The attempted London bombings were, we will be told, a consequence of US/UK actions Iraq or Palestine or Afghanistan or something or other about George Dubya Bush or Halliburton or Global Capitalism or Social Injustice. You may be certain that all these bullshit excuses will be trotted out by the disingenuous left who crave the accusations or the deeply provincial Americocentric faction of libertarianism who pretend bad people will leave you alone if only you stay in your mountain bunker in the Ozarks, do not ever send soldiers abroad and refuse to trade or interact with the rest of the world.
However I wonder what these people will make of the possibility that the attacks could well have been about Britain daring to grant an honour to Salman Rushdie. Yet again I am delighted that Rushdie was so honoured, thus subjecting so many of western civilisations’ enemies, domestic and foreign, to the harsh light in which their true natures are revealed.
Of course I have no doubt this will all be used to bring in yet more regulation of our lives, reducing even more of our already grotesquely abridged civil liberties whilst leaving us not even slightly safer.
Would have been even more delighted if Sir Ahmed (no lover of Blairite authoritarianism he) had felt moved, as Agent Provocateur co-founder Joseph Corre did with his MBE, to throw it back at Blair saying he could not accept an honour from someone so morally corrupt as Blair.
It is a mark of how bad our education system has become that even our own home-grown terrorists are unable to follow simple bomb-making instructions from their local Imam/Mullah. Is there a market now for a ‘Martyrdom for Dummies’ book in the UK?
Of course the Iraq/Afghanistan excuse is bullshit: 9/11, Bali, the embassy bombings, the first WTC attack all predated the war.
But even if we do imagine for a second that all these current attacks are because of Iraq/Afghanistan, so what?
If we attacked Serbia and subsequently started facing nightclub bombings from militant Latvians would we say, yeah, our policy is immoral, we’re stirring up the Latvian zealots? No. we’d say bugger off and continue liberating the Kosovars.
Iraqis and Afghans aren’t blowing up our nightclubs. Poll after poll in those countries show majorities support the overthrow of Saddam and the Taliban.
These cretins from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia don’t give a damn about people in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else. They are solely preoccupied with insults to their religion, and those run the gamut from infidels on Islamic lands, to mishandling a Koran to Rushdie to guide dogs in cabs.
It’s a plausible theory, Perry. Such people after all are just like some right- and left-wing fanatics in the West and tend to get their news only from sources that perpetuate their obsessions. While mainstream media have moved on to Brown or the EU, they’ll still be echoing about Sir Salman as a world-shaking insult.
Indeed, here’s an email I got yesterday from some primitive, cc-ed to the bizzarest collection of great-and-good, mad-and-bad, you’d ever see:
How to get British Awards and Honours?
Tips to get Booker Prize and Knighthood in the U.K.)
The Satanic Versus (TSV) Salman Rushdie has become a Knight now. First he has got the Booker Prize for his noble contribution. He will become a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
Of his knighthood for services to literature, Rushdie said: “I am thrilled and humbled to receive this great honour, and am very grateful that my work has been recognised in this way.” Guardian says that literary world applauds Rushdie knighthood. Now all the British citizens are obliged to call him Sir Rushdie. Now let us analyse the standard of this British literature, the Satanic Versus (TSV).
THE SATANIC VERSUS (TSV)
One may wonder why Salman Rushdie was given Booker Prize and now honoured with Knighthood. When you complete the following important pages of Satanic Verses, you will really understand the taste of British and their Royal Family.
Let us count how many four letter words (fuck), in the Satanic Versus by Salman Rushdie who has got the Knighthood recently. Page numbers also given from TSV (The Satanic Versus). And so on endlessly and witlessly.
…
I have little doubt the Haymarket bombers will be caught after such a feeble attempt. Then maybe we’ll find out what they thought they were doing it for.
Yes, I saw the same possible reason mooted on the front of one of the newspapers this morning – I forget which. But the problem with these islamic maniacs (one assumes it was islamic terrorists who plotted this, not someone else, like a rogue IRA outfit or whatever), is that they have an inexhaustable supply of grievances. Even OBL cited the Spanish expulsion of the Moors from Spain in the Medieval period. It is not possible to assuage the anger of these bastards. We must either jail them or shoot them.
I suppose it is true that some hotheads have gotten even madder because of the Coalition’s overthrow of the Taliban and Saddam, and the subsequent mess in Iraq has certainly not won the likes of Britain and the USA many friends among islamists. But the overthrow of the Taliban was justified – they backed al Quaeda – and the fall of Saddam, a secular ruler, was surely to the benefit of many Muslims who had suffered under his regime and glad to see the back of him. Most of the violence suffered by Muslims is carried out by other Muslims, a fact that is not pointed out nearly enough.
I agree also with Perry’s statement about some isolationist libertarians’ naviete on these issues. The Justin Raimondo types have argued that if only we pulled out of the ME and just traded merrily away, that a lot of the heat would dissipate. I used to take this view in my younger days – I still think “soft power” is as important as the hard sort – but we cannot let legitimate use of force to deal with thugs be deflected because of home-grown nutters. By all means let us not, however, forget the Law of Unintended Consequences. It will be some time before I can be convinced of major armed interventions in foreign nations again without overwhelming evidence.
I am waiting to find out the IDs of the folks who blew up their Land Rover at the Glasgow airport, and what was their motivation?
The second question: Was the Glasgow attack supposed to be coordinated with a London attack today?
Maybe, but is there an editor for it? I just heard they had another, even more pathetically failed, attempt in Glasgow. Is there such a thing as the Jacques Clouseau Martyrs’ Brigades?
No you do not understand Perry, it is all “blowback” from the wicked imperalist neocon British regimes Crusades under Richard the Lionheart and George W. – it was all for oil and to have a excuse for domestic oppression. The Islamic advance before the Crusades was legitimate self defence – clearly they understood the evil in the hearts of the corporate puppet masters of the warfare state in such places as London.
Besides, long before this, the Byzantine Empire did not practice free trade with Arabia, so the Islamic attack in the early 7th century is quite understantable indeed the Byzantines fault. Just like Pearl Harbour was the fault of the American imperialist neocon regime, because of its economic sanctions against Japan – which was trying to save China from evil American corporate domination.
And we must not forget Uncle Sam’s imperialist aggression against peace loving National Socialist Germany from 1939 till Germany declared war in self defence in 1941.
Or the aggression of the American empire in such places as Korea, Vietnam and Grenada against people the corporate warmongers, absurdly, claimed were Marxists. In reality such people (and the I.R.A. and so on) were noble, engaged in “National Liberation struggles against Western Imperialism”.
And some people (reading the publications of our Rothbardian friends) have the strange notion that libertarians are barking mad.
The Glasgow event seems almost laughable (who was it? Bungle and Zippy?) but people learn. Remember that those who cook up these things are not the deluded chumps behind the wheel, wearing the waistcoats or carrying the rucksacks. They sit, the supreme cowards that they are, plotting in some flat.
I think we need to be on Fisk Patrol for the mealy-mouthed pronouncements from the MCB, Lard Ahmed and other beards.
p.s. Paul Marks: I suspect the US oil embargo on Japan was as much to do with “that’s our plaything!” as “the poor Chinese!”, but yes, you do hear the old chestnut about Japan “liberation of Asia”. As. If.
Wow. You argue so well against the arguments never made. One day, you should turn your talents to arguments that somebody does make! You might change some minds!
These guys seem to be like the Al Qaeda version of the Keystone Cops, but remember that the IRA were pretty inept in the 1960’s and early 1970’s too but they eventually became very sophisticated at the Dark Arts of Terrorism.
Perry de Havilland wrote,
I don’t understand your disbelief, Perry. I mean, just because you favour these wars, why be skeptical about the explainations for such attempted terror attacks? This is a war on terror and a war on these places we are fighting, and it seems kind of obvious that in a war people fight back, you know. Why pretend that this is not the case – you don’t have to give up support for the wars in order to acknowledge that the other side is likely to retaliate in some way.
