Posted on 08/12/2006 2:52:23 PM PDT by quidnunc
The foiled plot to blow up several trans-Atlantic flights originating in London demonstrates Britain’s problem with Islamic extremism is far deeper than its political class wants to acknowledge. So Londonistan author Melanie Phillips tells National Review Online. It also should remind us, she says, that Israel is the Western world’s front line of defense against that threat.
“All credit to [the British authorities] for uncovering it,” Phillips told NRO via phone from Israel on Friday afternoon. “But it’s not enough to thwart terror attacks if at the same time you are not only failing to come to grips with the radical ideology behind them, you are busy appeasing it.”
“This is really the core of the problem of what’s happening in Britain,” she said. “Even though Britain had its own atrocity last year, the 7/7 bombings, and it was perpetrated by British-born Muslim youths … there is a settled consensus developed among the political class in Britain that this was kind of one-off, that it wasn’t al Qaeda, that this was a group of guys who put together a plot because of anger over the war in Iraq. Britain does not want to believe what is patently obvious: that it has an enormous fifth column of radical Islamic terrorists who were born and bred in Britain.”
“The British are rightfully concerned to not want to demonize an entire community,” she said. “There are many hundreds of thousands of British Muslims who generally have no truck with radical Islam. Nevertheless, in absolute terms the numbers who have extremist views and support jihad are enormous and unsustainable. The reasons for this are religious. It doesn’t follow that all Muslims subscribe to this particular view, but those who do are being told to do so by Islam, by the belief rooted in Islamic theology, endorsed by clerics, that there is a duty to wage jihad, reestablish the caliphate and turn non-Muslims into believers. Britain refuses to accept this.”
The explanation for Britain’s deep state of denial, Phillips said, is partly psychological: “A holy war is a horrific concept. It is a protracted fight with an uncertain outcome and an enormous cost in terms of casualties. Human nature, when we are faced with a reality that is overwhelmingly awful, is to deny its existence and alight instead on something that is less bad.” She said that is why so many in Britain blame London and Washington for provoking terror attacks. “We can change ourselves. This is within the scope of our potential. Consequently, the British cannot come to grips with the terrible ideology that’s driving the global jihad.”
“It’s not enough to thwart terrorist plots and break up terrorist cells, vital as those things are,” she said. “In addition, what they have to do and have not done is address the ideas that are driving people to these horrible acts.” They are ideas, she said, based on a paranoid view of the world in which that the West is out to destroy the Muslim world and controlled by the Jews.
-snip-
Since this is Melanie Phillips Day on the Corner — would that it were Melanie Phillips Day at the White House or Foggy Bottom! — I thought it appropriate to offer this excerpt from Londonistan (pp. 49-50), which is a perfect explanation of why we are losing.
She is talking, of course, about the Brits, but she would equally well be describing us. Having lost the capacity, or at least the willingness, to come to grips with an existential threat catalyzed by religious conviction, we delude ourselves into believing we instead face merely episodic problems — treated as crimes or political disputes — that can be prosecuted or negotiated (or, I would add, democratized) away. This self-delusion pervades government, as well as the academy and the media.
Bottom line: the jihadists are true believers; we, to the contrary, having lost any sense that religious belief can animate a revolution, refuse to accept that there is a revolution … while looking for any explanation other than religion to explain what little we allow ourselves to see. Here is how the peerless Melanie Phillps explains it:
To understand the depth of this reluctance and incomprehension in Britain [to acknowledge a threat based on religious belief], … it is necessary first to bear in mind one of the most deeply rooted of all aspects of the British character. This is its belief in the rational, the everyday and what is demonstrably evident, and its corresponding suspicion of the abstract, the theoretical and the obscurantist.
Wars of religion, when different kinds of Christians burned each other at the stake in post-Reformation England, are seared into the British historical memory but belong to a premodern period of savagery upon which the country has long resolutely turned its back. The liberal settlement that followed the Enlightenment in Britain put religion very firmly back into its box and elevated reason to pole position as the supreme national virtue. This sturdy empiricism lies at the very core of the British love of liberty, and has bequeathed to them their deep skepticism of all forms of extremism. Presented with a ranting ideologue, the British are less likely to succumb than to scoff.
But the downside of this robustly down-to-earth approach is that the British now find it very hard to deal with religious fanaticism. They no longer recognize it — or want to recognize it. Presented with a patently ludicrous ideological ranting, they refuse to believe that anyone can take it seriously. So when Islamist clerics … were loudly trumpeting their hatred of the West and their calls to holy war against it, MI5 regarded them as little more than pantomime clowns, shooting their mouths off in the open where everyone could hear them and laugh them to scorn. Except, of course, a number of impressionable young Muslims did not laugh at all. Such ranting incited them instead to enlist in that holy war against the West which Britain refused to accept was an actual and lethal reality.
As one foreign intelligence source put it: “During the 1990s, many attempts were made to enlighten the British about what was happening. But they refused to see this problem as having a religious character. If this was a religious problem, it became a religious confrontation — and the specter of a religious war was too horrendous. A religious war is different from any other war because you are dealing with absolute beliefs and the room for compromise is very limited. Religious wars are very protracted and bloody, and often end up with a very high toll of lives.
“So Britain turned a blind eye to the fact that freedom of religion for Muslims means freedom to propogate their faith in every possible way. There was almost a conscious psychological suppression of this subject. Politicians didn’t want to think about it at all. The official class wanted to think about it in as narrow a way as possible by dealing with individual incidents as they occurred, but no more than that. They were very concerned about social unrest among Asians in cities like Bradford, but they treated it more as a criminal matter. There was a conscious and subsconscious effort to deracialize and depoliticize it and distance themselves from the religious aspects. After 9/11, they woke up in principle but not in practice. They still thought that the UK wasn’t in the front line, and if they continued with their policy of ‘benevolence’ the same thing wouldn’t happen to them.”
