defeat of the liberal elites and their replacement by nationalist governments which will do a peace deal with Islam - "We'll get out of your part of the world if you'll get out of ours;"

iii) A collapse in US political will and economic viability leading to a return to isolationism - a cross between the cut-and-run from Vietnam and the German collapse in 1918, something which would also quite possibly lead to the political and cultural eclipse of America's client regimes elsewhere in the West, and the consequent victory of nationalism.

From the nationalist point of view, "two out of three ain't bad", especially when the first of the three just isn't a realistic possibility. It is in this sense, not in terms of the possibility of massive casualties among our servicemen or of a 'dirty' nuclear device going off in Trafalgar Square, that we're back in August 1914. We are sliding into a war which our soldiers will probably 'win', but which our masters can only lose. Just as the social order that the Victorians took for granted died in the mud of Flanders, so the multicultural Utopia of the liberal elite will die as the sounds of the dusty conflict in the Middle East echo through the streets of the West.