Actually, I suspected that it may have been the far right in the bombings, what with Gay Pride and all.
Is this a stab at the LRC/Mises Institute/Antiwar.com lot? When has at least Lew Rockwell.com or the Mises Institute favoured not trading with the world?
Richard
Agreed, but in this day of enlightened communication, surely they could at least do a Google search on ‘ANFO’? Propane cylinders and bags of nails sound like something more akin to the Angry Brigade of the 1960’s than a dreaded Al Queda Suicide Bomber cell. Rantingkraut has it nailed (excuse the pun) with the ‘Clouseau Martyrs’ Brigades’.
And so how does that explain the Islamic terrorism in those notoriously Imperialist interventionist globalist nations of Kenya, Philippines, Thailand, Nigeria…
Because when you regress the arguments of a lot of Rothbardians far enough, they end up retreating into total isolationism in which no violence backed actions by foreign states against contracted business relationships or persons justifies a force backed response. And so you get the likes of Raimondo castigating US state actions (often with justification) but then launching into apologias for tyrants in Iraq or China (and their professed anarcho-capitalism get strangely twisted in the process). Lew Rockwell foreign affairs pronouncements often really do not make any sense at all.
What about the absence of Islamic fundamentalist terrorist attacks prior to Britain’s involvement in these wars? The 7/7 bombers explicitly said that it was British foreign policy that motivated them. Oh, I don’t doubt that it was religious mind boggling too, but that has always been here.
Lets face it, whether the wars are justified, there are two sides fighting them, and we should expect one to fight back against the other.
Richard
I take it you never read the Guardian or Independent or New York Times then. You should try it sometime.
Richard Garner you need to face a few facts. The Islamic world has little or nothing to offer the rest of the world in terms of trade. Check out the UN (no Bush/Bechtel?Halliburton bias there) data on what is produced in the Islamic world and you will be amazed at how retarded in virtually every aspect of what is accepted as normal life in the rest of the world these countries are. And before you start whining about Iraq and Afghanistan and how evil western countries are to engage themselves there consider what is happening in Darfur where outsiders are not involved and Islamic savagery is on display for what ii is – brutal and murderous delusional and insane.
Unlike Perry I do not believe that we should engage with these evil and stupid beings. Banning them from entering our countries and deporting those who are here whether they claim to be citizens is and should be our final solution. As for their oil. We don’t need it. The world is full of the stuff and all the chicken littling about supplies running out is on a par with Al Gore’s man made global warming mythology.
Yes, it comes and goes. It was there when they were at the gates of Vienna in 1529 and 1683 too, no doubt in response to something Bush did. Islam has been the enemy of western civilisation since the 700s.
So what?
Let’s cut to the chase here.
Islam will forever excuse itself as long as it exists.
Let us all wake up and help it to cease to exist.
After all, that is their long term plan for the rest of us.
…whether the wars are justified, there are two sides fighting them…
What makes you think there are only two? The world is more complicated than that.
To Perry
So why presume that explainations of bombings, or attempted bombings that claim they are in response to British foreign policy are “bullshit”? Nobody would have taken seriously a claim that the Blitz was not a response to waging war on Nazi Germany. If you wage a war, expect retaliation. That doesn’t necessarily make the war unjust or wrong.
To Millie Woods,
Could you please point out where I said anything about whether it is worth trading with the Islamic world?
Interesting to see such sentiments expressed in a sentence ending with the words “final” and “solution.” Where should British citizens be deported to? Any Moslem should be treated as a criminal regardless of whether there has been any crime proved against them? I would almost rather Perry’s wars (and I haven’t opposed the wars in this discussion) than such a policy in my own country.
Richard
Richard
Just so you know who the MSM will rely on to decide the reasons(Link).
No less a terrorist than Osama bin Laden told us that jihad is a response to Western interference and imperialism. Choose not to believe him, sure, but do the favor of prefacing your statements with “I am too foolish to understand what I do not believe.” It will save us all some trouble. Thanks.
I really fail to see why Salman Rushdie was given an honour. In fact, the whole honours system is statist garbage.
And although it isn’t all about Iraq, you can’t deny that the war has been a PR disaster that has really rattled a hornet’s nest. Far from being a cakewalk like the neocons and their dupes promised, the war has been an utter disaster. Compared to what has been unleashed in Iraq, Saddam Hussein in retrospect appears fairly safe goods. And the only beneficiaries have been Iran, because we conveniently handed Iraq over to pro-Iranian shiites, and Al Qaeda, as the war has been a propaganda dream to them. America and Britain have not benefited one jot. The war is not in either country’s national interest, and because of that ought to be terminated ASAP.
islam offers nothing to advanced societies. It is a backward, exclusive ideology that is way behind other religions and should be ridiculed, not coddled. If the State had a choice the religion would be stripped of legality and that should now be the guiding principle. Even the moderates are radical, by modern standards.
We’re in for a long, tough fight, despite the amateurism displayed by the fanatics over the last 2 days.
What bothers me is the continued failure by government to take the following steps:
1. Detention of suspects for 90 days plus – the bombers here are apparently escapees from control orders : this is a disgrace
2. Closing down of radical bookshops
3. Closing down of radical mosques
4. Deportation of radical imams
5. Deportation of convicted terrorists
6. Pressure brought to bear on radical families – such as deportation of forced re-location to other parts of Britain
7. Onerous visa restrictions on all travellers in and out of Pakistan and the mid-east
8. Profiling at airports and other places of risk
9. Banning of islamic dress in public places
10. Monitoring under threat of closure islamic schools
11. Banning of islamic dress in legal forums
My personal opinion is that all religions, including Islam, exist at the permission of the State. These people need ot be advised in harsh terms (probably are being advised) that the British population’s patience with their death cult is wearing thin.
These are ‘de minimis’ requirements in the current security climate and the failure ot implement them smacks of a culture that confuses tolerance (to be admired and encouraged) with naivete. I keep seeing Brown et al in their comfortable safe offices, surrounded by security people, telling us all to be vigilant etc without taking the hard, necessary steps to protect us.
Rant over.
islam offers nothing to advanced societies. It is a backward, exclusive ideology that is way behind other religions and should be ridiculed, not coddled. If the State had a choice the religion would be stripped of legality and that should now be the guiding principle. Even the moderates are radical, by modern standards.
We’re in for a long, tough fight, despite the amateurism displayed by the fanatics over the last 2 days.
What bothers me is the continued failure by government to take the following steps:
1. Detention of suspects for 90 days plus – the bombers here are apparently escapees from control orders : this is a disgrace
2. Closing down of radical bookshops
3. Closing down of radical mosques
4. Deportation of radical imams
5. Deportation of convicted terrorists
6. Pressure brought to bear on radical families – such as deportation of forced re-location to other parts of Britain
7. Onerous visa restrictions on all travellers in and out of Pakistan and the mid-east
8. Profiling at airports and other places of risk
9. Banning of islamic dress in public places
10. Monitoring under threat of closure islamic schools
11. Banning of islamic dress in legal forums
My personal opinion is that all religions, including Islam, exist at the permission of the State. These people need ot be advised in harsh terms (probably are being advised) that the British population’s patience with their death cult is wearing thin.
These are ‘de minimis’ requirements in the current security climate and the failure ot implement them smacks of a culture that confuses tolerance (to be admired and encouraged) with naivete. I keep seeing Brown et al in their comfortable safe offices, surrounded by security people, telling us all to be vigilant etc without taking the hard, necessary steps to protect us.
Rant over.
Then you are a fascist no less dangerous than the Islamo-fascists you say you despise.
