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November 24, 2003
The demented logic of appeasement
Daily Mail, 24 November 2003 Following last week’s terrible carnage in Turkey, there are still grave doubts over whether this country has even now woken from its apparent trance to grasp the full nature of the threat we all face, and what needs to be done to counter it. After the bombing of the British consulate, al Q’aeda threatened it would now target the UK itself along with Australia, Italy and Japan. In an under-reported paragraph, it also singled out for specific attack Jews around the world. Faced with the criticism that the government is not doing enough to protect the country, the Home Secretary David Blunkett says that what’s needed is good intelligence rather than massive concrete blocks round every building. This is true as far as it goes. And the police and intelligence agencies seem to have got their act together since 9/11 caught them so badly on the hop. But Mr Blunkett’s remarks will still strike many as hopelessly complacent. For in a number of areas, the government still seems – bafflingly – to be sitting on its hands. How, for example, can it have ‘good intelligence’ while it has lost control of our borders so that it hasn’t got a clue who is entering or leaving the country? In one chilling estimate, police sources say there could be scores of individuals in Britain prepared to turn themselves into human bombs. But when illegal immigrants are simply disappearing into society by the thousand, how can they be detected? Worse still, some of these potential terrorists are thought to be British Muslims. Clearly, this is a terrible thing for the law-abiding majority in that community. The only way to crack this appalling problem is for Muslims themselves to help the authorities to identify the extremists in their midst. But many say that even when they do just that, the authorities still do nothing. No action is taken, for example, against the clerics who have hijacked mosques up and down the country to incite young Muslims to hate the west and even recruit them to terrorism. Groups such as Hizb ut Tahrir or al Muhajiroun, which support suicide bombings and call for the Jews to be killed, are still allowed to whip up hatred and violence against the west on the streets of Britain – even though other countries have declared them illegal organisations. No action is taken against Arab publications on open sale which promulgate antisemitism and incitement against America or Israel. The government’s inability to grasp the crucial part played by the hysterical incitement of irrational hatred means it also refuses to shut down organisations like Filastin al Muslema, a principal source of funds for Hamas based in London. It says there is no proof the money is used to fund acts of terror --but at the very least, it funds terror’s recruitment. Even where the government does take action, as in the attempt to strip the radical preacher Abu Hamza of British citizenship and deport him, it is mired in legal delay. So even last weekend, Hamza was still free to whip up his followers by predicting imminent terror attacks in Britain. Italy, by contrast, recently managed to throw a similarly compromised imam out of the country more or less overnight. Not for nothing is our capital now referred to as ‘Londonistan’, the west’s prime exporter of terror. In addition, there is still no general grasp of the real nature of the threat. Like many others, Clare Short has blamed the Istanbul bombing on Tony Blair’s decision to attack Iraq. This is demonstrably absurd. Al Q’aeda was attacking western interests for a decade before 9/11, let alone the Iraq war. Ms Short’s argument echoes the Islamists’ claim that their violence is merely a response to western aggression. But this is a reversal of the truth. For it is they who have declared war upon the west. And they have done so not because of Iraq, or Israel, but to destroy western democracy, capitalism and modernity, whose very existence is held to be an assault upon Islam. Al Q’aeda’s on-line magazine recently made clear yet again that the aim is to islamicise all western countries: ‘Therefore, the crime of the tyrants in infidel countries, who do not rule according to Allah's law, is an enormous sin… and we are obliged to fight them and initiate until they convert to Islam, or until Muslims rule the country’. The crime is considered even worse, it says, for those who rule ‘Muslim’ countries not in accordance with Islam – which includes not only Israel but reformist or anti-terrorist Muslim regimes, which must all therefore be obliterated. Hence the attacks by the global jihad –of which al Q’aeda is part – upon Indonesia, Morocco, Nigeria, Kashmir and Saudi Arabia; hence the murderous attacks on Christians around the world, along with Jews, secularists, Hindus and reformist Muslims. It is, as Jack Straw has said, a war being waged against the civilised world. But when Islamists blow up westerners, these terrorists say they are only acting in self-defence because the west’s modernising influence is itself an act