Democracy Didn't Stop British Terrorists

Had the Liquid Bomb Plot (as some English papers call it) succeeded, a headline the next day might have accurately said, “British Terrorists Attack America.”

Though the plot was foiled by excellent British police work, it nonetheless demonstrated that the land of Locke and Blackstone, the cradle of Western democracy and law, has become a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists.

Given that the terrorists planning to commit what may have proved to be the deadliest anti-American terrorist attack ever were born and bred in democratic Britain, President Bush may want to reconsider his strategy of pushing democratic regime-change around the world, and especially in the Middle East, as the means of protecting the U.S. against terrorism.

“We know that democracies do not foment terror or invade their neighbors,” Bush said last year, explaining his policy.

“If the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation and resentment and violence ready for export. The United States has adopted a new strategy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East; a strategy that recognizes that the best way to defeat the ideology of terror as a weapon is to spread freedom and democracy.”

But the first premise of this strategy is borrowed from bleeding-heart liberalism. Muslim terrorists, it supposes, start out as victims of benighted governments. Remove those governments, it concludes, and you will end Islamist terrorism.

Freedom House, which ranks the world’s nations by the degree of “political rights” and “civil liberties” they afford, gives the United Kingdom the best score possible in each category. The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom ranks the U.K. as the world’s 5th freest economy. The U.S. ranks only 9th.

So why have native Brits been implicated for the second time in little more than a year (the London subway bombings was the first) in an Islamist conspiracy to commit mass murder?

All 23 alleged conspirators held in Britain in connection with the latest plot were reportedly British born and raised. They did not embrace terrorism under the heel of some Oriental despot; they embraced it at British universities and in relatively comfortable suburban British homes.

British oppression did not create these suspected terrorists. A radical Islamic ideology did. Changing Britain’s form of government will not change that radical vision.

Indeed, the challenge for Britain will be to defeat those who embrace it without sacrificing its own traditions of liberty.

Writing in the London Daily Telegraph on Sunday, film maker Russell Razzaque explained his own brief exposure to an Islamist club at a British university in 1989. Leaders of the club espoused the view that: “The duty of every Muslim was … to join the battle to set mankind straight and this was possible only via the establishment of a global Islamist state ruled by a single ruler—Khilafah—imposing a strict interpretation of Shariah law across the board. Our religious and moral obligation was to this cause alone.”

The same edition of the Telegraph reported on the Islamist literature found in office of the London Metropolitan University Islamic Society, headed by Waheed Zaman, one of the suspected Liquid Bomb Plot terrorists. One sheet said: “Allah guarantees the person who carries out Jihad in His Cause … that He will either admit him into Paradise (Martyrdom) or return him with reward or booty.”

Zaman’s sister said of him: “My brother loves fish and chips and Liverpool Football Club.”

Earlier this year, I wrote in praise of the speech House International Relations Chairman Henry Hyde, the Illinois Republican, delivered when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appeared in his committee. With Rice sitting before him, Hyde advocated a return to the “clear-eyed and sober-minded understanding of this world” embraced by our forebears.

He rebutted the well-meaning but mistaken notion that “our interests are best served by assigning a central place in the foreign policy of our nation to the worldwide promotion of democracy.” He dismissed this as “the Golden Theory” and advocated instead a morally responsible realism.

“We can and have used democracy as a weapon to destabilize our enemies, and we may do so again,” Hyde said. “But if we unleash revolutionary forces in the expectation that the result can only be beneficent, I believe we are making a profound and perhaps uncorrectable mistake. History teaches that revolutions are very dangerous things, more often destructive than benign, and uncontrollable by their very nature. Upending established order based on a theory is far more likely to produce chaos than shining uplands.”

In last year’s Lebanese elections, the Hezbollah terrorist group won 14 parliament seats and a place in the government. This year’s Palestinian elections delivered the Palestinian Authority to Hamas. Is it in U.S. interests for Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to become more like Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority? Even if those states could peacefully replicate the political order of our best ally, Great Britain, would that stop anti-American Islamist terrorists from arising within their borders?

