Lando 
Posted on 07/14/2005 10:11:11 AM PDT by Lando Lincoln
This week, our politicians have reminded me of the castaway boys in the last scene of Lord of the Flies, suddenly tearful and ashamed of their terrible mischief as they are finally confronted by their grown-up rescuers.
Yes, there was a mood of solidarity and mature consensus at Prime Minister's Questions yesterday and during Monday's Commons debate on the bombings. But there was also the whiff of shame in the air: shame at the political decadence that had so demeaned the debate on the war on terror before 8:50am last Thursday.
The low point was the moment in March when the Tory whips, having forced the Government to insert an automatic expiry date into its Prevention of Terrorism Bill - the "sunset clause" - brayed that they were off to uncork the champagne. To celebrate what, I wondered at the time. Who was their real enemy? Bin Laden - or Blair?
This week, there were no champagne toasts in the Commons, no games or cheap shots or debating flourishes; only a collective flinch at reality's harshest smack. As the death toll clambered over 50, and the perpetrators were revealed to be British-born suicide bombers, the decadence drained from the system. The political consensus will not last, of course.
But the arguments that follow will be conducted in a new and awful context: namely, the absolute, incontrovertible knowledge, spelt out in the blood of Londoners, that this war is now being waged in our very midst. "It is a war," one Cabinet minister said to me. "People didn't believe that till last Thursday. But they do now."
I hope he is right. This war, of course, is like nothing that has preceded it, which is why it is so tempting to call it something else: a criminal conspiracy, or a series of isolated atrocities carried out by psychopathic mavericks. And yet the analysis that the President and Prime Minister offered after 9/11 now seems more pertinent than ever.
We face three, inextricably linked threats: from Islamist fanatics, from the rogue states that harbour them, and from the deadly weapons which they seek to acquire. Only three months ago, Kamel Bourgass was jailed for 17 years for plotting to unleash ricin on London's streets. Bourgass failed. On July 7, Hasib Hussain, Shehzad Tanweer, Mohammed Sadique Khan and another man succeeded with conventional explosive. What if it had been the other way round?
Alas, these grim realities have been obscured for almost three years by the tangled arguments over the liberation of Iraq. At precisely the moment that it should have been looking outward with ever greater vigilance, the British polity turned in on itself. "Iraq" became political shorthand - like "spin" or "sleaze" - a metaphor for all that was objectionable about Mr Blair and his Government. The horizons of British politics narrowed dangerously.
Ironically, it has taken a local event to remind us of the global nature of this conflict, its pervasiveness, and our consequent inability to escape its consequences simply by blaming this or that head of government. Does anyone seriously believe that 52 more Londoners would be alive today if Gordon Brown were Prime Minister, and John Kerry were President? The question is so absurd that it scarcely merits a response.
Yet this was precisely the logic applied in the aftermath of the Iraq war. Get rid of Bush and Blair, and the bloodshed will stop. The Spanish tested that logic to destruction after the Madrid bombing and discovered, to their horror, that the jihadis carried on plotting their atrocities.
The Iraq war was grotesquely caricatured in this country as a symptom of the Prime Minister's political infatuation with George W Bush, even as a demented outburst of Christian adventurism.
It came to be viewed almost as an abstraction, a symbol of Mr Blair's mad itch to intervene, a quarrel in a far away country of which we know nothing. But everyone knows the London Underground map, and everyone can point now to the stations that bear fresh blood stains. The war on terror has come home.
In truth, it was always here.
In this conflict, everything is, and will be, connected. There is still much glee at the failure of the Iraq Survey Group to unearth Saddam's weapons. I would have thought a more pertinent question - and a terrifying one - is where, exactly, all those weapons are?
That is, the 3.9 tons of VX gas, 8,500 litres of anthrax, 550 artillery shells containing mustard gas and other nasties that the Iraqi dictator himself admitted to producing in the 1990s, but are still officially "unaccounted for".