of violence. So any attempt by the civilised world to defend itself against real acts of terror is represented by Islamists as aggression. And in doing so, they do indeed incite other Muslims to rise up against this alleged attack upon Islam. The mad logic of this way of thinking is that the west must never defend itself against terror because to do so may provoke more Islamists to sign up to mass murder. So because of their demented way of looking at the world, we shouldn't fight back at all. This is tantamount to a call to surrender, not just to fascism but to a kind of insanity. Dismayingly, though, such a reversal of victim and victimiser strikes a chord in Britain. The Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane provoked fury when he courageously observed that British Muslims had to make much clearer a choice between terrorism and non-violence. In view of the extremists in their midst, this was surely a reasonable enough comment. But Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, astonishingly said that Mr MacShane’s remark could ‘drive Muslims into the arms of extremists’. In other words, any criticism of Muslims is no longer to be allowed, and terrorism is to be blamed on those who warn against it. In a similar display of spinelessness, the European Union's racism watchdog has suppressed a report on antisemitism because it concluded that Muslims and pro-Palestinian groups were behind many of the incidents it examined. If people accept the twisted reasoning of the proponents of terror, it will win. And if a country flinches from the action that needs to be taken against terror, it will win. Later this week, the Queen’s Speech is expected to include sweeping new emergency laws to counter terror. But unless we take the action that is necessary against those who intend to destroy our democracy, freedom and way of life, passing yet more laws will not prevent us from being –as Abu Hamza has taunted us – ‘sitting ducks’ waiting for attack. Posted by melanie at November 24, 2003
Comments
We must view any comments by Clare Short MP in the light of her constituency and its ethnic composition. She puts her constituency above the national interest, as do many with mUslim claques within their constituency parties. Only Labour faces a threat from ethnic parties in inner cities, the other major political groups do not have such a dependency. The Government is essentially weak: they could dust off the 1872 (?) Conspiracy Act and start tightening up, or even use the Seditious Meetings Act that Pitt introduced; but they are still besotted with the European Conventions......and live in Angst....lest the first outrage when it comes in Europe unleashes popular anger and mosques burn. It is rather like the fact that in 1938 London could boast I think 24 AA guns; or Hull Council would not permit TA Soldiers in city parks, until war broke out; a state of unpreparedness exists; and when the dam bursts these politicians will be by-passed by the surging torrents of anger. It is a giant bluff, and when the bluff is called the world will spin on a new axis. New York was complacent on 10/11 and fearful on 15/11........London or Berlin or Madrid will also change European perspectives when it happens. Complacency is the usual course. The destruction of Poland in September 1939 allowd Britain and France the luxury of 7 months "Phoney War" so they could relax instead of preparing; and after Dunkirk they had to react rather than prepare. Posted by: Peter Williamson at November 24, 2003 10:41 AMHow does one 'fight back' against the suicide bomber? The Muslim community, far from supplying significant numbers of killers, has supplied a disproportionately high number of voices for peace and dialogue. Note then the numbers of Muslims who participated in the peaceful demonstrations against the war. But this is an affront to Melanie Phillips, how dare they fail to support the war? So we won't hear of that. Nor will we hear the routine denunciations of Muslims of others who claim to represent Islam and Muslims in Britain. Indeed, it is in the interests for the likes of Melanie Phillips and the Daily Mail to have bogeymen such as Aby Hamza. Posted by: T Munabbih at November 24, 2003 12:50 PM"How does one 'fight back' against the suicide bomber? You do what Israel is doing: go after those who dispatch these murderers; something in fact that was strongly supported recently by a retired very senior British general. Posted by: Pooh at November 24, 2003 02:30 PMWhile we have your here Mr. Munabbih, would you kindly explain to us how the Islamic concept of the Dhimmi which creates a second-class status in Moslem societies for Jew and Christian alike assists this peace and dialogue you speak about? Posted by: Pooh at November 24, 2003 02:34 PMDo we want to see Mossad-style 'targeted killings' in the UK? I think not. The Israelis can't teach us anything about counter-terrorism. Posted by: M Wilkins at November 24, 2003 02:43 PMWe have already seen Mossad-style "targeted killing" in the UK, directed against the IRA; and it worked well enough to induce that organisation to