Richard Garner
“The 7/7 bombers explicitly said that it was British foreign policy that motivated them. ”
No they fucking didn’t you deluded loon. More than 3/4 of Mohammed sidique Khan’s suicide note/video was about the corruption of western society, and the corruption of muslim Imans whoo didn’t meet hois stringent standards of hate
“Our so-called scholars today are content with their Toyotas and semi-detached houses. They seem to think that their responsibilities lie in pleasing the kufr instead of Allah. So they tell us ludicrous things, like you must obey the law of the land. Praise be God! How did we ever conquer lands in the past if we were to obey this law?… By Allah these scholars will be brought to account, and if they fear the British government more than they fear Allah then they must desist in giving talks, lectures and passing fatwas, and they need to sit at home and leave the job to the real men, the true inheritors of the prophets.”
He was active in Jihadi groups before the invasion of Iraq, in fact before 2001. It only takes five minutes to find this information out.
Idiot
chip mentions about our ‘liberation’ of Kosovo.
I would ask him to look at the ethnicity of the terrorists arrested for planning to attack Fort Dix in the USA. They were not Slavic Serbs.
Again, it just further shows the folly of getting involved in disputes and wars that really have little to do with vital interests. I won’t deny that Milosevic was an SOB, but he certainly was not a threat to us, and helping the terrorists of the KLA so that they could commence the ethnic cleansing of Kosovan Serbs was never in anybody’s interest but that of the KLA. Dropping bombs on the Chinese embassy certainly was not cool either.
“No less a terrorist than Osama bin Laden told us that jihad is a response to Western interference and imperialism.”
Yes, in fact in his video claiming responsibilty for 9/11 he made special mention of the defeat of the Moors by the Spanish in 1492. Maybe if we give them back Analucia they’ll be nice to us again.
It’s like idiot soup round here these days
Rushdie is not my cuppa tea but actually the honours system is exactly the sort of non-toxic and very cheap thing that states should indeed be doing. Ditto the monarchy, which is a nice powerless figurehead vastly less damaging than the actual democratic government.
So then it is a good thing that wars are not decided by PR companies. You really need to stop reading the Guardian, it will rot your brain.
Really? The late Saddam might disagree. And the war is not over. Eventually the country will be partitioned: Kurds happy, Sunnis mollified, Shiites fucked. Hey, we live in an imperfect world, two out of three is better than one unified hell under Baathism.
I am sure the people of Halabja would agree with you.
1. I don’t read the Guardian.
2. Why was it absolutely necessary in 2003 to avenge a crime that happened in the 1980s? Especially when not a single American or British citizen had been killed at Halabja. Do you want to invade China to avenge Tiananmen too? John Quincy Adams once said that America did not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. He was a wise fellow. Unlike today’s armchair generals that want to throw away soldiers lives for ‘humanitarian’ purposes.
3. Partition? When we tried that with India, it left one million dead in a year. Well, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are already dead. Why not kill a million more?! It just reeks of all the other sure cures we’ve been offered for Iraq- debaathisation, democracy, surge etc etc.
Joshua,
I grant that Osama bin Laden did indeed refer to post renaissance episodes of Western intervention in his letter. I am not going to discuss if and to what extent Islamist terrorism is a response to this. I don’t think it matters all that much for a simple reason: whatever the origins, the objective of Jihad is to conquer the rest of the world for Islam. Even if the West kept out of the Middle East completely, even if the state of Israel were to be destroyed and even if the caliphate of Cordoba were to be restored, the Islamists’ Jihad would continue until the rest of the world submits to Islam. –this too is in bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’.
Partitioning nations into smaller and smaller bits is almost always a good idea. It is a process that was inevitable in India and will also happen to the UK (the sooner the better).
A partitioned Iraq would create 3 weak states. The Kurdish part would end up being invaded by Turkey for being home to Kurdish terrorist bases. The Shiite nation would become defacto Iranian territory. The Sunni part, largely deprived of oil, would be very poor and reliant on Sunni nations to support it. Considering partition will without doubt involve ethnic cleansing and the deaths of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of civilians, that is one further dishonour I would prefer Britain and America not be associated with.
It is not a bug, its a feature.
Yes, lets completely butcher the only buffer state to Iran. Then again, as that will leave Iran in a brilliant position, it will give the neocons their excuse for more cakewalk wars.
Big powerful states cause a whole lot more problems than they solve. Saddam’s big powerful state kept invading his neighbors so more of the same is a pretty dumb solution. Break it up!
Oh right and that would because a unitary Iraq was such a stabilising influance in the region, eh?
I mean it was not like the government in Baghdad contented itself with slaughtering their own people, they were rather keen to do it to Iranians and Kuwaitis too. So more of the same is your suggestion, right? Very sensible.
‘Big powerful states cause a whole lot more problems than they solve.’
Would you say a big powerful state like the United States ought to be broken up? China? Russia?
And nobody bar the Iranians gave a hoot when Saddam attacked Iran. Every Western nation wanted him to win that war.
I find it real ironic that many of the war whoopers are so belligerent against Iran too. The war whoopers, whether they know it or not, have done so much to help Iran and its interests.
And these people think they are patriots!
Yes indeed.
I can understand having an affinity with and even a loyalty to a society but attributing nobility to nation states themselves and getting all misty eyed and ‘patriotic’ about them is generally a bad idea.
Interesting you mention partition of the UK Pierre. The Al Qaeda manual “The Management of Savagery” which may be found at:
http://www.ctc.usma.edu/naji.asp
Has as their explicit strategy:
1. Create chaos by terror, see the UK and Iraq.
2. Use chaos to create smaller states out of larger ones (partition).
3. In the smaller, weaker states construct an Islamic Society.
It is quite clear that Muslims in general have been waging war against native Britons to impose Sharia and Islam through these means. Various polls show an appalling level of support for Jihad among young Muslim men, denial of 9/11, 40% support for Sharia, etc. Not all Muslims to be sure, but most either tacitly or actively support these measures. Not surprising. Islam requires collective submission and erasing individuality; Westerners require individuality. That’s a recipe for War of Civilizations unless one is much much stronger and unconstrained than the other.
It is just as clear that neither Blair, nor Brown, nor the Tories, have an idea of how to fight the Islamic challenge of chaos, partition, and take-over. Radicals preach and organize without consequences, there are so many of them that MI-5 can’t even watch them all. And the British elite in the Press, Academy, Government, and literary/intellectual spheres fetishize victimhood, weakness, effeminancy/feminization, appeasement, self-loathing, and so on. There isn’t a single public figure willing to call Islam on all it’s loathesome practices: female genital mutiliation, polygamy, amputation of limbs, honor killings, stoning to death of women, forced marriages, hatred of other peoples, etc. To call Islam’s evil well, evil. To allow no toleration for it. To call and put into practice jailing for very long terms anyone even associated with those practices which are evil, vile, and disgusting.
No, the public knows the elites are weak, corrupt, effeminate, and unwilling to stand up to the enemy that threatens them. With being blown up in airports, nightclubs, buses, subways and bars, closing their pubs, putting burkas on their women, or perhaps conducting rape campaigns against them. Along with banning pork and Christianity.
The anti-Muslim riots in Winchester were only the beginning. Since Muslims have been conducting “a war of the peoples” and the elites been predictably hiding or cowering with PC, missing in action, how long before the people self-organize.
How long before Mosques, with or without Muslims within them, are burnt down after the next terrorist atrocity (i.e. large death tolls)? How long before you see Muslims marching in masks saying “England you will pay” and “Sharia now” matched with Britons in masks marching holding signs saying “Muslims out” and “To hell With Mohammed”
I noticed Gordon Brown said as little as possible so his weakness and lack of any thing to offer would not be exposed. But given that the Government is totally unable to deal with continued Baghdad-level violence, and Muslims feel free to go on jihad without reprisals, I fully expect the British people to get fed up.
To self-organize.
And to start making reprisals of their own.
What does Brown and the other effeminate, weak, corrupt, and inept elites do then? Order the police and army to arrest/jail/shoot the people? Maybe. But how long before an active revolt against the elites by the people?
Here in the US, the people pushed back on the Senate elites, and made our anger known. There is no reason something like that can’t be done in the UK, only a lot more violent because your Muslims are blowing up Britain. With the elites making weakness in response a virtue.