This is the way I see the world today.

People of the Middle East, whether they be Arab or Kurd, have a long history of being cutthroats of one kind or another.... murderers, thieves and liars. Its been a way of life for several thousand years and continues today. Mohammad came along and created Islam out of chaos. Islam unified the people of the Middle East behind a religious order that promotes jihad, violence and death to all non-believers. Death to all infidels. Islam is an entity that promotes religious, civil and military order as a way of life. Period!

In the 20th century, the discovery of great oil reserves in the ME gave these followers of Islam, these religious fanatics, great monetary gains and huge sums of cash to advance their jihad against western civilzation. Along with the best education money could buy. Many of these jihadists took advantage of every opportunity that came along. Osama Bin Laden is the perfect example of a jihadist who got a first class education and became experienced in the religious hatred of Islam. These Islamofascists don't just want every aspect of western culture and the every member of western civilization removed from their homelands. They want to control the entire world, spreading their religious fanaticism to ever corner of the globe.

Right now western civilization led by the USA is unprepared for prosecuting a long term war against these warriors of Mohammad. The people of the free world have grown complacent, lazy and are far too easily intimidated. Instead of wasting time attempting to understand every detail about these terrorist barbarians, we need to realize, its kill or be killed. You can't negotiate with people who dwell in a religious and spiritual world of the 7th century AD, and who have no respect for human life in todays world.

Muslim radicals want the west to fight a long protracted war against the forces of Islam, in the hope that this will wear down the worlds democracies and make it easier to conquer the infidels. And I seriously doubt anything the west has done so far is going to stop the jihadists from advancing their hostilities and aggressions anytime soon. If the democracies of western civilzation don't face this enemy head on, in the end, the Islamofascists will be the victors and we will be under their jackbooted totalitarianist regime.

We can't afford to play this war by THEIR rules, we need to start fighting this war using OUR rules. Some of the same military rules of engagement we employed against the nazi's, imperialists and communists from past wars. We can't wait until the Islamofascists nuke a European or US city. Freedom is under attack from the forces of evil and freedom must be defended at all costs.

As President Reagan once said:

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

When someone asked Ronald Reagan, what his strategy was for fighting the Cold War, he gave a simple answer: “We win; they lose.” I like that strategy.

The Japanese have an average IQ far, far higher than that in the Near East. When you compare Japanese governmental forms to those the President is trying to change, you are comparing apples to mushrooms.

Secondly, the Japanese adoption of changed forms was from their top down. While MacArthur directed certain changes, he had the full cooperation, at that point, of the Emperor, who was the spiritual head of the Japanese people. His surrender to the allies and personal relationship with MacArthur, is not a situation possible to repeat in any of the lands, with which President Bush would arrogantly meddle. Also, prior to the Tojo Government moving in a Totalitarian direction, the Japanese did have popular participation in their Government, during the great modernization, which took place in the late 19th and early 20th Century.

The Japanese people are also more homogenious than those currently under-attack. That makes them far more susceptible to successful adoption of popular government. In lands where there is ethnic diversity, "Democracy" is far more likely to result in ethnic conflict, such as in contemporary Iraq, or out-right genocide, such as occurred in Ruanda, over a decade ago. There is no moral imperative in counting-noses to determine policy in artificial nations, such as Iraq.

As for the British "success" in India, I would suggest that you look more closely. While economic reality has moved India somewhat to the Right in recent decades, the India that the British left in 1947, had a socialistic Government, which for the next few decades was more likely to side with Soviet Russia in world affairs than with the United States and Britain.

"So why have native Brits been implicated.."

They're NOT "native Brits" They are Muslims born in Britain or recruited from the native British population.

When are these people going to get it through their heads that to Muslims, primary allegiance and loyalty lies not with the State, but with Islam. WE may view them - erroneously as Brits, etc. but THEY view themselves as Muslims living in Britain, etc.

