The war within the west - (liberals' predictable reaction to London bombing; it's our fault!)

As I predicted yesterday, a number of commentators have rushed to blame Tony Blair and President Bush for causing yesterday’s carnage in London by having the effrontery to defend their countries against the war declared upon the west. Not that they see it that way, of course — the west’s defence is deemed to be aggression and the Islamist jihad merely an act of self-defence. Thus the ageing revolutionary Tariq Ali writes in the Guardian:

‘The real solution lies in immediately ending the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. Just because these three wars are reported sporadically and mean little to the everyday lives of most Europeans does not mean the anger and bitterness they arouse in the Muslim world and its diaspora is insignificant. As long as western politicians wage their wars and their colleagues in the Muslim world watch in silence, young people will be attracted to the groups who carry out random acts of revenge. At the beginning of the G8, Blair suggested that "poverty was the cause of terrorism". It is not so. The principal cause of this violence is the violence being inflicted on the people of the Muslim world. And unless this is recognised, the horrors will continue.’

No point telling Tariq Ali or the Guardian’s comment page editor that Iraq, Afghanistan and the West Bank and Gaza were only ‘occupied’ as a defensive move because they were all being used as the front line of attack against the west. For such people, America and the west cannot ever do self-defence because by definition they are colonialist oppressors and therefore their very existence is an act of aggression.

More generally, it is specifically Iraq that is presented as terrorist year zero. The Islamic world was all sweetness and light, it appears, until the Iraq war acted as a recruiting sergeant for al Qaeda. Thus James Reynolds, currently the BBC’s World Affairs correspondent and soon to head the BBC’s bureau in Israel (where he will no doubt continue to shine as an exemplar of the Robert Fisk school of objective journalism) writes of Tony Blair:

‘He is committed to staying in Iraq and to the hope that, in due course, the insurgency there can be overcome and Iraq will develop into a functioning, democratic state backed by its oil riches. Britain therefore remains in the front line, and the option of withdrawing from Iraq and minimising the risk of further attacks is not presently open to British voters. They have taken their decision and must accept the consequences’ (my italics).

Note in particular the pronoun ‘they’. For Reynolds here goes even further than blaming Bush and Blair for creating terror. It’s apparently all the fault of the British people for voting Blair back into power – for which they must ‘accept the consequences’ of being blown to bits on public transport! What an extraordinarily malevolent thing for anyone to write, let alone someone being paid to do so from the pockets of the very people he is so venomously blaming for their own destruction.

The reason why blaming al Qaeda’s terror on the war in Iraq is morally so obtuse goes deeper than the astonishing historical amnesia displayed by those who appear to airbrush from their memory the declaration of war upon the west and associated acts of terror over more than a decade culminating in 9/11. It is because it takes an element of truth and then draws from it a perverse and amoral conclusion. The element of truth is that the west’s actions in Afghanistan and Iraq undoubtedly have exacerbated jihadi fervour and drawn more into the cause. The amoral conclusion is that therefore these actions by the west were wrong.

The truth is that, for countries that believed Afghanistan and Iraq had already inflicted aggressive acts of violence upon the west and were poised to inflict even worse, there was no reasonable or principled alternative but to wage war upon them. The fact that any attempt by the west at self-defence would enrage yet more Islamists was merely the other prong of Morton’s Fork, and illustrated the dilemma posed by all terrorism – if its victims defend themselves, this recruits more to the terrorist cause, but if its victims don’t defend themselves this encourages the terrorists to redouble their attacks because their whole strategy is to demoralise their victims in every way in order to finish them off altogether. This is, after all, the terrible dilemma faced all the time by Israel – a choice between, on the one hand, protecting its citizens from genocidal attack by means which inflame the Arabs in the territories simply because they perceive any self defence by the Israelis as aggression thanks to the warped ideology with which they have been brainwashed, and on the other hand, appeasing terror by a variety of means which are all taken as a sign of weakness and which act therefore as a spur to redouble the terrorist war.