Power abhors a vacuum.
I wonder how long before the UKIP or BNP run this into electoral success?
“Nobody would have taken seriously a claim that the Blitz was not a response to waging war on Nazi Germany.”
What??? The Blitz would have happened sooner or later.
An independent England is going to happen, and probably within the next 20 years at most (maybe less if things go well in Scotland with the SNP). And I assure you Al Qaeda has nothing to do with the process of the end of the UK.
And I also assure you that if Europe looked a lot like a bunch of Netherlands sized countries, it could still stomp the Islamic world into red paste if it really decided it needed to.
It is preposterous in this modern world to think only huge nation states can survive and prosper. Any nation with 3-5 million people is entirely viable economically and militarily.
Organisations like NATO make sense to deal with collective threats (like Russia, for example) but that would work just fine with more nations of smaller sizes.
‘Westerners require individuality.’
Really? I find many Westerners to be utter sheep. Maybe not as docile as the average muslim, but pretty docile all the same.
I’m all for individualism, but considering Europeans came up with communism and fascism, both far more evil than islam, we ought to be careful about making grand claims about all ‘westerners’.As much as I would love Westerners to all individualists, that just is not the case.
Interestingly enough, the Glasgow chief plod was issuing dire threats to the indigenous population about just that even as he related the details of the latest attack……
Jim Rockford,
Baghdad-level violence? Lets see.
UK: Three improvised incendiary-explosive devices at two sites, of decreasing levels of copy-cat competence. One petrol fire. No one killed. One ineffectual bomber very badly injured. Several suspects already in custody. People going about their lives entirely normally.
Baghdad: 293 civilians killed in May, that being the middle estimate, since no one knows the real numbers. Countless – literally – maimed. An effective curfew, with death-squads roaming the streets. Citizens and soldiers afraid of one another.
Reprisals? Yeah, random violence is a great solution to random violence. Perhaps a few death-squads would liven up a situation that’s in danger of being boring, what with no-one murdered, police pursuing actual suspects, and all the paraphenalia of rule of law still functioning. What particular means of reprisal would you recommend? A little bit of rape and torture? Mini-pogroms? Or a full scale “self-organised” genocide?
TD:
“If the State had a choice” but it doesn’t. The state’s role in society is to shut the fuck up and fix potholes and let Federal Express screw up the mail. The police parts of the state have their role as keeping the peace. Not to decide which faiths may and may not be practiced in public.
YEAH! No more pretrial bond or whatever it’s called there! And how do you know the suspects’ identities so well? If you have such useful personal knowledge, I’m sure the Met has a detective who’d love to talk to you.
Yeah, it’s the books that did it.
Who decides what is and isn’t radical?
Are they citizens?
That’ll do wonders for allowing the cops to get useful information, going on the attack against people who haven’t even been reasonably suspected of wrongdoing. Why the fuck should anyone tell us anything if they expect us to act like goons no matter what?
Do you even know what profiling is? Then you know why it’s worthless at that scale.
THAT’S your solution? To tell adults that they can’t be trusted to dress themselves???
My own faith is rather different from Islam. However, I have remarkably little patience for the notion that someone needs to go to jail or even get government permission for praying five times a day, not drinking, and holding troglodyte opinions as to the role of women in society. The fact that the Saudis have criminalized my faith doesn’t justify your goofy nonsense.
Wow. Talking to you makes me feel dirty. And not a good dirty like two hours on a secluded beach with Shawn Colvin either.
Of the 46 responses (including one repeat) to an article by PdH, there are 11 comments/rebuttals by PdH himself. Is this a new record? Now what’s that expression I’m reaching for?
Oops. That Baghdad figure. Too low. I looked up the estimates for May 2003 in error. It’s got rather worse since then.
Here’s the official US announcement:
So that’s Baghdad comfortably exceeding all terrorism casualties among US and Western European nationals and residents over the last decade, since the start of this year, in one city.
Or compare Israel, which has a consistent suicide bombing problem without a break-down in civil order, and has had rockets fired at it intermittently: 1,132 deaths since September 2000 – less than January in Baghdas. Britain has a bit of a way to go before reaching Israel’s levels of violence, never mind Baghdad’s. The Israelis maintain the rule of law and a functioning civil society, so I don’t see why we shouldn’t.
“Far from being a cakewalk like the neocons and their dupes promised, the war has been an utter disaster. Compared to what has been unleashed in Iraq, Saddam Hussein in retrospect appears fairly safe goods.”
Let’s see Nuke Reactor
Iraq-Iran War
Koweit Invasion
Yeah Really Fairly Safe!!!
“The Israelis maintain the rule of law and a functioning civil society, so I don’t see why we shouldn’t.”
Well, yes. But it’s not an ideal situation. You can’t say: terrorism is a given fact that we have to live with it the best we can.
The best would be not to have terrorism, short of that – you do what you can: defensive measures (searches, etc.), preventive measures, surveilance measures, etc.
You need to try to reduce the damage of terrorism as much as possible.
Can we mantain a functioning society in spite of terrorism ? Sure. But it does not mean that we do nothing against terrorism, except adapting to it.
Me:
My personal opinion is that all religions, including Islam, exist at the permission of the State.
Perry:
Then you are a fascist no less dangerous than the Islamo-fascists you say you despise.
What utter tosh. Perry, Rick was a charcter from The Young Ones in the 80s. You’re giving your age away. If I were a fascist I’d be calling for the end of all religion, plus the extermination of muslims. My point is rather more subdued – we have an ideology that preaches allegiance ot the ummah, not the state; the vast majority of muslims have some level of sympathy for the islamist extremists, event if that means ‘understanding their point of view’; a significant minority support the use of terrorism for the cause.
This is a specific threat, posed by islam, against the west. Extremists are the tip of a long spear. Deny it if you wish but events tend to favour my view of things.
Sorry TD but you did not say Islam should be banned (which I also have a problem with when stated that broadly) but rather, and I quote, “My personal opinion is that all religions, including Islam, exist at the permission of the State.”
You think a person cannot practice a religion without the approval of the state, not just Islam, but all religion, i.e. you take the Chinese position… and China is clearly now a fascist (ideologically extreme nationalist and uses regulation and crony relationships to control the nominally private means of production) rather than a communist state (ideologically trans-nationalist and uses direct state control of the means of production).
By implication presumably you think belief in anything which has a political dimension must be state approved (like, say Falun Gong), as I assume it is not the theological aspects of any given religion that you care about, or then again, under the TD Reich will belief in transubstantiation or predestination or the Harrowing of Hell also require approval from some Department of Religious Regulations?. Yes, I think ‘fascist’ is probably the technically correct label, though the more generic ‘totalitarian’ works too.
Golly gee whiz and just imagine! Richard Garner failed my irony recognition test. The Nazi final solution murdered millions of innocents for no reason other than who they were. The Islamics murder millions of infidels as well as other Islamics they disagree with and the Richard Garners of the world give them a pass and act as apologists for these hopeless scraps of life masquerading as humankind. Try reading Crime and Punishment and The Caves of the Vatican if you want an analysis of dealing with these moral questions. But if reading books is beyond you, go to G & S’s little ditty – Let the Punishment Fit the Crime.
Richard Garner writes:
Well clearly, some of these nutters were motivated by a desire to launch attacks in “revenge” for our overthrow of the Taliban (protectors of AlQ), and Saddam (a secular ruler who oppressed and murdered hundreds of thousands of Muslims). But remember, as Perry pointed out with the examples of Thailand, Bali, etc, that these folk have attacked targets with no obvious motivations whatever other than the sin of being, however vaguely, “pro-western” in some sense. There is no way you can appease such people. We cannot adopt a totally isolationist, hide-under-the-bed, Swiss model of foreign policy and hope that we do nothing to upset the tender sensitivities of these folk. For a global trading nation like Britain with a long legacy of Empire and trade, we are bound to have offended some sensitivities down the line, and these assholes will have a bottomless pit of “excuses” to carry out attacks.
