On the bomb attacks in London.
Topic: Politics
I know what Churchill would have said.
"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life". Although it is no consolation for the bereaved, the fact that we are the target of fascist extremists should be a source of pride to us. No extremists threaten Luxembourg, because Luxembourg doesn't threaten them. Your choice of enemies says a lot about your values.
Swift condemnation followed Thursday's news, but of more importance is the national mood in the weeks that follow. Opinion polls suggest that Britain's resolve is unwavering, but among the chattering classes are those who say that we should withdraw from Iraq. In doing so they often suggest that there is some moral equivalence in the attacks on London and the war we are fighting to create a more democratic Middle-East. They are wrong.
In case it needs spelling out, there is a huge difference and it is this: those innocent Iraqi civilians who were killed in the 2003 war were the
unintended victims of a war to remove a regime that itself had killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. The civilians who died on Thursday were the
intended victims of an attack that was aimed at discouraging democratic reform in Iraq.
In 1991, when the first president George Bush hinted that he would help Iraqis if they rose up against Saddam Hussein, many thousands of them took him at his word and did just that. They got no backing and were slaughtered. It was perhaps the greatest betrayal of an oppressed people in my lifetime and it still sickens me now. It showed that the removal of Saddam was something for which Iraqis were prepared to fight and die.
Al Qaeda doesn't care about Iraqi civilians. It bombs them every day and it regards the Shiite people as infidels. If the Iraq war had toppled Saddam without a single loss of life, it would still hate us for introducing democratic institutions and holding an election. Freedom is what it fears most, because oppression and misrule breed a tolerance to extremism. It doesn't want Arab people to prosper and live in peace, because it knows that they will lose their appetite for jihad if they do. Al Qaeda wants us to leave the middle-eastern nations we support only because it wants to topple them itself and restore the Caliphate, even if the majority of Arab people don't want it. The people who struck Britain last week weren't fighting back against imperialists, they
are imperialists.
We are in a war for civilisation against an ideological enemy in which we are employing an ideological strategy. Going into Iraq and introducing democratic values is a sound move in the context. It follows from the principle of opening up a second front when in possession of superior military and economic resources.
There can be no appeasement of Islamic fundamentalism. Its demands are non-negotiable. It must be utterly defeated. Those who seek
peace must realise that it is a necessary, but not sufficient condition of victory. After all, Auschwitz has peace. Islamic fascists threaten the freedom of people all around the world, not just in the Middle-East and the West, but also in Asia and the Pacific Rim. Our duty is not to end the fight, but to win it.
_ DY
at 4:41 PM BST
Updated: Monday, 11 July 2005 5:04 PM BST