Faced with this intrinsic dilemma posed by terrorism, in which both courses of action have a downside, the only moral choice is to fight terror by the most vigorous means of self-defence possible. This is because while in the short to medium term this may recruit more to the terrorist cause, the alternative route of appeasement is to commit cultural or national suicide. In other words, for free peoples there is no alternative. That is why blaming the continuing war by al Qaeda on the west’s actions in Iraq is such a degraded and disgusting position to take.

[London Terrorism:] British "Covenant of Security" with Islamists Ends

by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
July 8, 2005
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2742

Terrorism usually comes like a bolt from the blue, but not so the four explosions yesterday in London, killing at least 37. Some British Islamist leaders have been warning for months that such violence was imminent.

An Islamist British group called Al-Muhajiroun - "the immigrants" in Arabic - for some time publicly stated that Britain was immune from Islamist violence because of its acceptable behavior toward Muslims within the country's borders. In an April 2004 conversation, the 24-year-old Sayful Islam, who heads Al-Muhajiroun's Luton branch, announced that he supported Osama Bin Laden "100%" in the quest to achieve "the worldwide domination of Islam," but went on to voice an aversion to himself performing terrorist acts in Britain.

Yet, Mr. Islam endorsed terrorism in Britain in a broader sense "When a bomb attack happens here, I won't be against it, even if it kills my own children. … But it is against Islam for me to engage personally in acts of terrorism in the UK because I live here. According to Islam, I have a covenant of security with the UK, as long as they allow us Muslims to live here in peace." He further explained. "If we want to engage in terrorism, we would have to leave the country. It is against Islam to do otherwise."

Covenant of security? What is that? In an August 2004 story in the New Statesman, " Why terrorists love Britain," Jamie Campbell cited the author of Inside Al Qaeda, Mohamed Sifaoui, as saying, "it has long been recognized by the British Islamists, by the British government and by UK intelligence agencies, that as long as Britain guarantees a degree of freedom to the likes of Hassan Butt [an overtly pro-terrorist Islamist], the terrorist strikes will continue to be planned within the borders of the UK but will not occur here."

The New Statesman story drew from this the perversely ironic conclusion that "the presence of vocal and active Islamist terrorist sympathizers in the U.K. actually makes British people safer, while the full brunt of British-based terrorist plotting is suffered by people in other countries."

A Syrian immigrant to Britain who headed Al-Muhajiroun, Omar Bakri Mohammed, confirmed the covenant of security, describing companions of the Prophet Muhammad who were given protection by the king of Ethiopia. That experience, he told the magazine, led to the Koranic notion of covenant of security: Muslims may not attack the inhabitants of a country where they live in safety. This "makes it unlikely that British-based Muslims will carry out operations in the U.K. itself," Mr. Mohammed said.

But in January 2005, Mr. Mohammed determined that the covenant of security had ended for British Muslims because of post-September 11, 2001, anti-terrorist legislation that meant "the whole of Britain has become Dar ul-Harb," or territory open for Muslim conquest. Therefore, in a reference to unbelievers, "the kuffar has no sanctity for their own life or property."

The country had gone from safe haven to enemy camp. To renew the covenant of security would require British authorities to undo that legislation and release those detained without trial. If they fail to do so, British Muslims must "join the global Islamic camp against the global crusade camp."

Mr. Mohammed went on overtly to threaten the British people: "The response from the Muslims will be horrendous if the British government continues in the way it treats Muslims," explicitly raising the possibility of suicide bombings under the leadership of Al-Qaeda. Western governments must know that if they do not change course, Muslims will "give them a 9/11 day after day after day!"

When Sean O'Neil and Yaakov Lappin of the London Times asked Mr. Mohammed about his statements on the covenant, he said his definition of Britain as Dar ul-Harb was "theoretical" and he provided a non-bellicose re-interpretation:

It means that Muslims can no longer be considered to have sanctity and security here, therefore they should consider leaving this country and going back to their homelands. Otherwise they are under siege and obviously we do not want to see that we are living under siege.

In a less guarded moment, however, Mr. Mohammed acknowledged that for him, "the life of an unbeliever has no value."

Yesterday's explosions mark the end of the "covenant of security." Let's hope they also mark the end of an era of innocence, and that British authorities now begin to preempt terrorism rather than wait to become its victims.

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