Author: Mick Hartley

Michael Portillo in the Sunday Times:

Britain could be an Al-Qaeda target precisely because it is a nation divided and given to self-flagellation. After the Lockerbie bombing it fell to me as a transport minister to meet some of the grieving relatives. One man who had lost his daughter told me that he blamed airport security, not the terrorist. Even allowing for his suffering I can make no sense of the remark, but it seems to typify a misplaced magnanimity that springs from unwarranted collective guilt.

Terrorists are alive to our vulnerabilities. In 2004 Al-Qaeda attacked trains in Madrid hours before the Spanish general election. Jose Maria Aznar, ally of Bush and Blair, who had been expected to win, lost. The new government scurried to withdraw Spain’s troops from Iraq. Was Spain targeted because it supported America, or because it could be intimidated? Perhaps the US has been spared attacks at home since September 2001 partly because its security is good, but also partly because terror unites Americans more than it divides them.

In this country discontent with Blair’s foreign policy has reached fever pitch. From a pipsqueak parliamentary private secretary to Jack Straw, the former foreign secretary, Labour politicians vie with each other to wear their conscience on their sleeve and distance themselves from Blair. As Israel fights terror the Tories are mealy mouthed and Gordon Brown is silent.

Might not Al-Qaeda reasonably believe that another massive atrocity could bring Blair’s leadership to an end and usher in a series of less hard-nosed administrations? Might they not also reason that Britain is a tempting target because in vast numbers the British refuse to recognise the nature of the extreme Islamist threat that confronts us?

For many Britons a new massacre would supply fresh evidence of the wickedness of the Iraq war or the plight of Palestinians or the downtrodden condition of British minorities. The more obvious explanation, that a group of religious fanatics is bent on destroying us and achieving world domination, would somehow elude them.

he fascist that he’s objecting to, but I doubt it. Somehow the the actual articulation by a Western leader of the fact that there are Islamic groups bent on terror is presented as an insult to all Muslims. A responsible Muslim leader might admit that such, regrettably, is the case, and that it’s a fact that causes shame to all decent Muslims. But that’s not what we get from Bunglawala. Instead we have a man capable only of seeing the faults of the West, of non-Muslims, but entirely unable – or unwilling – to see any faults within the Muslim community on whose behalf he claims to speak. In the face of a Western culture that’s often only too willing to see its own faults and assume that non-Westerners are always the oppressed – well, it’s an echo chamber. Those who know that they’re always right because Allah ordained it, allied with those who’ve been taught that all the current ills of the world are the fault of the West….

And this kind of overexcitable “us and them” rhetoric? We’re talking here about people who blow up planes and tube trains, people who glorify in mass murder. Terrorists. Of course they’re the enemy.

Update: more Muslim spokesmen:

British Muslim groups have written to the prime minister calling for “urgent” changes to UK foreign policy.

In an open letter they say British policy is putting civilians at increased risk in the UK and abroad.

The letter, signed by three Muslim MPs, three peers and 38 groups, also points to the “debacle” of Iraq and the UK’s stance over the Middle East crisis….

MP Sadiq Khan, who signed the letter, said British foreign policy was seen by many as unfair and unjust.

“Whether we like it or not such a sense of injustice plays into the hands of extremists,” he said.

“As moderates we will do all we can to fight extremism. We hope the government will join us in this, not just by changing the rules on hand luggage, but by showing itself as an advocate for justice in the world.”

So, we do what we can to combat extremism (ie mutter the occasional, “Yes, I condemn terrorism”) if you conduct British foreign policy according to Muslim requirements. And if there are more terrorist attacks, we’ll know who to blame. Which looks to me to be a case of moderate Muslims not so much confronting the extremists as hiding behind them.

want to imagine that the entire planet is mired in anti-Jewish paranoia! But then the matter becomes even more puzzling. What is the source of this hemiplegia? Why is the world frightened by Israeli bombs alone?

Gerald Baker in the Times:

There’s a familiar ritual each time an operation to thwart a putative terrorist incident dominates the news. After the public’s initial expressions of relief and shuddering contemplation of what might have been, a rising chorus of sceptics takes over, with a string of questions and hypotheses.

