Waleed Aly: apologising for barbarism in the name of peace

Waleed Aly’s “Something we should talk about” segment on Channel 10’s The Project last night, has gone viral, with more than 15 million views on Facebook in less than 24 hours.

Aly argues that we can only destroy ISIL if we stand together against bigots such as Pauline Hanson and other hard-line Islamophobes. But for all his evocation of liberal humanism and a desire for community harmony, Aly actually misses the mark.

His speech is ISIL: how to isolate and destroy it. But the imperialist states and their Middle East partners which are ultimately responsible for the rise of militant Islamism are spared his acid tongue.

Aly said that ISIL “want countries like ours to reject their Muslims and vilify them”. True, but when it comes to identifying those responsible for the vilification of Muslims and making their lives a living hell, Aly would do better to focus on the governments, media and state security apparatuses that have waged a war on Islam for 15 years.

Aly charges ISIL with “wanting to start World War III – a global war between Muslims and everyone else”. But how else should we describe the experience of much of the Middle East at the hands of successive White House administrations and their allies?

ISIL is a foul reactionary outfit precisely because it is born of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead and the collapse of state structures. The barbarism that has engulfed sections of Iraq is due to “countries like ours” invading, raping, pillaging and destroying. Former US president George W Bush in 2001 called the butchering that was about to be unleashed a “crusade” to “rid the world of evil doers”.

Where do the endless wars being waged by the imperialist powers, the 70-year occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the black prisons, or the Western support for the crimes of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states fit into Aly’s narrative?

There was nothing but a damning silence.

Pauline Hanson does need to be put in her box for stoking bigotry and attempting to capitalise from it. But when you pass over the crimes of the West, Australia included, you’re not building “community cohesion”, you’re giving carte blanche to the biggest war criminals of all.