Of Terrorist Motivation & British Papers

Denis MacShane, a Labour MP, opines in the UK's far left newpaper The Observer that the cause of Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with the Iraq or Afghanistan Wars, nor anything else in the foreign policy of Britain or, by extension, the US. His argument is based on the litany of barbarous acts of Islamic terrorism that occurred prior to 9-11, such as the gutting and beheading of fifty Swiss tourists in Egypt during 1997. It is a good article that you can find here.

The fact is that the underlying ideology that gives rise to Islamic terrorism, the Wahhabi sect from Saudi Arabia that has infected everything it has touched (arguably even Khomeinist Shia'ism), is incredibly triumphalist and expansionist. Just as there could be no way short of capitulation of peacefully setteling with Hitler, so there is no possible way of setteling with Islamic terrorists. Any act which is perceived as preventing Islamists from reestablishing a caliphate over all lands now or once under Muslim rule would suffice as justification for attacks on the West. Indeed, the list of potential justifications goes much farther and deeper than just that. Omar Bakir justified the 9-11 attacks on the basis of the 13th century Crusades. And Osama bin Laden, in 2002 prior to the Iraq war, provided seven preconditions for peace with the "Islamic Nation," the first of which was that we convert to Islam. And one former jihadi has described how he and his friends would laugh whenever they heard a useful idiot stand and claim that the reason for terrorism was the war in Iraq or the foreign policy of the UK.

Whether we defend our values aggressively, or demurely bury our heads in the sand, there will be a clear winner and a clear loser as regards Islam and the West. If the West wins, then Western values will prevail, and Muslims who choose to practice their religion peacefully in Western countries will be free to do so. If the Wahhabi ideology wins, then this world will become a medieval kingdom, and the chattering classes of the left will find themselves in their worst nightmare. Our soldiers fighting and dying on foreign soil today, should they succeed, will be saving the far left from the extreme consequences of their own actions.

The thing that amazes me about Mr. MacShane's essay is that he is a member of Britain's left wing party and that the essay appears in the most left wing of Britain's newspapers. That shows a degree of tolerance and maturity on the part of Britain's political parties that goes beyond what we see here. The last time a left wing Democrat spoke such heresy - Joe Lieberman - he was drummed out of the Democratic Party. And my hats off to the Observer and the Guardian for three reasons. One, their factual reporting is usually balanced and first rate - something clearly cannot be said for today's most liberal major newspaper in America, the New York Times. Two, while the Guardian and Observer do give the majority of their editorial space to the far - and sometimes very far - left (there was an essay the other day bemoaning the fall of communism), they also give a fair amount of space to people of all sides to express their opinion. Lastly, their comment policy and set-up is exceptional, leading to very public and robust debate that often sees hundreds of comments posted for any one editorial. I may be fairly conservative, but I do read the Guardian and the Observer daily.