Since this is Melanie Phillips Day on the Corner — would that it were Melanie Phillips Day at the White House or Foggy Bottom! — I thought it appropriate to offer this excerpt from Londonistan (pp. 49-50), which is a perfect explanation of why we are losing.
She is talking, of course, about the Brits, but she would equally well be describing us. Having lost the capacity, or at least the willingness, to come to grips with an existential threat catalyzed by religious conviction, we delude ourselves into believing we instead face merely episodic problems — treated as crimes or political disputes — that can be prosecuted or negotiated (or, I would add, democratized) away. This self-delusion pervades government, as well as the academy and the media.
Bottom line: the jihadists are true believers; we, to the contrary, having lost any sense that religious belief can animate a revolution, refuse to accept that there is a revolution … while looking for any explanation other than religion to explain what little we allow ourselves to see. Here is how the peerless Melanie Phillps explains it:
To understand the depth of this reluctance and incomprehension in Britain [to acknowledge a threat based on religious belief], … it is necessary first to bear in mind one of the most deeply rooted of all aspects of the British character. This is its belief in the rational, the everyday and what is demonstrably evident, and its corresponding suspicion of the abstract, the theoretical and the obscurantist.
Wars of religion, when different kinds of Christians burned each other at the stake in post-Reformation England, are seared into the British historical memory but belong to a premodern period of savagery upon which the country has long resolutely turned its back. The liberal settlement that followed the Enlightenment in Britain put religion very firmly back into its box and elevated reason to pole position as the supreme national virtue. This sturdy empiricism lies at the very core of the British love of liberty, and has bequeathed to them their deep skepticism of all forms of extremism. Presented with a ranting ideologue, the British are less likely to succumb than to scoff.
But the downside of this robustly down-to-earth approach is that the British now find it very hard to deal with religious fanaticism. They no longer recognize it — or want to recognize it. Presented with a patently ludicrous ideological ranting, they refuse to believe that anyone can take it seriously. So when Islamist clerics … were loudly trumpeting their hatred of the West and their calls to holy war against it, MI5 regarded them as little more than pantomime clowns, shooting their mouths off in the open where everyone could hear them and laugh them to scorn. Except, of course, a number of impressionable young Muslims did not laugh at all. Such ranting incited them instead to enlist in that holy war against the West which Britain refused to accept was an actual and lethal reality.
As one foreign intelligence source put it: “During the 1990s, many attempts were made to enlighten the British about what was happening. But they refused to see this problem as having a religious character. If this was a religious problem, it became a religious confrontation — and the specter of a religious war was too horrendous. A religious war is different from any other war because you are dealing with absolute beliefs and the room for compromise is very limited. Religious wars are very protracted and bloody, and often end up with a very high toll of lives.
“So Britain turned a blind eye to the fact that freedom of religion for Muslims means freedom to propogate their faith in every possible way. There was almost a conscious psychological suppression of this subject. Politicians didn’t want to think about it at all. The official class wanted to think about it in as narrow a way as possible by dealing with individual incidents as they occurred, but no more than that. They were very concerned about social unrest among Asians in cities like Bradford, but they treated it more as a criminal matter. There was a conscious and subsconscious effort to deracialize and depoliticize it and distance themselves from the religious aspects. After 9/11, they woke up in principle but not in practice. They still thought that the UK wasn’t in the front line, and if they continued with their policy of ‘benevolence’ the same thing wouldn’t happen to them.”
Posted at 9:44 AM
(‘The Corner’, in National Review, August 12, 2006)
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OGU5YzMzNmZiZjU0ZTI2Zjg4OWVlODFkZWIxYjkxMDQ=
More to the point. The Brits( and all of Europe and Canada) , like Americans have been indoctrinated (read brainwashed) by their LIBERAL media. Until that changes all bets are off.
"He who controls information..."
One of the major problems is that once you have a pool of terrorists that exceeds law enforcements ability to track them, you're going to get hit. Tracking even 25 terror suspects is going to involve hundreds of public servants and a number of agencies.
Try tracking 250. Or 2,500. Or 25,000. Especially when every time a cell is caught, the government is seen as racist and anti-Islamic. More extremists are created, to avenge their comrades, and they are now armed, in a Darwinic fashion, with the knowledge of how not to get caught the same way their friends were.
Every time we roll up a terror cell, the next team gets harder to catch. Also, every time we investigate a new cell, it turns out to be only several months old, where a normal terrorist cell used to be several years old. They're gestating faster, and becoming harder to spot. Time in not on our side, and sadly, we won't be able to summon the national will to stamp out this type of evolving threat until we get hit again, and hard.
| As you probably know, the recent violence followed the kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers, one in Gaza and two in southern Lebanon. Which of the following statements comes closer to your own view? |
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| Israel has the right to defend itself and the Israeli attacks in Gaza and the Lebanon have been an appropriate and proportionate response to the kidnappings |
17 |
| Israel has the right to defend itself but the Israeli attacks in Gaza and the Lebanon have been an inappropriate and disproportionate response |
63 |
| Neither/Don't Know |
20 |
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| Some people say the Israelis have brought the present violence on themselves by refusing to withdraw behind their original borders and by taking over Palestinian land in the West Bank. Do you think the Israelis have, to any extent, brought the present violence on themselves? |
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| Yes, there would be fewer attacks and a real chance for peace if Israel withdrew behind its original borders |
40 |
| No, the opponents of Israel will always attack Israel and try to destroy it, no matter where its borders are |
35 |
| Don't know |
25 |
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How would you rate the American administration's performance in the current crisis? |
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Excellent |
1 |
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Good |
4 |
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Fair |
18 |
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Poor |
32 |
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Very Poor |
27 |
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Don't Know |
18 |
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Which of the following statements comes closer to your own view? |
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Tony Blair in the current crisis gives the impression of making up his own mind and taking his own line |
15 |
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Tony Blair in the current crisis gives the impression of siding with the Americans, whatever the Americans say |
64 |
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Don't know |
21 |
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ICM Research interviewed a random sample of 1,000 adults aged 18+ by telephone on 20-21st April, 2002. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults.
. . .
Quid,
If you get a chance, and if they rebroadcast it, watch Melanie's appearance on CSpan, answering questions about her book. She is on the far end of whatever scale that the Hollywood's ditzes are on the other end of!
In a word, she is awesome! Articulate, knowledgeable, and very, very bright.
an opinion poll showed that almost a quarter of British Muslims say the bus and subway bombings of last year are justified because of the British Government's support for the war on terror. “The British are interfering with the sacred Muslim right of jihad,” said Solhed Diapur, a poll respondent from London. “Muslims have a right to respond to this intrusion by any means necessary. Infidels must learn not to meddle in matters of Muslim faith.”
read more...
http://www.azconservative.org/Semmens1.htm
The UK will wring its hands until another attack. If they succeed in blowing up the Queen or Parliament, maybe that will get them really worried.