Was it really a serious terrorist plot, or only a bunch of misguided, alienated Muslim kids larking about with a chemistry set and a mobile phone? Sometimes, unfortunately, as with this summer’s ludicrously overplayed Miami “plot” to blow up buildings in Chicago, in which the plotters had got as far as purchasing some boots but not much else, overzealous authorities bring this sort of suspicion on themselves. But you can guarantee that every incident now, whatever the evidence, will be treated with such derisive doubt. If the police had got to the 9/11 hijackers or the 7/7 bombers in time, a sizeable chunk of respectable opinion would have dismissed them as idealistic young men with no real capacity or intent to cause harm.

The scepticism is then embellished by the conspiracy-as-diversion theory. How convenient, cluck the doubters, with rolled eyes and theatrical sarcasm, just as the Government’s got some new bonfire of civil liberties planned; or just as President Bush’s poll numbers are collapsing; or just as Israel is stepping up its ground attacks in southern Lebanon.

Then, of course, whether real or imaginary or government-authored, the cynics will say the plot inevitably has its roots in our own culpability. If we hadn’t invaded Iraq, if Tony Blair weren’t George Bush’s agent of oil-fuelled imperialism, if Israel weren’t killing innocents in Lebanon, this wouldn’t have happened.

It is a neatly comprehensive schema of cynicism. If the plot turns out to be a damp squib, or the police have made some ghastly error, the sceptics will triumphantly claim that it was deliberately overdone to scare us. If the plot is real, or God forbid, as with 9/11 or 7/7 it isn’t foiled in time, then they can switch seamlessly to the claim that we’ve only ourselves to blame.

In this internally pure worldview, the consistent theme is denial— denial of the reality of the mortal threat we face, denial of the reasons we face it. The villain for these people is not the jihadist, with his agenda of destroying our very way of life. It is, as it has always been, that malign continuum of institutions of our own authority that begins with the aggressive police officer and goes all the way up via the credulous media and craven officials to No 10 and the White House.

This business of the foiled plot to blow up airliners:

Muslim community leaders were contacted by the police and Government officials early this morning as the first statements were released to the press.

Khurshid Ahmed, leader of the British Muslim Forum was rung by a chief superintendent from the Metropolitan Police and a senior official from the Department for Communities and Local Government just before 7am to be told the arrests had taken place.

The police also contacted Dr Muhammed Abdul Bari, General Secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, at 6.54am. He was told that a number of arrests had taken place “for the public’s safety” but given few details.

Mr Ahmed said that he felt the operation had been handled well but he warned that if the police failed to find any evidence to incriminate the people concerned then relations between the government and the Muslim community would deteriorate further.

Is it normal police practice to inform religious leaders when members of their flock are arrested? Do they ring the Archbishop of Canterbury every time a Christian’s collared?

And who gave Khurshid Ahmed the moral authority to lecture police on how to deal with terrorist threats, given that his fellow British Muslims have engaged in terrorist acts in the past – in the name of their religion – and have been applauded for it by a not insignificant proportion of their peers.

s said.

“We stormed out of the talks after we informed the mediator that we are not ready to proceed with the negotiations until the government declares a unilateral cessation of hostilities,” Obonyo Olweny told Agence France-Presse.

Last week, the LRA declared a unilateral ceasefire in an apparent bid to boost faltering peace talks and urged the Kampala government to reciprocate. The government refused.

This is confusing. A phrase like “stormed out of the talks” – that’s for journalists to use when describing angry withdrawals. It’s not for those who angrily withdrew to describe themselves as having “stormed out of the talks”. You wouldn’t find old-style trade union leaders, unhappy with management’s offer of a 1% across-the-board pay rise, emerging from Transport House to say “We stormed out of the talks….” Dear me no. Some gravitas needs to be maintained. They’d say, “We felt there was little point in continuing with the talks, in the face of management’s frankly insulting offer, and shall therefore recommend to our members that the strike action be continued, and picketing intensified.” Then you’d get the breathless BBC industrial affairs correspondent saying, “Union leaders today stormed out of a meeting…..”

After last week’s, “I do hope that the government of Uganda shall reciprocate this gesture of goodwill“, I have to say that I have my doubts about the competence of these LRA negotiators. Plus the fact that they’re crazed cultists who specialise in the abduction rape and brutalisation of young children.

If you can’t beat them….

Former Darfur rebel leader Minni Minnawi has begun his role as special assistant to President Omar Bashir.

Mr Minnawi’s faction of the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) was the only movement to sign a peace deal with the Sudanese government earlier this year.

He takes responsibility for government policy in Darfur, where a three-year conflict has killed tens of thousands.

On his first day, he rejected any suggestion that members of other rebel groups should get official positions.