Terrorism is but a symptom. The disease is Islam - a belief system which tolerates no other, which seeks to impose Sharia Law, which relegates women to second class citizenship, which inflicts barbaric punishments on people for acts we don't even consider a crime, which employs violence to forcibly convert unbelievers or relegate them to an oppressed status, which still practices and condones slavery, which divides the world into the Islamic world and the non-Islamic world, which believes in a theocracy as they see no distinction between religion and government, and which denies the dignity of the individual human being and freedom of conscience.

If Islam is the problem, why are the bulk of the forces fighting, and doing the bulk of the dying, on our side Muslim Iraqis, Pakistanis and Afghanis?

Good Point.

I think there is a second element to terrorism that we are ignoring, Islam is a common thread but alone does not seem to be enough to drive people to insane acts of murder. As we know, thankfully, most Muslims don’t want to kill anyone, they just want to live their lives.

It appears to me that when Islam is combined with another radical ideology, fascisms in the case of Iran & Hezbollah, the two elements combined create the basis for slaughter.

In the UK or with Johnny Jihad Linch it was not fascists ideology that combined with Islam but leftists anti-American/Western hatred. The question is whether the majority of the radicalization was in a madrasa or a western university, probably a combination of both.

The beltway sniper and I guess the boys in Florida were black extremist.

I am not sure where I am going with this, it is easy to focus on the common element, Islam, but in the end that may not be our best strategy.

When someone asked Ronald Reagan, what his strategy was for fighting the Cold War, he gave a simple answer: “We win; they lose.” I like that strategy.

Fortunately, that is why Bush is the true heir of Ronald Reagan

The battle is now joined on many fronts. We will not waver; we will not tire; we will not falter; and we will not fail. Peace and freedom will prevail.--GWB

Some skeptics of democracy assert that the traditions of Islam are inhospitable to the representative government. This "cultural condescension," as Ronald Reagan termed it, has a long history. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, a so-called Japan expert asserted that democracy in that former empire would "never work." Another observer declared the prospects for democracy in post-Hitler Germany are, and I quote, "most uncertain at best" -- he made that claim in 1957. Seventy-four years ago, The Sunday London Times declared nine-tenths of the population of India to be "illiterates not caring a fig for politics." Yet when Indian democracy was imperiled in the 1970s, the Indian people showed their commitment to liberty in a national referendum that saved their form of government. --GWB

We have conquered two countries in 5 years, and both have an excellent shot at becoming stable allies for decades to come. Libya has disavowed terrorism and WMDs and has rejoined the community of nations. Yemen and Saudi Arabia, hotbeds of terrorism for decades, have been actively helping us in the WOT. Iran and Syria are on notice. We can bomb places like Iraq and leave the muslims to fight among themselves to fill the power vacuum, or we can bomb them and set up democratic intstitutions and fill that vacuum with allies. It's as simple as that. What more can you possibly expect in such a short time? Is Karzia preferable to the Taliban? Is al-Maliki preferable to Saddam? The answer is emphatically yes. Iran is sandwiched between two govts allied with the US. History is not made by the meek, and Bush's efforts to transform the ME are anything but meek.

IQ has little to do with it. If IQ was the barometer of power and good governance, than Japan should be ruling the world. Afghanistan has had more democracy in the past 60 years than China. Peru is more democratic than the Russia. It means nothing.

So what that we had the Emporer surrender and acquiese to our demands. We did not give Saddam that opportunity, instead we pulled his sorry ass out of a spider hole and his own former citizens are going to hang him. What we HAVE had in Iraq is 3 national elections in 3 years. For temporary government, for a constitution (democratic and liberal in comparison to anything in history for that region) and for a new ruling parliament and local offices. And yet you scoff at that, just like the NY Times. There are lines of people applying to be policemen, soldiers, and gov't bureaucrats despite the gang warfare currently going on in parts of the country. NONE of this would have been possible had not that meddling Bush sent our soldiers in to topple a SWORN ENEMY OF THE USA. Japan turned out fine, as did Germany, DESPITE the doom and gloom prognasticators of the day, of which there were many.

