Posted on 04/04/2006 12:25:22 PM PDT by Tolik
I have just taken part in a debate on the Jeremy Vine show with the Conservative MP John Gummer about the anti-American protests which are dogging and interrupting the progress of Condoleezza Rice as she visits the Blackburn constituency of her friend the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. You can listen again to this item here. It is a telling commentary in itself on the times in which we are living that a Conservative politician took the line that the protests were entirely justified because the Americans are so awful and they are doing such terrible things in Iraq and we were taken to war on a lie and...well, you can write the rest of the script.
What is so striking about these protests is not just the discourtesy shown to a senior member of the government of our most powerful ally; it is not just that it is extraordinarily bone-headed to insult and alienate the ally on whom we continue to depend for our protection; it is not just the craven appeasement of intimidation, as I wrote in the Mail this morning [posted here below]. It is the lethal moral inversion of the argument, which is not surprising since these protests are being fuelled -- if not orchestrated -- by the comrades of the Trotskyite/Islamist Stop the War Coalition, as can be clearly seen from their website which provides details of and helpful travel arrangements for marches and demonstrations today and tomorrow.
Here is a country which utters not a batsqueak of protest when Sheikh Qaradawi, who endorses and encourages human bomb terrorism in Iraq and Israel, speaks on a London platform – and indeed is actually embraced by the London Mayor Ken Livingstone as a hero of religious enlightenment – and yet is treating the US Secretary of State as if she is a major war criminal. Why? Because the US is apparently waging war against the innocent in Iraq. Excuse me?? The US is currently in Iraq at the express request of the Iraqis themselves to defend the innocent against the war being waged against them. The US went to war in Iraq to start unpicking the axis of terror that so threatens the world. The US remains in Iraq to help the Iraqis, at their express request, build the institutions of democracy, law and security. It is in Iraq to help protect innocent Iraqis against the forces of al Qaeda and the remains of the Ba’ath party who are determined to stop them and replace freedom by tyranny. It is in Iraq to help defend Iraqi lives and liberty against those who seek to destroy them.
Yet in Britain anti-war hysteria has institutionalised a Big Lie that the US is waging war not on behalf of the innocent but against them. One can make many justified and bitter criticisms of the way in which the US has prosecuted this defence of life and liberty and the terrible errors that have been made. But to say that it is waging war on the innocent is simply a gross inversion of reality. It is the big propaganda lie of the enemies of freedom and democracy, promulgated by those who have every interest in bringing about the defeat of the west – both radical Islamists and the extreme left, now in close and unholy alliance with each other in the Stop the War Coalition and elsewhere – and now fast becoming the accepted unwisdom of those who opposed the war for more respectable reasons. The result is a madness which is consuming British public debate.
Welcome, Condi, to Londonistan.
Londonistan
Published April 30th by Encounter Books.
The suicide bombings carried out in London in 2005 by British Muslims revealed an alarming network of Islamist terrorists and their sympathizers. Under the noses of British intelligence, London became the European hub for the promotion, recruitment and financing of Islamist terror and extremism - so much so that it has been mockingly dubbed 'Londonistan'. In this ground-breaking book, Melanie Phillips pieces together the story of how Londonistan developed as a result of the collapse of British self-confidence and national identity and its resulting paralysis by multiculturalism and appeasement. The result is an ugly climate in Britain of irrationality and defeatism, which now threatens to undermine the alliance with America and imperil the defence of the free world.
Reaping the Blackburn whirlwind
The decision by the Blackburn mosque to cancel the planned visit by Condoleezza Rice is utterly unacceptable and deeply troubling. A mosque spokesman has said that it was cancelled not through dislike of Dr Rice but because of the threat by Muslim anti-war protesters to invade the mosque, thus compromising the safety of the visiting dignitaries.
What an appalling state of affairs where the safety of the Foreign Secretary and a distinguished overseas visitor cannot be guaranteed against the threat of violent disorder. Aren’t we all supposed to be engaged in a war against this kind of menace to life and liberty ?
If there are disagreements, however profound, the British way is to voice them in a civilised manner and never to resort to violence. It is essential that fanatics should not be allowed to disrupt our British way of life like this -- which, let it not be overlooked, is also pitching Muslim against Muslim -- and that we should not cave into this kind of intimidation.
But the response of both the mosque and the authorities has been worse than pusillanimous. If neither mainstream Muslims nor the British state has the courage nor the means to face down such a threat within the Foreign Secretary’s very own constituency, how can either the Muslim community or the British government purport to be fighting to defeat the violent extremism that threatens us all?
Even worse, Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain has suggested that it was right for the visit to be cancelled because of the widespread opposition in the Muslim community to U.S. foreign policy. What insolent presumption. America is Britain’s most crucial and important ally. It has played an essential part in our defence against tyranny in the past, and continues to do so.
However strongly feelings may be running against the Iraq war, the fact is that British Muslims are British and should afford Dr Rice – a principal member of the government of our major ally—an elementary degree of courtesy.
After all, if the US government is to be treated in this way over the Iraq war, logic dictates that these British Muslims would regard the British government with identical hostility over its own part in that war. And that is a very troubling thought indeed. It implies that some of them do not identify themselves as British but adhere to a hostile set of values.
It is, however, richly ironic that this should have happened in the Foreign Secretary’s constituency. For our man of straw has led the field in grovelling before religious intimidation. Only this week, in a speech at the Muslim News awards, he effectively blamed the west for Islamist violence around the world.
Now the chickens of appeasement have come home to roost in Blackburn -- their home town.
...Yet in Britain anti-war hysteria has institutionalised a Big Lie that the US is waging war not on behalf of the innocent but against them. One can make many justified and bitter criticisms of the way in which the US has prosecuted this defence of life and liberty and the terrible errors that have been made. But to say that it is waging war on the innocent is simply a gross inversion of reality. It is the big propaganda lie of the enemies of freedom and democracy, promulgated by those who have every interest in bringing about the defeat of the west – both radical Islamists and the extreme left, now in close and unholy alliance with each other in the Stop the War Coalition and elsewhere – and now fast becoming the accepted unwisdom of those who opposed the war for more respectable reasons. The result is a madness which is consuming British public debate.
Welcome, Condi, to Londonistan.
Nailed It!
Moral Clarity BUMP !
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Gee, ya think?
Good article.
Sounds like "lawlessness" is more and more getting a seat at the table.
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