Blackmail by the 'moderates'

The suggestion that the Government should change its foreign policy in order to placate terrorists is not only doomed to failure; it also rests on a fundamental confusion. The essence of democracy is commitment to accepting that the only policy which is legitimate for the Government to pursue is the one that is the outcome of democratic procedures. Whatever may be thought of it - and this newspaper is far from agreeing with every aspect of it - the present Government's foreign policy has passed that test.

The writer 'gets it'. The letter from muslim leaders reads like a thinly veiled threat to me. They are trying to use the fear produced as a result of the almost-terror attack to promote their own foreign policy ends, claiming (threatening more like) that there will be more such violence unless the govt. changes specific policies. As the south park boys say... That's not LIKE terrorism, that IS terrorism.

Seemingly, Muslims don't "get" democracy. All they seem to understand is force, their own, or somebody else's.

The West has a huge educational burden before it. We are dealing with a backward, violent culture that treats women as property, and respects those with the greatest force and the will to use it.

They don't respect our force because our culture has its own issues of feminzation and political correctness. Until we return to a full understanding that not all cultures are relative, that ours is, in fact, superior in most ways, we are not going to get it done.

"They don't respect our force (I think you meant culture) because our culture has its own issues of feminzation and political correctness. Until we return to a full understanding that not all cultures are relative, that ours is, in fact, superior in most ways, we are not going to get it done."

I actually disagree with that. Pardon me for my neo-con-ness, but I think that once liberal democracy takes hold, the culture does change. The problem of "homegrown" terror in britain has more to do with political radicalization than traditional religion.
The vast majority of muslims in the west (and in other liberal democracies such as Turkey, India, etc...) are becoming far less traditionally religious generation to generation. The reason the terrorism problem is getting worse in the west is that a portion of the muslim population is sufficiently isolated and politically radicalized (the media culture, particularly in Britain, is at least partly to blame for this) to take violent action and disregard their own life.

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