Battle lines

BTW, link to Milne’s Guardian piece: It is an insult to the dead to deny the link with Iraq.

CNN/Gallup US opinion poll from 7/7/05 here

“Just your best guess: Do you think the terrorists attacked London today mostly because Great Britain supports the United States in the war in Iraq, or mostly for other reasons?”

Support For Iraq War : 56% (aka idiots and dickheads)
Other Reasons: 37% (reasonable folks)

Hmm, it is my impression that this post implies that one deserves to be called a dickhead for simply suggesting that Blair shares responsibility for the 7/7 atrocity. If it’s based on the collective works, I’d appreciate a clarification.

an isolated and frightened Muslim community, unwilling to talk to the police, unwilling to engage with wider British society would provide a place for the real nutters to hide and recruit,

It would also make then a sitting target for people who don’t like muslims, Pakistanis, immigrants etc.

I agree on the need for dialogue. It is the best way to avoid Europe finding itself once again in a situation where extremists are able to take power and muslims have to go around with yellow crescents stitched to their clothes, find themselves fenced into ghettos, and taken off to “transportation camps”. However I do not believe that Iraq, Middle East policy etc. are behind the terrorists – terrorism is human weakness and is carried out by people who have died inside and lost their soul.

If the global islamic community has one, or more cults within it that effectively kill the human spirits of their members, and drive them to commit acts of indiscriminate terrorism, then it should deal with the problem. Cults usually prey on the weak and it is the weak who seek strength in terrorism – they have already lost their jihad both externally and internally.

…. it is going to be very difficult to reach out to even the most moderatest of the moderatest of the Muslim community if you are also committed to the view that the Iraq War was a great idea, hasn’t been a disaster for Muslims and is the first step on the way to creating a secular democracy there (Oh dear). If any Muslims do start a dialogue with the pro-war Left, then whatever they think about Israel, homosexuality and women, they are going to end up being called quislings, fascists and worse on that ground alone.

Fascinating observation.

So what are people supposed to do then? Change their viewpoints so as to facilitate this dialogue? Or merely say one thing and secretly believe another?

Those who think anyone who has a contrary viewpoint is either an “Islamofascist” or a “useful idiot” would do well to leave dialogue to others and stick to ranting since it’s what they do best.

As Chris said, I’d suggest you brush up on your reading comprehension. Or perhaps you have me confused with someone else.

chris – I understood you and seeing as you were calling people names I thought I’d throw in some admittedly over handed attempted sarcasm and point out that you were perhaps on a slope toward joining people you probably abhor.

What you are suggesting is that if everyone sits down and has a nice chat and people who are stirring up trouble can be picked up and neutralised.

It didn’t work with the IRA and it won’t work with muslim extemists. The IRA shut down when their terrorism became such a problem that Britain began to negotiate, at first in secret and then in the open to end the problems. In other words a political solution to a problem that people engaged in violence to change was finally sought that did, in truth, give in to their violence.

The reality is that states that engaged in an act of war that many muslims regarded as barbaric has provoked a response that is also barbaric. It does not appear to be a coincidence that it is Britain and Spain that were attacked.

It should also be pointed out, that previous to the invasion of Iraq the extremist muslims which are now such a great threat had carried out no attacks against Britain.

And to call people ‘idiots’ and ‘dickheads’ who suggest what many people believe is just daft, even if they annoyed you in the past.

As someone who occasionally ventures into Harry’s blog, I had rather gained an impression that anyone with reservations about the Iraq war is a Dickhead and an Idiot and therefore eligible for political interdiction.

For all my continuing reservations over both the legitimacy and good sense of the war, I feel no particular affinity with George Galloway of the anti-war crusade but the regularity with which he is hauled out of the closet to be pilloried suggests that he has come to fulfil much the same functional role for Harry’s blog as Emmanuel Goldstein fulfilled for Big Brother in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four and Trotsky fulfilled for Stalin until his (inevitable?) assassination.

Somehow, the landscape always seems familiar but then I suppose moral certainties should be, rather like fairy tales.

Chris – For what reason, then, is abb1, “like” Milne, “a dickhead”? I don’t think he/she is a Stalinist. I thought you had a specific reason in mind but now, thanks to your addendum and “clarifications”, I can not work out what it is. A nuanced position indeed.

“We now know, that there are Muslim extremists in the UK who are willing to kill us in large numbers.”

Do we? Many, many others suggest that is not true. For instance …

“How the Government Staged the London Bombings in Ten Easy Steps

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet | July 13 2005

Ten Step Method To Staging a Terrorist Attack

1) Hire a Crisis Management firm to set up an exercise that parallels the terrorist attack you are going to carry out. Have them run the exercise at the precise locations and at the very same time as the attack. If at any stage of the attack your Arabs get caught, tell the police it was part of an exercise.