declare a ceasefire. Posted by: GrimReaper at November 24, 2003 06:44 PMMuslims in the UK would have you believe that Islam is a religion of "peace"! But look around the world today and one perceives a religion of unbridled "hate". It appears highly likely that we will suffer some event equal to or greater than 9/11. Muslim barracades will then go up around Muslim enclaves for they have consistenly told us their religion is more important than any allegiance to Great Britain. The likes of Trevor Phillips and the race relations industry will be swept aside. Posted by: Frisbee at November 24, 2003 06:52 PM"Do we want to see Mossad-style 'targeted killings' in the UK? I think not. The Israelis can't teach us anything about counter-terrorism." No, of course not, the Jewish people who have won an enormous percentage of the world's Nobel Prizes can't teach Perfidious Albion anything - unfortunately for Albion. Britain's experience with the IRA is a walk in the park compared to what she's up against now. This is terror on a scale that has never been seen before. The targeting of the "masters of terror" might not be perfect, but is the only practical way of dealing with the problem. What I find so breathtakingly hypocritical is that Britain who just in the last few years is responsible for countless civilian deaths in places like Serbia and Iraq (never mind the attempts, successful and otherwise, to target Saddam Hussein and his family) expresses outrage when Israel actually attempts to target those responsible for terror. God alone knows what Britain would say if the Jewish State employed British tactics of mass bombing raids over cities. What can possible account for this hypocrisy? Well, as a leading newspaper in Poland of all places suggested a few days ago, European gentiles haven't got the balls to murder Jews any longer, but they sure get a kick when a whole bunch of them are blown up by suicide bombers. Allied with this is the typical anti-Semitism of Europe which holds Jews up to a different standard to everyone else. Woe betide the Jew who will actually behave like the rest of humanity and stand up for himself. No, the European gentile infinitely prefers the image of the sensitive Jew being betrayed by his neighbors and then murdered. And that is exactly why Europe can never ever play a significant role in trying to bring peace between the Jewish State and the Arabs: she has not got one solitary penny in her moral bank account. Posted by: Pooh at November 24, 2003 06:59 PM"No, of course not, the Jewish people who have won an enormous percentage of the world's Nobel Prizes can't teach Perfidious Albion anything - unfortunately for Albion.......if the Jewish State employed British tactics of mass bombing raids over cities."
What Nobel Prizes have to do with assassination I know not. Since Imperial College London is the leading European institution for Nobel Prizes, you suggest they advise on targetted killing ? Or do you think Menachem Begin got his Nobel Peace Prize for killing terrorists ?
So now it is the Poles you loathe. Does it ever end ? Maybe you are just too good for this world Pooh.......! I am glad you know about the IRA....you would know then they are the most professional terrorist group around. The chaotic Arab terrorists have to blow themselves up because they have no infrastructure. The Arabs are chaotic and seem to depend on sloppy Israeli security - how else can you kill soldiers in a barracks ? Perhaps Israel could do with tighter security; it has too much myth around its competence and too much hubris has shown that little girls dressed as Israelis can blow buses to pieces on a regular timetable. There is something very deficient in Israeli security. Few people would waste a $50.000 missile to kill a terrorist, but the US taxpayer is so generous. Using cluster bomblets to police civilian areas is also not the best idea. You know Pooh, Israel has a lot to learn about terrorism; perhaps it should revisit Begin and Shamir and see how they would have dealt with those terrorists......the British certainly were not ruthless enough......how do you think we should have dealt with Begin ? "Of course the sheer fact that there are a huge amount of Muslims, approximately 70 million in the EU, this issue has also turned into a political matter. I would say, in my opinion, EU governments are not doing enough to tackle anti-semitism," he said. "
" We have already seen Mossad- What rot. We sat down with them Pooh,You seem to forget that all this is a walk in the park to people who lived through 1939-45.And please cut the insults eh!It demeans a serious matters. Posted by: Peter Bocking at November 26, 2003 03:25 AM"The French and the Germans are so obsessed with their own historical tragedies and their national shame over the events of the past century, that they fail to see the true global danger of this one. So infinitely relieved are they that the European nightmare is ended, and so narcissistic are they as to believe that a peaceful Europe must equal a peaceful world, that they cannot see the threat of Islamic terrorism for what it is."