Posted at 9:44 AM
(‘The Corner’, in National Review, August 12, 2006)
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OGU5YzMzNmZiZjU0ZTI2Zjg4OWVlODFkZWIxYjkxMDQ=
More to the point. The Brits( and all of Europe and Canada) , like Americans have been indoctrinated (read brainwashed) by their LIBERAL media. Until that changes all bets are off.
"He who controls information..."
I don't know, the Brits seem to do a better job of investigating domestic terrorists than we do. All we get is a constant whine about our civil liberties being in danger.
One of the major problems is that once you have a pool of terrorists that exceeds law enforcements ability to track them, you're going to get hit. Tracking even 25 terror suspects is going to involve hundreds of public servants and a number of agencies.
Try tracking 250. Or 2,500. Or 25,000. Especially when every time a cell is caught, the government is seen as racist and anti-Islamic. More extremists are created, to avenge their comrades, and they are now armed, in a Darwinic fashion, with the knowledge of how not to get caught the same way their friends were.
Every time we roll up a terror cell, the next team gets harder to catch. Also, every time we investigate a new cell, it turns out to be only several months old, where a normal terrorist cell used to be several years old. They're gestating faster, and becoming harder to spot. Time in not on our side, and sadly, we won't be able to summon the national will to stamp out this type of evolving threat until we get hit again, and hard.
Muslims fear backlash
Peaceful neighborhood shattered by raids
All that PC crap
"Tracking even 25 terror suspects is going to involve hundreds of public servants and a number of agencies.
Try tracking 250. Or 2,500. Or 25,000."
Excellent point. I was thinking myself the other day, doesn't this sort of scalpel-style anti-terror operation only work when the number of radical muslims is relatively small. When a significant portion of the population is muslim and radicalized, doesn't that make anti-terror impossible from a law enforcement standpoint and become basically a civil war?
Yes, and once it reaches that point London will basically turn into Baghdad circa 2004-2005, when the city itself was basically quiet, but car bombs and other attacks seemed to come out of nowhere. There will be parts of town that the police won't enter without armored vehicles.
Most of the smart terrorists will never go to jail for long due to 'lack of evidence', and the flunkies that are caught with bomb making materials will be easily replaced. The strict PC mentality in Britain will hamstring their abilities to fight the problem once it passes a certain size. I hate to say it, but the UK is playing a game that it's bound to lose sooner or later. Their problem runs a lot deeper than 25 guys with homemade bombs.
The Brits' civil liberties are already gone. Ours are merely on the precipice of extinction.
"I don't know, the Brits seem to do a better job of investigating domestic terrorists than we do."
What makes you say that?
| As you probably know, the recent violence followed the kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers, one in Gaza and two in southern Lebanon. Which of the following statements comes closer to your own view? |
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| Israel has the right to defend itself and the Israeli attacks in Gaza and the Lebanon have been an appropriate and proportionate response to the kidnappings |
17 |
| Israel has the right to defend itself but the Israeli attacks in Gaza and the Lebanon have been an inappropriate and disproportionate response |
63 |
| Neither/Don't Know |
20 |
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| Some people say the Israelis have brought the present violence on themselves by refusing to withdraw behind their original borders and by taking over Palestinian land in the West Bank. Do you think the Israelis have, to any extent, brought the present violence on themselves? |
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| Yes, there would be fewer attacks and a real chance for peace if Israel withdrew behind its original borders |
40 |
| No, the opponents of Israel will always attack Israel and try to destroy it, no matter where its borders are |
35 |
| Don't know |
25 |
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How would you rate the American administration's performance in the current crisis? |
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|---|---|
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Excellent |
1 |
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Good |
4 |
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Fair |
18 |
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Poor |
32 |
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Very Poor |
27 |
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Don't Know |
18 |
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Which of the following statements comes closer to your own view? |
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Tony Blair in the current crisis gives the impression of making up his own mind and taking his own line |
15 |
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Tony Blair in the current crisis gives the impression of siding with the Americans, whatever the Americans say |
64 |
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Don't know |
21 |
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ICM Research interviewed a random sample of 1,000 adults aged 18+ by telephone on 20-21st April, 2002. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults.
. . .
Give the poster a cigar....
L
Quid,
If you get a chance, and if they rebroadcast it, watch Melanie's appearance on CSpan, answering questions about her book. She is on the far end of whatever scale that the Hollywood's ditzes are on the other end of!
In a word, she is awesome! Articulate, knowledgeable, and very, very bright.
Bingo.
an opinion poll showed that almost a quarter of British Muslims say the bus and subway bombings of last year are justified because of the British Government's support for the war on terror. “The British are interfering with the sacred Muslim right of jihad,” said Solhed Diapur, a poll respondent from London. “Muslims have a right to respond to this intrusion by any means necessary. Infidels must learn not to meddle in matters of Muslim faith.”
read more...
http://www.azconservative.org/Semmens1.htm
The UK will wring its hands until another attack. If they succeed in blowing up the Queen or Parliament, maybe that will get them really worried.
That poll reveals exactly how bad things are in the UK. The MSM can pat themselves on the back for a job well done. PC moralizing, anti-American bashing has done its work well. They're Judas goats, leading the UK to extinction.
I saw it.
Melanie Phillips has a Web site and she posted that she would be talking about her book.
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