As for India, yes they fell under the sphere of Soviet Influence to a large degree, yet they never became Britain's enemy. By the time of the USSR's collapse, the pendulum was swinging towards free markets and modernization, investments and capitalism. All because the institutions that they learned from the Brits held steady. How many ethnicities are in India? Not only that, they have a caste system. Yet they are becoming a world power, regardless, and a responsible member in the international community.

You are offering a purely circular argument, which misses the point. You seek to define what is good in terms of what is Democratic. But whether Democracy is good or bad in any situation, has to do with the realities of that situation, including such things as the intelligence of an electorate, and the homogeniety of an electorate. Simply counting noses to count noses, is an absolutely assinine way to formulate policy.

James Madison correctly reported in the Federalist the dangers of "Democracy." It was because of those dangers, that the Founding Fathers adopted a Constitution intended to protect Americans from "Democracy."

To appreciate just how confused the President is in his approach to this issue, you need to actually analyze his Second Inaugural Address. I have done so: Washington/Bush Debate On Foreign Policy. He uses "freedom" in at least six different and conflicting senses. That is pretty confused.

William Flax

I answered your assertion that IQ plays a seminal role in democracy. It doesn't. Scandanavians score higher on IQ tests than Americans, yet few of us would trade our constitutional republic for their socialistic form of democracy.

And yes, what is good is generally democratic. Otherwise the "stability" of the warsaw pact versus the USA led democracies would be seen as a good thing, as opposed to the mess that was created when the USSR collpsed. Was it better for Poland and Estonia and Mongolia to be under the Soviet jackboot? Was it better for Japan to be under an Imperial cultist? Is it better that Kim Jong Il rules half of Korea or would it be better that Korea in total was like the South? Was the Taliban better stewards of the Afghan people than the people themselves? Was Chile better off before Pinochet grabbed the reigns of power and handed them a democracy upon retirement, or would it have been better for Allende to create a new Cuba? Are cubans going to demand freedom with our support, or are we going to allow Raul to continue the commie paradise. How would the Cubans vote given the chance?

And how many democracies have we been to war with? Was Saddam's Iraq one? Were the N. Vietnamese communists or democrats? Did Adolf Hitler tolerate dissent once in office or did he usurp the power to the Nazi machine?

And of our enemies today; is Iran a democracy? Syria?

Democratic countries come in all flavors and styles. But one thing is certain, they are seldom our enemy. And in the words of Thomas Jefferson:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

You were defending "Democracy," yet here seek to oppose it, by setting up our Constitutional Republic, which was specifically designed to prevent Democracy. (See Madison's discussion in No. 10 of the Federalist Papers. I do not want to insult you, but fear that you are as confused as is the President.)

Incidentally, the Scandinavian countries are roughly on a par with, not higher in IQ than the rooted American Caucasian population. And, incidentally, they are starting to move to the right in Denmark and Norway.

Your other comments show a total confusion between how the Government is chosen, and what the Government does. Governments elected can be as disasterous--or more disasterous for their people--than those unelected. You are focusing on procedures rather than substance, and are confused even there. Democracy in a land with relatively low average IQ and less educated people, simply permits decision making by the less qualified. Would you run a business on such a fromula?

And how many democracies have we been to war with? Was Saddam's Iraq one? Were the N. Vietnamese communists or democrats? Did Adolf Hitler tolerate dissent once in office or did he usurp the power to the Nazi machine?

Hitler did indeed usurp power, just as Roosevelt, LBJ, Clinton and Bush II have ururped power. But he was a product of the Weimar Republic, which was a Democracy, persuading enough of the Electorate to make his party the largest in Germany, with well over 40% of the vote. (They had about the same percentage as Clinton, when he won in 1992, or Nixon in 1968; more than the 38% Lincoln polled in 1860.)