The problem with the appeasers and terror-deniers is that they want to believe, perhaps understanderbly, that these people are amenable to reason. They are not.
“The 7/7 bombers explicitly said that it was British foreign policy that motivated them. Oh, I don’t doubt that it was religious mind boggling too, but that has always been here.”
Then we must just as explicit reminding them,as British citizens, that violence has no place in a democratic society.
When one considers on of the bombers was a West Indian convert to Islam,the whole argument becomes ludicrous..
The strategy obviously works,from to look of some comments,what will the next affront be?
That’s not how I read it – prolonging the war was the primary goal. From what I can gather, the West (esp. the Americans) didn’t particularly want Saddam to win the Iran-Iraq war, although they didn’t want him to lose, either. Ditto the Iranians. Western interests were served best whilst those two regional powers were fighting each other.
As for the breakup of the USA, not a bad idea – and an increasingly necessary one under the circumstances. Such radical action wouldn’t be required if American lawmakers and judges (many of the latter appear to consider themselves lawmakers these days, so perhaps the distinction is redundant) kept to the formula of the Founding Fathers, but apparently they know better.
And while we’re dismembering the USA, I say go ahead and stick a fork in Australia, too – another degenerate Federation of States. Breaking countries like these up is one of the most effective ways to reverse the ever-expanding authority of their overweening central governments.
Jacob,
Can we mantain a functioning society in spite of terrorism ? Sure. But it does not mean that we do nothing against terrorism, except adapting to it.
You have me out of context. I wasn’t advocating doing nothing against terrorism. Though I do advocate doing quite a lot less of some things that are purportedly counterterrorism, but are actually in effect the promotion and exploitation of terror, that’s not what I was doing there.
What I was doing was repudiating Jim Garner’s absurd and revolting nonsequitur suggestion that (1) Britain is as bad as Baghdad, thus (2) the British population should not be blamed if it were to form lynch mobs and carry out “reprisals” against Muslims.
“The 7/7 bombers explicitly said that it was British foreign policy that motivated them.”
And Hitler said that it was only a desire for a little lebensraum following the unfair Treaty of Versailles that led him to invade the Sudetenland, and it was only the Jews’ plotting against Germany that led him to exterminate them. And of course Stalin and Mao were only acting in the interests of the oppressed workers. What people say about their own motivations tends to serve their own purposes.
Besides the business of all the places where Jihad occurs without an anti-terrorist foreign policy (they always find some excuse, though), and that it is an entirely unreasonable justification anyway (I don’t like their foreign policy, does that mean people will understand if I try to kill them?), there is the undoubted correlation between terrorism and Islamism, the well-known Islamist rhetoric to the effect that they are trying to return to the original Islam of the Prophet, and the historical fact (so far as history can ever be determined) that the theological purpose of Jihad since the time of the Prophet is and always has been to extend Muslim rule to the entire world, and that deception of the enemy about one’s true beliefs is justified in the process.
Islam’s own books and authorities say so, and it is hard to imagine that Jihadists are pious enough to kill themselves in battle, but not pious enough to have heard about their own religious doctrines.
We can acknowledge that there may be some Muslims who have been fooled by the rhetoric too, and that of course people intent on taking over the world understandably don’t like a foreign policy that gets in the way of that, but the principle reason we face terrorism is because of their religious beliefs. To concede the point is to surrender on one of their main lines of propaganda. If someone wants to claim it is all a result of our foreign policy, they’re going to have to fight to support the contention.
“If someone wants to claim it is all a result of our foreign policy, they’re going to have to fight to support the contention.”
Does it really matter? The war in Iraq is criminal, irrespective of its domestic consequences. And terrorism is criminal, irrespective of the motivation of the terrorists.
Julius
Re Richard’s What about the absence of Islamic fundamentalist terrorist attacks prior to Britain’s involvement in these wars? The 7/7 bombers explicitly said that it was British foreign policy that motivated them. Oh, I don’t doubt that it was religious mind boggling too, but that has always been here.
But in the real world… More likely the change of Government policy towards radical imams and radical Islamic groups using the UK as a base post 9/11.
Up ‘till then they had a relatively easy time of it and were less likely to foul their own nests. They probably thought they had a good chance of ‘turning’ the UK the way they were going in a nice easy process using political correctness and suckering the Government into incremental legislation.
When certain Imams started to get banned from Belmarsh and the security services started to take an interest and certain groups were made illegal. That is when it probably became inevitable that there would be attacks in the UK. After that it was just a case of the process of finding turning and training dupes to work it’s way through to its perverted fruition.
Julius,
Except that the war in Iraq wasn’t and isn’t criminal, although many anti-Western terror-supporters have tried to claim that it is, and many others have chosen to believe them.
It is just another part of the information war, in which the Jihadists and their supporters try to erode the West’s moral authority by throwing out endless accusations and tu quoques in an attempt to paint some sort of moral equivalence. It’s a technique they borrowed from the ComIntern-backed “human rights” groups.
We could divert the discussion on to an explanation of the legal case for war if you like, but it’s a distraction from criticising Jihadists. That’s exactly what they want.
This is how they fight the war. They cannot win by military force, but they can attack our self confidence and moral certainty in order to degrade our will to fight, and so ‘force’ us to surrender (or at least compromise). They try to persuade us that we are wrong to resist them. They’re lying, but we are so ignorant and befuddled by the propaganda machine that the tactic is succeeding rather well, and their campaign is posing a serious threat to our values and liberties.
My point is not that the war is criminal (though I cannot begin to understand the contrary argument). My point is that the criminality of the war makes not a jot of difference to the criminality of the terrorists (and vice versa).
Julius,
Fair enough. But even if it wasn’t the point you were making, it is a point many other people do make, just as they use claims that foreign policy is the motivation to excuse it.
In the public perception of these issues, there is some sort of idea of at least partially ‘justified’ criminality; an impression that is used by the Jihadists to blunt the condemnation and measures taken against them. Nobody takes their crimes very seriously. It’s a clever technique, and effective.
I was arguing not so much against you, but to point out this is another very good example of the problem we’re facing. It’s not as if terrorists could ever kill enough of us that we couldn’t fight them any more, but with such techniques they can persuade us to surrender anyway.
We agree. But the point of course cuts both ways.
Your middle pararaph is a good example. Substitute “Pro War party” for “Jihadists” and you will see what I mean. To put it another way, Bin Laden and his apologists are not the only ones guilty of moral equivalency.
I opposed the judgement to go into Iraq in 2003, but the idea that the war is “criminal” (reglarly stated in the newspapers and by guests on the B.B.C. and so on) is absurd.
Saddam broke the cease fire agreements of 1991 (many times) so any attack upon his regime was fine from a legal point of view (although it may still have been unwise).
On the mass killing of civilians:
Sadly various government of Iraq have been doing that (on and off) as far back as the 1930’s (and long before in the area now known as Iraq). It is the custom in this part of the world (I hope I will not be called a “racist” again – as I was when I cast some doubt about whether a successful liberal democracy could be built in Iraq).
It is possible that a liberal democracy will be built in Iraq (in spite of the history of the area and the customs of the various groups), indeed things have turned out better than I expected – so we will just have to wait and see.
On dividing the country up:
The Constitution of Iraq has already been wrtten (by the Iraqis) and approved (overwhelmingly approved) by the people of Iraq.
Either we believe in this process or we do not (in which case going in 2003 looks a bit odd). So Senator Brownback rewriting the Constitutional settlement is not going to work (he is not an Iraqi, let alone the majority of the population).
Besides what does one do with Baghdad?
Neither the Sunni or the Shia are going to give up this city, and whilst de facto segregation is emerging – the political and cultural areas of the city are not going to be given up by either side.
