Posted on 11/21/2003 8:32:05 AM PST by alnitak
Having just listened to yet more claims, reported on BBC radio's The World at One, that the British consulate in Istanbul wouldn't have been bombed had we not helped attack Iraq, I am struck even more by the truly demented discourse we are now being forced to have. The attack on Iraq may well have enraged more Muslims and helped recruit them to terror. But then so does any attempt at self-defenceagainst Islamic terror. As soon as one fights back, one is accused of aggression.
That is precisely what is happening in Israel. Israelis are murdered; Israel fights back to prevent more Israelis being murdered; Islamists then claim the Israelis have perpetrated aggression to which the Islamists are entitled to respond. But their claim is monstrously untrue. It is a reversal of the truth. The same argument is being used about Iraq. Saddam presented a terrible threat to the west, and was involved in numerous acts of terrorism against it. Eventually, the west decided to defend itself against this threat by attacking him. This was justified -- and indeed somewhat tardy -- self-defence. But the Islamists, for whom Islam is by definition perfection and is therefore incapable of doing wrong,and who therefore represent any act of aggression on their part as a legitimate defence against the west which by definition is aggressive towards them, not only invert victim and terrorist but in doing so incite other Muslims to rise up against this alleged attack upon Islam.
This is truly insane. The logic of this insane way of thinking is that the west must not ever seek to defend itself from attack by the jihad by waging a just war of self-defence, because to do so will merely invite yet more terror. This mad logic means that if we are murdered and fight back, the fact that this may provoke more Islamists to sign up to murder because of their truly crazy way of looking at the world means we shouldn't fight back at all. This is tantamount to a call to surrender to fascism.
The even more terrible thing is that there are so many in Britain who can't see how insane this is but themselves subscribe to its mad logic. It may well be true that the attack on Iraq has provoked more violence. But that should not support an argument for surrender to such monstrous intimidation. It's rather an argument for redoubling the fight against an insane and totalitarian ideological death cult. Someone in government has got to spell this out to the public, fast.
Melanie Phillips is a British journalist and author. She is best known for her controversial column about political and social issues which currently appears in the Daily Mail. Awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism in 1996, she is the author of All Must Have Prizes, an acclaimed study of Britain?s educational and moral crisis, which provoked the fury of educationists and the delight and relief of parents. Her ideas have influenced politicians in both government and opposition, who follow her battles in the culture wars with fascination. Styled a conservative by her opponents, she prefers to think of herself as defending authentic liberal values against the attempt to destroy western culture from within.
Born in 1951, Melanie read English at St Anne?s College, Oxford before training as a journalist on the Evening Echo, Hemel Hempstead. After a short period on New Society magazine, she joined the Guardian in 1977 and soon became its social services correspondent and social policy leader writer. After a stint as the paper?s news editor, she started writing her column in 1987, taking it to the Observer and then the Sunday Times before starting to write for the Daily Mail in December 2001.
Apart from All Must Have Prizes, she is the author of The Sex-Change Society: Feminised Britain and the Neutered Male, published by the Social Market Foundation, and America?s Social Revolution, published by Civitas. She also wrote a play, Traitors, which was performed at the Drill Hall in London in 1985.
Her new book The Ascent of Woman, a history of the ideas behind the female suffrage campaign, has recently been published by Little, Brown.
Aided by the press and the usual useful idiots, of course.
Good little piece - I'll have to look up some of her other work.
Its not insane if your a self hating American or Brit who wants to see his/her country as it currently exists is destroyed.
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