Melanie is absolutely correct when she observes that a government which pretends it has good intelligence on terrorism and hasn't even got the faintest idea what Muslim flotsam and jetsom is floating around the Muslim "community" - whatever the hell that is - is in no position to make plans to foil terrorists. It can't even identify the ones in our midst. Posted by: Caroline at November 26, 2003 01:43 PMCaroline, what you state is perfectly true, but the first duty of a government is to itself; and it usually lies to its own people on the basis of 'not frightening the children'. You must watch that seminal political satire "Wizard of Oz" and at the end observe the Wizard and is wondrous abilities. Frank Baum depicted it all so well on the yellow-brick road.......or as some would say, path to perdition. It is smoke and mirrors, and politics is about illusion. In former days it was modelled on the Church with Ministers and Missions and Ministries........today it is Departments and Initiatives and Conferences.........where once it was the rectitude and duty of a politician that was supposed to hold our awe, today it is his 'scientific' competence, modernising instinct and Tv gimmicks. The fact is that they are a group of mediocrities with an overblown sense of self-importance who could succeed in no other walk of life save where their tongue gets more exercise than any other part of their anatomy. Posted by: Peter Williamson at November 26, 2003 02:01 PMIn mandatory Palestine, the British did targeted killings of freedom fighters (Avraham Stern, for instance), imprisoned, deported or executed other Jewish freedom fighters (calling them, by the way, terrorists) and also closed the doors of the region to Jews who were trying to put in practice their right of return, usually sending them back to Europe's really occupied territories. By the end of the mandate, the number of British troops there wasn't much smaller than that of American troops today in Iraq, which is slightly bigger and more populous. The British also trained a Quisling army of mercenaries to fight and murder those freedom fighters: it was called the Arab Legion and its commander was Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot Glubb. Of course the UK could have found another solution. It could, in the 30s and 40s, have accepted in Britain the Jews who wanted to leave Europe and those who had to leave the Arab countries, giving them British citizenship. But the UK didn't want to disturb its own demography by accepting a population that was, at best, 10% of its own. Actually the Jews don't have much to teach to the Brits, but Israel can still learn a lot from them. Posted by: nelson ascher at November 26, 2003 05:37 PMIs it a law in the Daily Mail office that all articles have to involve illegal immigrants regardless of whether they have any relevence to the article itself? It must be difficult if you were writing about children's television shows... 'With names like Great Uncle Bulgaria and Madame Cholait it is perhaps worth noting that The Wombles are clearly illegal immigrants camping rough in Wimbledon Common, having no recognisable talents they clearly would have been turned back at immigration...' It can surely only be because she was forced to that Ms. Phillips brings up the spectre of a tide of faceless immigrants waiting to become human bombs for the cause of jihad, as to date everyone arrested and/or charged with acts of terror connected to Al Qaeda has been a completely legal member of the society they came from, sometimes even second or third generation. She also raises the image of preachers travelling round mosques in this country inciting people to violence (in which case they've so far done an extremely poor job of it, how many mosques divided by how few terrorists?) when laws to prevent them from saying what they like would also stop newspapers like The Sun and The Daily Mail from printing articles from people like Ms. Phillips. And as for Denis Mcshane's fatuous comments about British Muslims having to choose between peace or terrorism (again, how many British Muslims divided by how few terrorist convictions?) Ms. Phillips would presumerably react with