Yourtrenchant editorial against the criminal terrorism committed in Paris (8 January) asserts the “adjectives are simply not there to capture the horror unleashed by weapons of war in a civilian office”. Maybe not for the Paris outrage. However, we should not forget Nato – on our behalf – has twice unleashed just such weapons when it bombed media headquarters in its invasions of Serbia and Afghanistan respectively. The then prime minister Tony Blair described the attack on the Serbian state television headquarters in Belgrade, killing 13 members of the media, as “entirely legitimate”. But the then general secretary of the National Union of Journalists described the attack as “barbarity”, adding that “killing journalists does not stop censorship, it only brings more repression”. In 2001, just before the Northern Alliance marched into Kabul on 12 November, the US, acting for Nato, dropped a bomb on the studios of the Arab satellite TV station al-Jazeera, also damaging nearby offices of the BBC and the Associated Press. Colonel Rick Thomas, in an unconvincing apologia to CBS News for the US Central Command, insisted that the building was “a known al Qaida facility in central Kabul ... We had no indications this or any nearby facility was used by al-Jazeera”. By chance, nobody was hurt, as the building was not occupied at the time by any of the 10 al-Jazeera journalists and technicians based there.
It is never right to attack journalists, even if you disagree with the editorial position of their media outlet, print or broadcast. We should uphold this defence of freedom, not apply it selectively.
Dr David Lowry
Stoneleigh, Surrey
• The last surviving British veteran of the first world war, Harry Patch, claimed rightly that war is organised murder. So-called terrorism is merely organised murder usually by non-state actors. There is no one method of killing or motive for killing that is always present in terrorism and never present in war. But even the Guardian does not seem to realise this, referring to the sanguinary wars waged by the west in recent times as “misadventures” and the sanguinary actions of the non-state actors at the offices of Charlie Hebdo as “murder”. Both are to be utterly condemned. To condemn the one and not the other is intellectually and morally dishonest.
Malcolm Pittock
Bolton, Greater Manchester
• This is a terrible tragedy for the families of the murdered journalists and their co-workers. Our condolences must go out to them. Amid the outrage about this act, there is anger about the offence against free speech and the question is asked “How can they do such a thing?” Which, of course, no one attempts to answer. From the point of view of the killers, they were merely attacking part of the propaganda apparatus of their enemies – perhaps considering it akin to the allies execution of Lord Haw-Haw after the second world war. But before the howls of whataboutery and the sanctity about free speech start, perhaps some people in the western media should ask themselves whether they raised sufficient concerns when the Americans killed an al-Jazeera journalist in 2003? This was far from being an isolated case as the US killing of ITN’s Terry Lloyd – described as a war crime by the National Union of Journalists – demonstrated. More recently, how many western news outlets are acknowledging that it is the US that is funding the Egyptian military that is imprisoning journalists on trumped-up charges?
Of course we could ignore the unequal power dynamic that is at work and fail to reflect on the forces that construct this conflict. The atrocity would then be used as an excuse to continue to kill more of them who in turn would enjoy greater recruitment to kill more of us.
Dr Gavin Lewis
Manchester
• We are continuing to pay a stiff price for Charlie Wilson’s war and arming Afghani tribesmen with Stinger missiles to down Soviet helicopters. It would have been as well to let the communists build infrastructure, sort out land ownership and secularise Afghanistan instead of the US continuing its decades-long jihad against communism. The Muslim jihadis are a byproduct of a superstitious holy war against the secular philosophy of communism.
DBC Reed
Thorplands, Northamptonshire
• Kidnapping, torture, rendition, illegal invasion, bombing, assassination, suspension of habeas corpus. Hundreds of thousands of non-combatants dead, men, women and children. How then shall we now with conviction resist the pernicious, toxic metaphysical ideology that left 12 tragically dead in a Paris office? Those who break the law cannot rely on its protection. To honour Charlie Hebdo we must live up to andby the fundamental principles it has taken us 2,000 years to embed in our democratic way of life. No exceptions. Or we will lose.
Keith Farman
St Albans, Hertfordshire
• I have always thought we were wrong to involve ourselves in Middle Eastern conflicts. However, the assassination of 12 cartoonists and journalists in their workplace is unforgivable. Our society and culture is based in the ability to rib and ridicule the pillars that hold us up, this is our check and balance, this is what keeps our people in power in their place. This extends to our god. I now fear that as a result of Wednesday’s events our journalists and cartoonists will still their pens for fear of retribution in the form of an AK47. If so, we have lost everything.
Jake Ridley
Saul, Gloucestershire