Your quoting from the preamble of the Declaration of Independence further reflects your confusion. A statement of self-evident facts is not a call for one-man/one vote. If you read the actual Declaration, and do not get stuck in the Preamble, you might clarify your understanding of what was afoot. The idea of even universal White male suffrage was not even popular in America until the 1820s, it was certainly not the norm in 1776 or 1787 or 1800. (See Declaration Of Independence, With Study Guide.)

The President's policy can only be justified by leaving the most significant details out of his mental calculations. It is at best intellectually undisciplined, wishful thinking; at worst actually delusional. In either event, it is extremely dangerous. It is a revival of the Dean Rusk policy from the 1960s, which has caused enormous misery in Africa and elsewhere.

William Flax

No it is you who is confused. Democracy is a broad term. And is only effective if the democratic institutions are able to support it. For example, a constitution, an impartial judicial system, a police force capable of enforcing law and order. Our Constitutional republic is a form of democracy, just as Britains parliamentarian system is and just as the Swiss federal system is. The same applies to Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, etc, etc. Regardless of the particulars, each is a form of democratic rule. Elected representatives that are anwerable to the people and that can be voted out of office.

No one is arguing for a pure democracy, and no one with any intellect ever has.

So the question remains, which countries are we more likely to be at war with? Those with democracies or those with tyrannical rulers who cannot be defeated by the will of the people? The answer is obvious, yet you want to get into an arcane discussion about the particular features of governance that all falls under the rubric of democracy.

Hitler usurped power, therefore he became a dictator, at no risk of being tossed from office other than a coup. Rossevelt won each election he was in, therefore he stayed in power. Apples and oranges, and pointless to the discussion.

Are we at loggerheads with Peru or with Venezuela (currently being run by an tyrant who is doing his best Hitler immitation)? With South Korea or North Korea? With Israel or Syria? With Turkey or Iran?

And has the realpolitik you subscribe to been effective over the last 30 years to stop the growth of the islamist terrorists? Answer no. The Bush doctrine will end it.

And you notion that "Bush II" usurped power is amazingly delusional. Maybe you might want to try the DU for like minded individuals.

When you deny that our Constitution was intended to protect us from Democracy, you deny the testimony of James Madison, long known as the Father of the Constitution. When you suggest that counting noses makes a society less likely to be our enemy, you ignore all history. Hitler was a product of Democracy, whether you like it or not. Chavez, in Venezuela is a product of Democracy. Neither the German nor Venezuelan traditional leadership classes would ever have chosen either of those men. They only accepted them because of the one-man, one-vote realities they had had to live with.

Democracy brought in the vicious Hutu government that kicked off the genocide of the Tutsis their traditional leaders. Democracy brought in Mugabe in what was once a paradise called Rhodesia. Democracy turned Nigeria into what it is today. Democracy means rule by numbers. It works only where four things are present: A reasonably homogenious population that share the same cultural verities. A population with an intelligence level capable of understanding what is actually important to the preservation of those cultural verities. An educational level--it can be tought in the home--where the average person has an understanding of the political processes relative to the first two; and, finally, a standard of living high enough to allow sufficient time for reflection on the issues and personalities, which enable people to employ the first three necessary attributes, intelligently.

If you think that every land is suitable for such a concept, you are delusional.

As for George W. Bush? Find any place in the Constitution, where the Federal Government is given a role in civilian education within the States? Find any place where is fiscally suicidal Prescription Drug subsidy is even arguably suggested? Find any place where he is authorized to appropriate American resources for the benefit of other lands, where we receive no clear benefit.

The man claimed in 2000 that he was a strict constructionist. He is no such a thing.

You are simply amusing yourself playing verbal games, to try to justify a very, very sorry Administration, which only looks even half-way acceptable because it follows the completely amoral, smoke and mirrors of the Clinton years. We all hoped that Bush would be a change. It is tragic, but the reality is that he has not been so far as most issues are concerned. And his failure to even try to protect our Southern border, during his first five plus years in office, make his pretense of protecting us little better than a sorry joke.

William Flax

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