2) Hire four Arabs and tell them they’re taking part in an important exercise to help defend London from terrorist attacks. Strap them with rucksacks filled with deadly explosives. Tell the Arabs the rucksacks are dummy explosives and wouldn’t harm a fly.

3) Tell four Arabs to meet up at London Underground and disperse, each getting on a different train. Make sure Arabs meet in a location where you can get a good mug shot of them all on CCTV which you can later endlessly repeat to drooling masses on television.” For the other steps go to the link .

If anyone is interested in replying -you can dismiss this of course; as ‘Razor’ is to ‘Occam’, ‘conspiracy-theorist’ is to ‘Procrustes’- I’m interested in the logical analysis rather than the politics.

I would have thought that the following Milne quote:

_The security crackdowns and campaign to uproot an “evil ideology” the government announced yesterday will not extinguish the threat. Only a British commitment to end its role in the bloody occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan is likely to do that._

made a solid case for dickheadedness. Take Osama, and grant him two things he would undoubtedly claim as heroic victories, and that is ‘likely’ to ‘extinguish’ the threat?

soru

I want to chime in in agreement with Russkie. I understand the pragmatism of it, but there’s something disturbing about people who would react with vitriol and condemnation to certain views if they came from the mouth of a Christian cleric are willing to at least sit down and listen to said views when they come from the mouth of an imam. Again, I understand the reasoning that if you attack a people’s culture and religion then you drive them into the arms of the terrorists, but in practice, it winds up sounding like, “We should give Muslims a hearing on their views because Muslims have guns.” If there were a danger of, say, Calvinist terrorism, would there be a similar approach to giving air to these views?

Let me be clear, I do understand that the threat of violence makes it necessary to not condemn out of hand the position of some Islamic sects on gayness, the subordination of women, and the right of Israel to exist, but there is at the very least something disquieting to such a position.

Andrew–
if you live in the states as I do, you may already be experiencing Calvinist terrorism.

Anyone with experience of the Illuminati will be raising their eyebrows at the fact that the conspiracy theory appeared in comment #23… so what’s he really trying to tell us there?

Peter, I don’t think they are completely different and not everyone who joined up to go to Vietnam did so because they wanted to commit a Mai Lai.

If anybody cares, I think that pursuing the rape example is slightly dubious. The key point is, surely that it is perfectly legal and moral (unless you are a fundamentalist Christian or…ahem…an ‘Islamo-fascist’) to get drunk, to dress how you like, and to walk in areas with poor lighting. In fact where I live these are main activitiies of most males and females aged 16-25. Therefore, the question is, why should someone be ‘punished’ (i.e. raped) for doing something that wasn’t illegal or immoral and didn’t do any harm to anybody?

This is very different to the situation vis a vis Iraq, where the legality and morality of the initial action are precisely what is in question.To admit the acceptability of the ‘rape’ example is to accept that the Iraq war was both legal, moral and ‘didn’t do any harm to anybody’ (the last of which at least is manifestly false).

Incidentally, could we scotch one rumour, the idea that the 9/11 attacks were ‘un-motivated’? (They hate us for our freedoms etc). As Juan Cole has pointed out (and a quick check on the 9/11 report will confirm), Israeli policies vis a vis the Palestinians and American policies vis a vis Saudi (and we should never forget that Osama views Saudi as an American occupied puppet state) were primary motives for those attacks. In fact, Osama tried to alter the timing of the attacks to coincide with Sharon’s activities (once, he attemped to alter them to coincide with a Sharon visit to the White House for example) to make this point more explicit.

I agree that there’s no sense in isolating people whose repellent positions will have no bad consequence in the actual world. Al-Qaradawi manifestly does not fit into this category, and Livingstone knew this when he embraced him. Why are you trying to spin Livingstone’s embrace as ‘aiming to support a policy that draws the line in the right place,’ as opposed to ‘symptomatic of an abject failure to draw the line in the right place’? For that matter, why formulate your view by way of reaction to “the obsession of the anti-Stopper bloggers with Ken and his works”, as opposed to a moral appraisal of things as they are? Certain people at CT refused even to acknowledge the truth about al-Qaradawi until the imprimatur of Juan Cole showed that Nick Cohen and Scott Burgess hadn’t being lying all along after all. It is now common knowledge that Livingstone publicly embraced someone who (as he knew) frequently and vociferously incites exactly the sort of deliberate murder of innocents as was subsequently visited on the city of which he is the elected Mayor. I think that this is a pretty extraordinary state of affairs, and I don’t think that it’s evidence of “obsession” if someone wants to press some awkward questions about it.

As Chris said, I’d suggest you brush up on your reading comprehension. Or perhaps you have me confused with someone else.

