Having comprehensively denied, omitted, obscured or distorted the facts over Iraq, the media are now starting to claim that the only reason for Tony Blair's actions must be that he is insane. This smear, so redolent of the techniques associated with Stalinism, surfaced today in the august prose of Anatole Kaletsky in the Times. To be fair to Kaletsky, his main complaint was that Blair's conference speech was astonishingly confused and made a serious leap of logic about Saddam's dangerousness, the point that I made in my own post below. But to conclude that as a result Blair must have lost his reason is itself a leap of logic -- and one which surely reflects a more general opinion that not just Blair's oratory but his behaviour over Iraq is so out of kilter with all the known facts that no explanation is possible other than insanity.

But in the course of his argument, Kaletsky reveals, through his display of both ignorance and non-sequiturs, that it is he who is out of touch with reality. He quoted Blair's suggestion that people either thought that what was going on now was essentially the same as before with isolated groups perpetrating isolated acts of terrorism, or they thought there was a completely new phenomenon of worldwide terrorism based on a perversion of Islam. From this statement of the obvious, Kaletsky triumphantly claimed to have spotted a logical flaw:

'If the “new” terrorists are isolated gangs of madmen with no defined objectives, then the fear of “provoking” them is irrelevant, since nihilists cannot, by definition, be provoked. Such nihilists, far from being “traditional” terrorists, as the Prime Minister suggested, are the opposite of traditional groups such as the IRA, Basque militants, Hezbollah or Hamas, all of which have clearly defined objectives.'

If you feel, after reading this passage, that you need to lie down in a darkened room with a wet towel round your head, I sympathise. It's not just Kaletsky's tortuous verbiage; it's that his argument makes no sense at all. First, nothing Blair said suggested the 'new' terrorists had no defined objectives. On the contrary, the objectives that they state repeatedly are to destroy western influence and values and re-establish the Islamic caliphate -- objectives that are no less clearly defined for being, as Blair suggested, worldwide. Next, since Blair dubbed these 'new' terrorists they are by definition the exact opposite of 'traditional' terrorists. So why does Kaletsky claim Blair said they were 'traditional'?

Next, Kaletsky says this:

'If, on the other hand, the “new” terrorism is really a malignant offshoot of the Wahhabi religious movement — then it is similar to traditional Irish and Palestinian terrorism, albeit more vicious and destructive. In that case, needless provocation should be avoided and the response must be political as well as by force.'

Oh dear oh dear. 1) Irish and Palestinian terrorism are entirely different. The former wants to remove a sovereign country from one of its provinces. The latter wants to remove a sovereign country altogether. 2) Irish terrorism used violence for a limited political end. Wahabi-ism and Palestinian terrorism are cults of death fuelled by religious hysteria, and justified by religious edict. 3) The idea that these 'new' terrorists only act because they are provoked is stomach-turning, since what 'provokes' them is any attempt by their designated victims to prevent themselves from being murdered by them in the first place. In other words, Kaletsky's language moves the argument onto the terrorists' own chosen territory. This is morally repellent. Moreover, it is ignorant and idiotic, since everyone can see that what distinguishes these 'new' terrorists is the fact that no negotiation or compromise with them is possible.

Kaletsky invites readers to decide whether he himself rather than Blair is 'the one whose reason has disappeared'. Further comment is otiose.

Posted by melanie at September 30, 2004