I am not saying that these unspeakable weapons have found their way into the hands of the disaffected young jihadis of West Yorkshire. But it requires only a small leap of imagination to conclude that there must be many other young men like them, in cities and mountain hideouts around the world, working desperately hard to lay their hands on these and similar tools of destruction.
Although the New Labour knee has not yet jerked, the contours of future action are already clear. The Chancellor, Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary have all been in Brussels this week seeking European co-operation on counter-terrorism.
Ministers mutter about the need to transform judicial culture tout court, and the heavy burden upon Lord Phillips of Matravers, who becomes Lord Chief Justice in September, to ensure that the courts deport those who should be deported.
Be in no doubt: the Government is braced for the worse. "If this is a one-off, we'll be all right," one of the Prime Minister's closest allies told me. "But if there are other incidents we have a very big problem."
On Monday, Mr Blair pointedly left the door open to further legislative measures. "Just using the normal processes of law will not be enough," he warned.
Therein lay the seed of a huge and necessary debate on the proper balance between security and liberty in this country. But that debate will now be carried out in the proper context. This is not about party politics, Mr Blair's future, or the Iraq war.
It is about what a civilised society does to confront those who will do anything to themselves, and to others, in the name of a murderous mission that knows no limit.
Matthew d'Ancona is deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph
Lando
The shame is in their refusal to protect common English citizens from the horrors wrought by immigration. It's the common Englishman they fear the most, and it shows.
ALLAHU AKBAR! = HEIL HITLER! 
You'd be arrested for saying that in public in the UK.
It is the shame that will overcome the Democratic Party when we get hit next time.
Our own President is planning to send $3 billion to the Palestinian Arabs. Is there no shame in that?
WHY is he doing that?
Is it because he likes the Palestinians and wants to send them the money?
Or is it because he wants national security and Hillary, Ted Kennedy and their cohorts are saying "We will give you some of that, if you give our friends in Palestine some of this"?
Unfortunately, England has taken on the appearance of confusion and uncertainty over what to do about this. Blair trotted out the "let's make a resolution not to upset Muslims" maneuver while showing no resolve about doing anything concrete - say arresting the radical imams who have been inciting this for the past four years.
ping
I think he really believes that terrorism is due in part to the lack of peace between Israel and the Palis.
That would be a start...
Muslims MUST be upset - and quickly. The sooner the better. They must be made to learn that this sort of behavior merits an appropriate reaction and an appropriate reaction is to totally clamp down on all radical, anti-western Muslims, their clerics, mosques, madrassehs, financial supporters and international backers.
Islamic terrorism should be equated with piracy and individuals who practise it or support it should be hung.
Hanging is environmentally friendly - it prevents lead poisoning from bullets, conserves electricity, rope can be recycled and it's bio-degradable when no longer useful.
A dangling terrorist also serves as a warning to others.
How? By crushing the jihadists, destroying and demoralizing their strongholds, and by the mass deportation of their mullahs! Allahu fubar!
"It is the shame that will overcome the Democratic Party when we get hit next time."
Do you really think so? You give them more credit than I do.
This was an excellent article. The best I've read since the London attacks.
What about arresting radical anglo leftists that riot in the streets and call for the destruction of western civilization every time there's a camera shoved in their faces? These muslim kids get it from every angle--their native and host nation's culture tells them to destroy everything around them.
No it won't. They are shameless. It will be everyone's fault, except the left's and the terrorists'
Sadly, this will not change the rhetoric of the left. They're only pretending to be 'united' with other Brits now because they don't want to commit political suicide.
Unfortunately, as soon as the pain fades a bit from the collective memory of the people of the UK, the left will start their braying again.
When I said "overcome" I did not mean that they would be overcome with shame... they are too sleazy to do that.
What I meant, is that the party will be overcome and that shame will be the basis for it. In other words, whether they feel shame or not, they will be shamed. The vast majority of people will recognize beyond a doubt that the Democrat party has gone way, way over the line.
If the Brits pretend that Muslims are Catholics and IRA sympathizers to boot, I'm sure they'll know how to handle them. It just takes a little effort.
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