Yes most of the population of the city are Shia, but the city was founded by the Sunni (in 762 as the capital of the Abbaside dynasty of Caliphs) and it was the capital of the Sunni Islamic world for centuries (perhaps till Timur sacked city in 1392 or till his conquest of 1401).
But it is more than this – long after this Baghdad was a great price normally held by the Ottoman Turks, but always under the threat of the Persians.
The threat of the Persians (the Iranians) exists to this day.
So we are just going to have to grit our teeth and try and make a democratic federal Iraq work. Of course “I would not start from here” (as the Irish side of my family might have said), but we do not have any better options.
Clearly, if we are to win in Iraq (or in Afghanistan), Iranian influence must be defeated. The Iranian regime not only supports the Shia terrorists, they support the Sunni ones as well (in Afghanistan also), in spite of the hatred that Wahhabis have for the Shia.
The Iranian regime has been killing Westerners around the world since 1979 and this must stop. No one is promising you a “cake walk” (although oddly enough the war in Iraq was a cake walk, if you do not think so have a look at the history of warfare – it is normally a lot tougher than this, it is just the television factor that makes it look special), but one way or another the Iranian regime must be removed (hopefully by internal revolt).
“One does not make peace with ones friends, one makes peace with ones enemies” yes, but one makes peace by killing them, or having them killed.
As for terrorism in Britain:
The attitude of many of the Muslims here was shown back in the 1980’s – the Rushdie affair. So the idea that their attitude is caused by the Iraq war of 2003 (or that of 1991 – as it is really the same war) is bullshit.
They have always thought like this. It is due to the interpretation that many of them have of Islam. And as I can not read classical Arabic I am not qualified to judge whether this interpretation is correct or not.
One good thing. It may be good that they have chosen to attack now (whilst they are still a small minority), had they waited till their numbers had grown things would be far more irritating.
As for what percentage of the Muslim population agree with the interpretation of Islam that holds that its laws must be imposed on a land where Muslims live – well I do not know what percentage this is.
“Moral equivalency” so what? When Hitler invaded Holland in 1940 who held the moral high ground and what use was it to them? The Jihadis are our enemies and we should destroy them in countless thousands wherever they are to be found.
Gordon,
That way has a high price – no point in paying more than we have to. There are better ways, if we have the will.
If they could defeat us through our culture, what could we do to them? Whose culture is the more powerful, the more preferable, when it comes right down to it? But it will take a little more knowledge, self-confidence and determination than we’ve shown so far.
Paul,
At the risk of wandering off topic, I’d suggest that this is a mistake:
I opposed the judgement to go into Iraq in 2003, but the idea that the war is “criminal” (reglarly stated in the newspapers and by guests on the B.B.C. and so on) is absurd.
Saddam broke the cease fire agreements of 1991 (many times) so any attack upon his regime was fine from a legal point of view (although it may still have been unwise).
The first point I think is fine. It is absurd to say the Iraq war was (is?) ‘illegal’. (It might be ‘criminal’ in a metaphorical sense, in a number of ways, and it would not be absurd to say so even if it were highly contentious.)
The second I suggest gives you trouble, undermining the first. By suggesting there were ‘legally’ legitimating grounds for the invasion, you are adopting the position that wars can in themselves (and not just in their conduct) be legal or illegal in international law, thus conceding that ‘International Law’ is a normative force superior to national sovereignty and separate from the custom of nations. Once you have conceded that principle, the idea that the war was illegal ceases to be absurd and might well be right.
Baghdad is mentioned in the talmud and existed long before arab interlopers started hanging around there. It was “founded” by Muslims in the same sense that the Dome of the Rock is an Islamic holy site.
This is how these bastards operate. They spread lies like “we founded this city in X” “the palestinians are the original inhabitants of these lands”, “there was a golden age in spain” with such a brazen lack of shame that no-one even bothers to check and see that Baghdad was a city long before Muhammed was shagging kids etc. 500 years from now people will talk about the day Muslims founded Rotterdam.
Baghdad, by the way, was 1/3rd Jewish at the beginning of the 20th century until those poor, sensitive arabs, who simply can’t bear to see the sight of a refugee without flying into rhapsodic rage, decided they didn’t want them anymore. Sunni pots and Shia kettles can argue about who has legitimate rights to the city till eternity, neither of them give a solitary s**t about either truth or decency.
Guy, the last paragraph in your July 2, 2007 08:28 AM is critically important. I was getting ready to make this point when I read your comment.
The entire idea of a war’s legality presumes a higher, multinational authority. Wars can be stupid, immoral, unjust, ill advised, whatever, but once words like ‘criminal’ or ‘illegal’ are used, it means there is a law making body above a nation’s sovereign law.
Those closest a war can come to being illegal for sovereign nations is when it violates their own internal laws and that is an internal matter. There is a reason it is called war. As in “alls fair”.
***…or the deeply provincial Americocentric faction of libertarianism who pretend bad people will leave you alone if only you stay in your mountain bunker in the Ozarks, do not ever send soldiers abroad and refuse to trade or interact with the rest of the world.***
Perry De Havilland 6/30/07
***Frankly I am more worried about the pervasive threat posed to my civil liberties by Gordon Brown than the more or less random threat to my life posed by Al Qaeda.***
Perry De Havilland 6/29/07
These quotes from the same person, one day apart?
The underlying basis of the (current) anti-war right is that the stylings that it has been fought under so far is ineffectual, and gone in the wrong direction. It simply puts forth that if there is a clear and present danger, there are already Constitutional methods to unleash the dogs of war, to fight efficiently and effectively until the threat is quelled. Any other mode merely invests bureaucrats with DOMESTIC as well as foreign carte blanche. It allocates more and more power into the hands of executives and bureaucrats, the worry expressed correctly in the second excerpt.
As far as blowback, it is a fact that Bin Laden got his turbin in a twist because of the infidels setting foot on sacred territory. And then was Hussein overthrown? NO! He was simply chased back across his border to do his misdeeds against his own. And keep bases in the Holy Land to maintain no-fly zones and other bureaucratic nonsense. The left uses “blowback” to condemn the West in toto. The right uses “blowback” to mean the improper use of force must have been used.
In my book, “blowback” only occurs when force has been used ineffectually and incorrectly, the battle cry of the bureaucrat. If we have been, indeed, at war for the better part of three decades, then it has been cocked up majorly. If this is the epic struggle of West against East, then we’ve been engaging in the protracted “sitzkreig” a la WWII or the strawberry picking phase of the US Civil War.
But why is this “struggle” being fought ineffectually? Just as with any State function, it is about the bureaucrat. His elevation, his power, his ultimately position. Our struggle has been by and large an economic navigation for resources in the middle east. It’s just a hilarious twist of fate that so much wealth in natural resources happens to be under nuts. But if this IS a time of reckoning with these nuts, then let’s get on with it. Endless half measures, securing resources and telling the domestics to keep on shopping and submit to having their phones tapped, has much more of the tang of Imperialism about it than of a cataclysmic clashing of civilizations. I think the Pauls of the world DO recognize threats, and are perfectly willing to battle them. NOT give license to those who are fighting for whats best for the Beltway, not the nation.
If this IS an epic struggle, then let’s get on with it. Bureaucrats worrying more about their positions and power, and using phrases like War on Terror (just like War on Drugs or Poverty) is a bureacratic euphamism. If we are truly at risk, there are all sorts of people with power over resources and State apparritus, make the case against them, Constitutionally declare War on them and execute it. Including the “friendly” ones we trade with.
And in what way are they contradictory?
Can a war be “illegal” if it violates a divine law of a certain religion?
***These quotes from the same person, one day apart?
And in what way are they contradictory?***
The contradiction is that you don’t allow others to fear their own bureacrats as well. Those who do are dismissed as backward, moonshine runners in the Ozarks. I fear transferring power to those who fight the wrong war (e.g. being the policeman of the world) or fighting the right war incorrectly (three decades of squeezing through keyholes for economic outcomes in the middle east).