Sounds like just the man for the job. Does he get his own air-conditioned office, plus chauffeur-driven Mercedes?

Recently Mr Minnawi’s soldiers participated in joint actions with the Sudanese army against the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), which did not sign the deal.

Here’s Ahmadinejad on Iranian TV last week:

I hereby declare that this sinister regime [Israel] is the banner of Satan. It is the banner of the Great Satan. All it does is to implement the orders of the criminal America and England. They think that the peoples are the same as they were 100 years ago. They are not aware that things have changed in the world. Today, all the peoples have awoken. The Iranian people is the standard-bearer of this awakening for all the peoples. As we can see, from the southernmost point in South America to the easternmost point in Asia, all the people are shouting a single cry. With placards in their hands and clenched fists, they shout: Death to Israel.

Well, no one could claim he’s not making himself clear.

It might be instructive if clips like these were occasionally shown on TV here – just, you know, to get a flavour of the man who’s president of the country which arms and finances Hezbollah, and which is currently in hot pursuit of nuclear weapons – but no doubt there’s some reason or other why we don’t see them.

Meanwhile in London we have, indeed, thousands marching in support of Hezbollah (via Harry). With placards in their hands and clenched fists, they shout: Death to Israel.

It’s difficult to choose the best poster from all the ones on display, but certainly “Stop Middle East Muslim Holocaust” (two-thirds down) must be a contender. Nice, eh?

Michael Young, editor of Lebanon’s Daily Star, writes in the NYT (reg. required):

One evening earlier this summer, Lebanon’s most popular satire show, ‘‘Bas Mat Watan,’’ broadcast a sketch showing an ‘‘interview’’ with Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader and secretary general. ‘‘Nasrallah’’ was asked whether his party would surrender its weapons. He answered that it would, but first several conditions had to be met: there was that woman in Australia, whose land was being encroached upon by Jewish neighbors; then there was the baker in the United States, whose bakery the Jews wanted to take over. The joke was obvious: there were an infinite number of reasons why Hezbollah would never agree to lay down its weapons and become one political party among others.

But it was the rapid reaction to the satiric sketch that sent the more disquieting message. That very night, angry supporters of Hezbollah closed the airport road with burning tires — a warning that they could block at will the main access point in and out of the country — and marched on mainly Sunni, Druse and Christian quarters in Beirut. In a Christian neighborhood, they clashed with the son of a former president and his comrades, and several youths were taken to hospital.

The leaders of Hezbollah defended these actions, explaining that they were the spontaneous emotional response to the mocking of a cleric. It is just as likely that they were a coordinated effort to intimidate critics. In any case, to me the event seemed an essential one, since it symbolized the duality that has defined Lebanon ever since its civil war came to an end in 1990. The duality was once neatly encapsulated by Walid Jumblatt, the leader of Lebanon’s Druse sect, when he asked, Would Lebanon choose to be Hanoi, circa 1970, or Hong Kong? That is, would it seek to become an international symbol of militancy and armed struggle, particularly against Israel, as represented by Hezbollah, or would it opt for the path laid out by Rafik Hariri, Lebanon’s late prime minister and billionaire developer, who sought to transform his country into a business entrepôt for the region, a bastion of liberal capitalism and ecumenical permissiveness?

In seeking to silence critics of their leader, in momentarily shutting down the airport, Hezbollah struck a blow against Lebanon’s tolerant, if always paradoxical, openness. Once again, it seemed, the Lebanese were suffering the consequences of failing to agree on a common destiny. At the time, the consequences seemed bearable. With the outbreak of the current conflict with Israel, they don’t seem bearable at all.

Michael Portillo in the Sunday Times:

Given the magnitude of Blair’s past errors it might seem odd to regret that he will soon leave the international stage. But I do. Over nine years Blair has amassed huge experience. He has a matchless familiarity with the issues and with world leaders. He has freed himself from the prejudices of his party and has no fear of striking clear positions and taking decisions. His likely successors show no such qualities; indeed they display no interest in foreign policy at all.

It has taken Blair years to perceive the threat from “reactionary Islam” as clearly as he does now. When he is replaced, first by Brown, maybe later by Cameron, his successors will take time to learn again what Blair has learnt already. During the time of their apprenticeships, Britain will be weaker and the threat will be growing apace.

While agreeing with most of what Portillo has to say about Blair, I don’t see why Brown/Cameron “will take time to learn again what Blair has learnt already” about militant Islam. If they don’t see it now, when will they ever see it?