He asked, "Does the House not believe that hatred and bitterness have been engendered by the invasion and occupation of Iraq, by the daily destruction of Palestinian homes, by the construction of the great apartheid wall in Palestine and by the occupation of Afghanistan? Does it understand that the bitterness and enmity generated by those great events feed the terrorism of bin Laden and other Islamists?"
Iraq is getting worse, not better, he said, adding that the killing there does not count. "Many members of Parliament find it easy to feel empathy with people killed in explosions by razor-sharp red-hot steel and splintering flying glass when they are in London, but they blank out of their mind entirely the fact that a person killed in exactly the same way in Fallujah died exactly the same death....I know that for many people in the House and in power in this country, the blood of some people is worth more than the blood of others."
Galloway is too easily dismissed in Britain. The usual view is that he said this because he would. But Charles Kennedy, leader of the Liberal Democrat party, was less easy to dismiss. The war and "the mismanagement of the aftermath have fuelled the conditions in which terrorism flourishes", he said at a lecture. Kennedy then went on to add, "I am not here implying some causal link between Britain's involvement in Iraq and the terrible terrorist attacks in London last week.... But those, like President Bush and Tony Blair, who have sought to link Iraq with the so-called 'war on terror', can hardly be surprised when members of the public draw the same link when acts of terrorism occur here in the United Kingdom."
There was more on the Iraq link than these views above. A dossier from the prime minister's office leaked to The Sunday Times says the Iraq war has been a key cause behind bringing young British Muslims to terrorism. And it sees the government as doing little on Kashmir too. The dossier says, "The perception (among Muslims) is that passive 'oppression', as demonstrated in British foreign policy, eg non-action on Kashmir and Chechnya, has given way to 'active oppression'. The war on terror, and in Iraq and Afghanistan, are all seen by a section of British Muslims as having been acts against Islam."
