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| Terror Networks |
| Force can crack Islamist terror |
| 2004-04-21 |
| There was a knock on the door at four in the morning above a take-away food shop in Manchester this week. People in the neighbouring flat reported being held under virtual house arrest while armed police led away the "friendlyâ, "hard-workingâ guys who ran the kebab place and then searched their premises. In simultaneous raids across the Midlands, 10 people were arrested in an operation involving four police forces and 400 officers. These co-ordinated arrests were apparently based on information gathered by surveillance of e-mails and mobile phone conversations. Is this a Britain that you scarcely recognise? Perhaps. Does it worry you? I doubt it. I suspect that you recognise that we live in extraordinary times - much more extraordinary than the period from which we are now emerging when the parochial terrorism of the IRA was a feature of daily life. As George Bush and Tony Blair keep saying, we are in a new kind of war. Anybody who saw the unretouched photographs of the Madrid train bombing will know that this is not hyperbole. This is a fight to the death with forces who - quite explicitly - have no regard for the value of human life and who make no demands coherent or consistent enough to be comprehensible. This is not politics as we know it. It is not war - or even terrorism as an act of war - as we have previously understood it. It is a kind of mystical nihilism. Defeating it is going to take all of the organised energy and commitment that the rich, decadent West can muster. It will also involve quite a few concessions with what we regard as our ancient freedoms. But that's how it is. The right to live is not just the most important entitlement in a free society: it is the one on which all the other rights are predicated. There are no civil liberties in the grave. That is the conclusion that has clearly been reached in Washington, which is why Mr Bush has apparently embraced (by failing to condemn) Ariel Sharon's policy of targeted assassination of Hamas leaders. Washington and Israel - and London, too - are, for the moment, in the same game. Their goal is not, as the anti-Zionist media lobby believes, the extinction of the Palestinian cause in the interests of US-Israeli imperialism. It is the eradication of an international terror network that uses the fate of Palestinian refugees as a pretext when it suits, but is actually dedicated to a transcendental vision of Arabic conquest of historical territories. These lands that al-Qa'eda has chosen to see as the Muslim birthright include a good deal of southern Spain. The Madrid bombing was more to do with this spiritual vendetta than with the presence of Spanish troops in Iraq. That, presumably, is why Islamist terrorists, such as those who blew themselves up when efficiently traced by Spanish security forces, continued to be active in Spain even after the election of José Zapatero as prime minister. The closest parallel in modern history to this blood and soil dream of reclaiming ancient lands from the usurper was the Nazi dream of Aryan reclamation of those parts of Europe with Germanic roots. The Wagnerian, German romantic mythology of expulsion from homelands leading to a sacred Teutonic mission of rebirth, has an uncannily similar ring to the new Islamist claims of Muslim displacement and injustice. Europe (and especially Russia, whose behaviour in the current crisis has been ignominious) should have learnt its lesson about dealing with this kind of insanity - and about what happens when you try to pretend that it is somehow capable of rational containment. All of this is mixed up with the local difficulties in the Middle East: the Arabists of the Foreign Office (and the BBC World Service), not to mention the governments of Old Europe who have their own Muslim ex-colonials to appease, cannot see why we have to go to the brink for what one French ambassador famously called the "shitty little countryâ of Israel. They have not yet grasped that al-Qa'eda with its lunatic raving about a new Muslim ascendancy has made Israel's struggle central - both practically and symbolically - to the survival of Western interests. When Mr Sharon assassinates the leaders of Hamas who have committed themselves to a non-negotiable programme of murder and extermination, he is doing no more than accepting the rules of the game as laid out by al-Qa'eda and practised by its franchised Palestinian branches. |
| Posted by:PlanetDan |
| #3 To clarify a little: This is a fight to the death with forces who - quite explicitly - have no regard for the value of human life and who make no demands coherent or consistent enough to be comprehensible. This is not politics as we know it. It is not war - or even terrorism as an act of war - as we have previously understood it. It is a kind of mystical nihilism. I am forced to wonder how long and how many atrocities it is going to take before the world's population finally understands this. It will also involve quite a few concessions with what we regard as our ancient freedoms. And this is pure horseradish. The only concession which must be made is recognizing that it will take a really, really big stick to club Islamic fundamentalists into submission. When enough tens of thousands of people have died and enough trillions of dollars have been bled out of our world by way of flat economies and forcible regime change, maybe then the world's governments will realize that there does exist a credible deterrent to terrorism. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-04-21 8:40:54 PM |
| #2 It will take more than force to "crack terror." Terrorism relies upon random application of barbaric savagery. A spiked club of monstrous proportion must be held over their heads, poised to retaliate against any further atrocities. Such a deterrent does exist. It is up to our leaders to overcome any squeamishness concerning the brutal repression of those who seek to commit global cultural genocide. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-04-21 4:57:01 PM |
| #1 Nice to see this in the British Press. Not to mention, France's expulsion of radical imams. However, I want to see their reaction after a succesful terrorist attack in France. |
| Posted by: Daniel King 2004-04-21 1:18:15 PM |