The first, the policeman of the world, leverages a role on ourselves that we need not take. The second is using the right reasons to fight the wrong way for the benefit of those already in the Beltway. Fighting wars the wrong way merely emboldens the bureaucrats and does little to end whatever threat is seen to exist.
To crystalize it another way, do you like the phrase “War on Terror”? To me it is doublespeak of the first order (and all that goes with it) and says a lot about those conducting this “war”. Thus far, this war hasn’t been fought as the struggle of civilizations, but as a mechanism in hands of Statists, where everything that is done is computed toward their interests, not the nation.
I think you, me, and even Ron Paul would agree that expansionary Islam is a problem. He and I merely see that what has taken place has merely centralized more power (willingly ceded by THIS Congress unconstitutionally), evaporated domestic freedoms, and chews up resources. And has accomplished very little in making us safer. Again, if this is a mortal struggle of West and East, let’s get on with it. Statists balancing their contrinued power on making good on promises it had no business making to its citizens while using real threats use greater force in its continued navigation of making nice-nice with some threats while attacking others that were much less so (at least according to that Red Neck CATO institute).
Hardly. In fact my two quotes indicate the opposite. There is sometimes a need to fight wars in the more godforsaken parts of the world but that should not mean that the state which perforce fights said wars should be trusted beyond very strictly delimited bounds.
Sure, which is why my two quotes actually make perfect sense. I may disagree with how a war is fought whilst supporting the idea that a war had much to commend it. I can also disagree with the same government which is fighting a war I approve of, doing things at home I disapprove of.
But please, drop the policeman of the world silliness. Do you see US troops in Darfur? In Tibet? In Gaza? In Sri Lanka? In Thailand? Or is the policeman just taking a few days off? You make not agree with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but both were done due to perceived US/UK interests rather than acting as policemen enforcing ‘international law’ (a daft concept, it must be said).
America does have a large number of military bases worldwide, and its not just Afghanistan and Iraq where America has recently intervened.
US troops were briefly deployed in Haiti in 2004 and Liberia in 2003. The USAF has bombed Somalia several times since 2006. There was the bombing of Kosovo and Serbia in 1999 and the bombing of Serbia and Bosnian-Serbs in 1995. 20,000 troops were sent to Haiti in the early 90s. The bombing of a Sudan pharmaceutical plant in 1998. There was the debacle in Somalia in 1993.
Lets forget about the morality of these interventions and consider if any of them were in American interests. Apart from Gulf War I (and President Bush Snr was right to stop his troops at the Iraqi border) and Afghanistan in 2001, none of the overseas interventions by American forces since the end of the Cold War have served American interests one jot. I don’t think having huge numbers of American troops around the world, especially since the Cold War ended 18 years ago, particularly serves America well anymore. Germany does not need 70,000 American troops anymore, and South Korea ought to be able to take care of itself now that it has an economy forty times the size of North Korea. And of course, America could do without 150000 troops tied down in Iraq, but that is what happens when you allow a poisonous mix of paranoia (WMD phantoms) and childish idealism (neotrostkyism, er I mean neoconservatism) to determine foreign policy.
“I opposed the judgement to go into Iraq in 2003, but the idea that the war is “criminal” (reglarly stated in the newspapers and by guests on the B.B.C. and so on) is absurd.
Saddam broke the cease fire agreements of 1991 (many times) so any attack upon his regime was fine from a legal point of view (although it may still have been unwise).”
“absurd”? Paul, take a look at the Attorney General’s Opinion dated 7th March 2003 on the legality of the war:
http://www.number-10.gov.uk/files/pdf/Iraq%20Resolution%201441.pdf
He plainly did not consider the suggestion absurd. To the contrary, reading between the lines it is clear that he was gravely concerned as to the legality of the whole enterprise.
Of course you might deny the legitimacy of International Law in the first place (and I might agree with you) but that does not solve your problem. For if you cannot claim that the war was legal under International Law then how do you defend our politicians and armed forces against the charge of manslaughter and murder in Iraq on a grand scale?
Julius
Perhaps it is more important to withdraw from Europe than to withdraw from Iraq?
I just wrote a long (and I think rather good) comment, but it will have to be “the one that got away” – as it did not get through.
Oh well I will try and write another one (but I will not spend so much time and care over it).
Brad first.
I hope you are right about Ron Paul (a man who, in many ways, I admire) but I doubt it – at least I doubt that what you are say is true about the people behind him.
I do not believe that they believe that there is any Islamic (or Islamist) threat.
A few inches from me I have a copy of the Mises Review (Volume 7, Number 4, Winter 2001) by David Gordon.
Starting on the front page Dr Gordon uses a review of an old book by Elizabeth Anscombe to compare the allied campaign against the Taliban to the atomic bombing of Japanese cites. Dr Gordon takes it for granted that the Taliban knew nothing about 9/11 (such things as the killing of the top anti Taliban commander and the same time and the Chinese reps being asked to leave Afghanistan a couple of days before are ignored) and Dr Gordon assumes that American action is about killing innocent civilians – hence the title of his article “can the state justly kill innocents.
To Rothbardians such as Dr Gordon the United States would always be in the wrong in any war “no that is collectivist thinking, it is the GOVERNMENT of the United States that they hate” – in theory yes, in practice no.
Martin makes a case against altruistic interventions. And Martin may or may not be right.
However, the struggle against Islamism after 9/11 is not altrusistic (or not just altrusistic). Any more that Thomas Jefferson’s intervention agaisnt the North African “sacred” Muslim pirates was.
In fact George Walker Bush ran on an “humble” overseas policy platform, and was showing signs of moving away from Israel and reducing American forces in the Middle East – his reward from the Islamists was 9/11.
Just as the most recent reward for the surrender of the Spanish government has been the blowing up of Spanish tourists in Yeman.
What was that “blow back” for Dr Gordon?
Gabrial:
My apologies. I fell for a propaganda line about the Abbasides “founding” Baghad, I was totally ignorant that they took over an existing town.
Guy Herbert.
You make a good point Guy.
Of course any war agreed to by the Queen (under the advice of her ministers) is “legal” and this war was also agreed to by Parliament (which Mr Brown tells us is now to be the standard practice).
There is an old sense of the “laws of war” where it is understood that if an enemy breaks a cease fire agreement one may justly take up arms again (although, of course, with the “no fly zones” we had never actually put down arms – the war of 2003 is in many ways a continuation of the war of 1991). However, this idea of “international law” is too apt to be confused with the modern conception of “international law” the League of Nations, the (even worse) United Nations and the various international treaties-treated-as-laws and Conventions of “rights” and world “courts” (or domestic courts enforcing pretended international “laws”).
I agree that modern developements are so dangerious than any form of speech or writing that implies the existance of international law is to be avoided. And I confess that I fell into this trap.
In short “my bad” as a Californian might say.
No doubt I have left a lot of things out (from various people), but enough is enough.
“how do you defend our politicians and armed forces against the charge of manslaughter and murder in Iraq on a grand scale?”
They can’t be charged with that.
The legal basis of international law is founded on the principle that ratifying the treaty makes it national law. You sign an agreement internationally promising to make it one of your own local laws. Should the war be found contrary to the international charter, it’s that law that would be broken, not the murder laws. That’s not to say they couldn’t be prosecuted, but you could only prosecute soldiers for murder if the government decided to deny having ordered the war, and claimed the army was acting independently.
This is all complicated a bit by international courts like the ICJ, but again, even they only have jurisdiction if the local laws say they do. I’m not sure, but I think if you visit a country where the ICJ has jurisdiction, it might have jurisdiction over you even if your own country hasn’t signed, but it depends how it’s written. I don’t know about that.
But apart from invoking local law, the only thing that can be done about someone breaking the UN charter is them getting thrown out of the organisation. Only if your actions are deemed a threat to international peace and security can the security council use sanctions or other enforcement action.