fury if he suggested that British Jews have to choose between peace or acts of terror in Palestine. Posted by: Loz at November 28, 2003 10:29 AM"Denis Mcshane's fatuous comments about British Muslims having to choose between peace or terrorism (again, how many British Muslims divided by how few terrorist convictions?) " Yes, McShane was even more loopy than normal. He is unctuous in his sycophantic self-serving insincerity on the subject of Europe (probably a paid advocate from some reptile fund); but has gone completely askew on this one. His blanket accusation by implication that ALL Muslims support terrorists unless they affirm otherwise is peculiar. When John Townend MP made a few simple valedictory remarks he was subjected to Labour/Media thumbscrews.......and he said nothing as stupid or preposterous as McShane. If others were to say what McShane printed but did not say they would be called all the numbers under a New Labour sun combining BNP and whatever other bogeys ive in Labour demonology. However, there are crackpots amongst the Muslim community feeding off it, and the cooperation of the majority in rooting it out is discreetly and consistently required; as in all parts of society to root out criminals who hide in the shadows. The duty on the Muslims is the same as on any other group in British society, it is to preserve liberty and stability to removing terrorists and criminals. Posted by: Red_Baron at November 29, 2003 10:18 AMDear Melanie, what does Osama bin Laden really aim? His Islamism, is it more than a tricky Big-Mouth-Campaign to get free shelter outside Saudi-Arabia during his terror battle and large resemblement of volunteers to fight for him badly paid? (Not that badly everyone at all - When I was investigating in Baghdad this May I was eyewitness that a crook presented an U.S.Seargant a proper looking Iraqi passport. A few days ago I had seen the same guy at the hotel checking in with a Jordan one. Guess in what kind of business that man is involved.) And is there any more real interest on his side than replacing the governing Saudi dynasty by a Ladeni one and launch confusion and chaos all around The Middle East so that a forthcoming Ladeni-Arabia easily could conquer and annex Iraq, Jordan and all the Gulf Emirates? Tell me. Now lets talk about the West, its modernity, capitalism and democracy. Italy recently managed to throw a terror attacks predicting imam out of the country - Well done. For Allahs sake, not to that Guantanamo Bay, a place that gives not only muslims an idea of how effective the protection and respect of elementary rights of human beings under suspicion in the West is all about. Some say: Western Muslims have to make much clearer a choice between terrorism and non-violence, and even if these reminders continue to fail to give any clever proposal HOW the Western Muslims could do it, they are right, arent they? BUT The West as a whole has to make a choice between the capitalism idea of modernity and the democratic idea of it. In his polemic "Die Machtwirtschaft" Christian Nürnberger calls for a elementary choice that has to be made rapidly: The West, should and will it be a community of ethics and conscience OR a community of nothing-but-profit? The oriental modernism initiated in Egypt after 1802 by Mohammed Ali as a response to the invasion of Napoleon and the Encyclopaedists - Was it abused and backstabbed by democrats? Or by capitalists? Keep on attac. But do forget of a da capo of Stop The War Coalitions marching season next spring in Rome, Berlin, Bruxelles, Paris, St. Petersburg, Washington etc., please. The only suitable place for the next march of that kind is Saadoun Street in nowhereelse but Baghdad. Get rid of all the Shit-In-Pants, Pouring/Spamming-with-declarations-and-other-papers and any other Big-Mouth-Far-Away-from-The-Battlefield-Only and come to Baghdad with Me and The Mine ! Martin James Paris Schodlok "Gesindel in Nadelstreifen" I thought it was called "Nieten in Nadelstreifen"....which of course is so true ! Posted by: Romulus at December 15, 2003 05:53 PMI can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars. Posted by: Niblock Jasper at January 20, 2004 06:07 AM |