However, the US and UK probably have less to worry about, should it ever come to court, than certain other people do. Under the UN charter, the UNSC has the obligation to identify threats to international peace and security, to take effective action to prevent or remove them, and while it has the option to use sanctions, if these have not proved, or are not expected to prove effective, then the military option becomes effectively compulsory. It is illegal under international law to block such action or to shield miscreant nations from its effects.
The UN identified Iraq as such a threat (right or wrong), gave them a final chance to comply (implying that sanctions had not worked) by a set date, and promised actions to deal with the situation not requiring Saddam’s cooperation if they did not.
Having passed this resolution, and Saddam not having complied by the due date, the UN’s only options were to use force or to withdraw the resolution. Having been allowed the opportunity in debate to do the latter and not taking it, there was no other legal option.
Now given the refusal by certain permanent members of the UNSC to do what they were now obligated to do, we enter a legally grey area. The writers of the UN charter did not legislate for this, because it would no doubt seem inconceivable to them that the UN could be so corrupted that it might occur. The charter says the UNSC will implement the required action. If the UNSC does not, but the action takes place anyway, who is breaking the law? If I pay your taxes because you refuse, can the police arrest me for doing so?
However, there is another bit of the UN charter towards the end that allows regional organisations to take enforcement action so long as they do so in accordance with the principles of the UN and obedience to its resolutions, and report their actions to the security council. It’s designed to allow for organisations like NATO and the African Union, but I can’t see any reason why it shouldn’t apply to the Coalition of the Willing.
The argument they actually used was that the earlier resolutions back in 1991 had authorised the military action, and it was only suspended pending Saddam’s compliance under the sanctions. Not complying by the set date reactivated them, unless the security council withdrew the resolution during the debate. I think this was so that they had something specific being authorised, rather than the rather vague ‘effective action not requiring Iraq’s cooperation’ they would otherwise have. The only legal argument I’ve seen against that was along the lines of “the UN would have to be silly to leave a resolution hanging like that for 12 years, they obviously intended something else”, which I don’t regard to be valid.
The situation is genuinely grey enough that you do need some high-powered legal advice to say whether the action of the Coalition is technically legal, and the people involved sought it. The advice that came back was “yes it is” and that’s a point the anti-war mob sometimes forget. Checking it was legal was the responsible thing to do, and not proof of a strong belief that it wasn’t.
However, given all the above, I think it’s not unreasonable to claim that the war being illegal would definitely be “absurd”.
In any case, it’s not something that will ever be tested in court. None of Saddam’s corrupted backers is going to dare go digging into that particular dungpile, and the game of international diplomacy has decided that we won’t mention it any more if you won’t, and in exchange for our silence on oil-for-food and those Paris Club loans and those oil deals with Saddam and who actually armed the bugger, perhaps you’ll give us a bit of help ‘under the table’ so to speak against your friends the terrorists.
It’s a dirty, dirty world.
Considering that the Bush administration decided to use an UN resolution to begin the war rather than formally make a declaration of war against Iraq, its tough fucking shit if the the agents of international law come to hold the Bush administration to account. If you wish to avoid international law, then don’t use the pretense of international law to start a war.
I would also say that any hope that Bush actually meant his rhetoric about a humble foreign policy should have been dropped when it was apparent that the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby, John Bolton, Condi Rice etc were all getting jobs in that administration. Hearing that the Weekly Standard was Cheney’s favourite magazine worried me a lot too. Even before 9/11, they were rooting for a foreign policy that was not really modest. After that US spy plane incident in China, they were rooting for more aggressive policies against China.
“the agents of international law”
They sound scary.
<laughs>
Martin the American reaction to the interception of a U.S. aircraft in international airspace was VERY RESTRAINED INDEED. This is especially interesting as Donald Runsfeld had a friend shot down by the Chinese while they were serving in the Navy together back in the 1950’s (yes the left’s charge about all the Bush Administration people being “chicken hawks” is yet another lie).
Still I am glad you did not use the word or words neo con in your comment as of all the people you mentioned only Paul W. is a neo con.
People like Dick Cheney were in favour of getting rid of Saddam because he was an enemy of the United States (for example he tried to have George Herbert Walker Bush killed) – not because they got all misty eyed over democracy (as neo cons do). Although, of course, as Dick Cheney (as Defence Secretary) had been involved in the judgement not to get rid of Saddam in 1991 he may well have had all the murders of Saddam (Shia in the south, Kurds in the north – and so on) on and after this date weighing on his mind. Even “realists” sometimes have a problem with their conscience. “We should have got rid of him in 1991, let us get rid of him now” may be the subtext to all this.
And (to be fair) things like the oil sanctions were collapsing.
Were some people (O.K. me) had a difference of opinion with the people you mention (other than Paul W. who, nice man though he may be, is not worth thinking about) is NOT over their view that the Saddam was a swine and an enemy of the United States. No the difference was over “how do we know that things will not be even worse if action is taken”.
What Donald Rumsfeld would call one of the “known unknows” (the “unknown, unknowns” are of course, things that are not even in ones mental universe till they happen).
As for the “Weekly Standard”, that publication supported John McCain (not George Walker Bush) for Republican candidate for President (although, like you, I am disturbed that someone could describe it as their “favourate reading”).
Indeed Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard (proof that there are non Jews involved in this publication) still seems to take John McCain seriously.
Actually it should be quite easy to defend allied military personnel and political leaders from the “international law” crowd. All you need do is expose who their friends and supporters are. I don’t know how much this would work in europe, but in the US, the patience of the American people with anything from Brussels would go from zero to negative in no time.
As for Neo Cons, it is funny how nation building was supposed to be the corner stone of the Clinton foreign policy, and GW ran specifically against it. Now that Iraq shows the first halting steps that it might work to some degree, the left now wants to abandon their baby. This reminds me of some wild animals that if they sense that their den has been disturbed, will abandon their young to die. Fascinating!
As I have said I opposed the judgement to go into Iraq in 2003 (and was called a “racist” for doing so). And I generally think a policy of “nation building” is silly (to use a polite word). However, we have started a task and must try and finish it.
To all those Democrats (and Republicans) who want to withdraw but do not like the words “victory for the terrorists”, sorry but to withdraw from Iraq under fire would be to give victory to the terrorists – it would show that if you head hack and suicide bomb enough you will win.
It would make victory in Afghanistan – or virtually anywhere else, almost impossible. The forces of radical Islam (both Sunni and Shia) would be wild with delight – and moderates in the Islamic world (not just in the Middle East – but in Europe and North America as well) would be discredited.
As for the legality of the conflict.
In the United Kingdom the Queen (on the advise of her ministers) agreed – AND Parliament voted to approve.
In the United States both houses of Congress voted in support (“but they did not use the words declaration of war” – they knew what they were voting for, and any claim they did not is bullshit). Indeed Congress voted in 1998 (long before the evil “Bush Hitler”) to remove Saddam – partly because of his endless breaches of the 1991 cease fire.
Well if its really necessary to stay in Iraq, all the war whoopers ought to be sent there. If it really is that necessary to ‘win’ in Iraq,all the war whoopers that say so should make the sacrifices.
I did not want the war, did not want any surge, and if we get humiliated in Iraq, then it is the neocons and their useful idiots that are to blame for dragging us into Iraq in the first place.
So you’ve got no real argument at all then, eh Martin?
Oh please. It is those that believe that western civilisation will collapse if we decided to stop sending our troops to die for the fantasy democracy of Iraq that have no argument. After saying in 2003 that the whole enterprise would be a cakewalk, they now resort to scaremongering. I would send them all to Baghdad to replace the troops. They can carry out their surge and die for Iraqi ‘democracy’.
I could not care less about Iraqi democracy, never have. Hell, I do not care over much about British or American democracy, mate. That was never my reason for wanting to see Saddam dead (sic semper tyrannis and all that) and an end to Ba’athist Socialism. As for nation building, I am all for nation wrecking, into ever smaller pieces. Partition the damn place into three countries (two viable plus an islamic “shiite-hole”) and get out. Two out of three ain’t bad.