Russkie,

Daniel’s comment (No. 4) refers to the pro-war Left and more specifically to those of them who brand their opponents as “quislings, fascists and worse.” Your response (No. 13) asks: “So what are people supposed to do then?” If you had asked “what am I supposed to do then?” you could fairly criticise my reading comprehension. You didn’t ask that. If you had I would not have responded, having no reason to suppose you are one of the people Daniel referred to.

Chris

First, you still haven’t answered my question. Do you in fact think that Blair shares some of the moral responsibility for what happened last Thursday? You strongly hint that you do but you’re unwilling to come right out and say so. Why?

Second, I didn’t say moral responsibility had to add up to 100%. But if – the day after your imagined rape took place – the op-ed pages of the country’s leading liberal newspaper were full of condemnation of the university lighting department, in some cases (I’m thinking of Tariq Ali here) not even mentioning the actual perpetrator/s, you may think something had gone seriously wrong, no?

And here’s another thing to think about: if, let’s just say prior to 12 September 2001, the campus had always been fantastically well-lit, and yet on a single day, 3000 women on the campus were raped, that would call into question how far the lighting was responsible for the rapes. Wouldn’t it?

Chris – You think that it is possible that people in government can take some share of the blame for individual criminal acts. You also say that “the bombers are responsible for the bombs and that Blair is not”. Can I infer, therefore, that your position is that though the idea that the government might share some responsibility is not incoherent, it happens to be false in this instance? If this is your view, is it really fair to call those who share your conceptual assumptions but differ on the interpretation of the facts “dickheads”?

Ok, your last post kind of answers that.

Certain people at CT refused even to acknowledge the truth about al-Qaradawi until the imprimatur of Juan Cole showed that Nick Cohen and Scott Burgess hadn’t being lying all along after all.

Oh fuck it, let’s resurrect the al-Qaradawi wars then. In fact, Juan Cole got this one wrong. The precise point at which CT (in the shape of Chris and me) decided to drop al-Qaradawi was when Juan Cole passed on the news that he had endorsed the murder of civilians in Iraq. This report turned out to be fake, Qaradawi denies ever having said it and in fact does condemn the murder of civilians in Iraq.

Other than this merely factual correction, could we not just reread our last exchange on the subject rather than writing it out again longhand?

Hey fergal what a great idea. Better still let’s compromise. Why dont WE start pushing for women’s rights and gay rights etc. in Saudi Arabi and Egypt and Pakistan, our little client states in the Middle East, whose behaviour we are responsible for?

And don’t even start on the ‘culture’ thing. A quick websearch will reveal (for example) the US army instituting racist rules in their own army bases in Saudi WITHOUT EVEN BEING ASKED TO DO SO BY THE SAUDIS.

Still obviously that’s nothing to do with us, even though, er, it is.

Nothins has been more pernicious than the idea that in any sense Bush and Blair are againstIslamic fundamentalism. In fact, with their slavish support for Saudi, they are aiders and abetters of the creation oceans of anti-semitic/racist filth.

Jimmy – presumably roughly as they did in Northern Ireland when the UK government did more or less exactly that; pretty angry at the whole situation, but what else do you do?

D2: Quite so; I wasn’t asking about what one could do in such a situation, but whether one would have a legitimate grievance, which is a separate question, unless one holds to a particularly extreme form of ‘might makes right.’ The tenor of your comment suggests that you think that there is indeed a legitimate grievance; it follows (it seems to me) that Israeli civilians would have the same sort of grievance against British politicians who embrace vocal advocates of their murder in the interest of minimising the probability of similar murder over here. We innocent civilians should stick together, whatever view we take of what our leaders and our military are getting up to.

In fact, with their slavish support for Saudi, they are aiders and abetters of the creation oceans of anti-semitic/racist filth.

Brendan, I was against the war in Iraq (in general because of the “gang that couldn’t should straight” argument) and I have no love lost for the Saudi regime (or the Bush administration, for that matter). But how any of this allows for Sinn Fein-style “negotiations” with Al Qaeda (pace Sien) escapes me. That way leads to “useful idiocy”.

Chris,

Given your support for the removal of the Taliban from Afghanistan, and the associated Al Qaeda training camps, are you in a position to use the “blow back” argument over Iraq?

In fact, are you re-considering your position on the invasion of Afghanistan as being a just war?

Do you now consider the invasion of Afghanistan a mistake, since it is equally arguable that it put Britain in the line of fire.

Chris y, when you write “You seem to suggest that the government’s foreign policy should in principle be subject to veto by its most extreme opponents (and not just foreign policy)” — you are striking exactly the right note. Not that it should be vetoed, but it should be carefully considered. And if the actions of the government are such as to motivate terrorist counter-strike while at the same time exposing the civilian community to bombing (by, for instance, incomplete and negligent action against terrorists in conjunction with provocative acts, invading other countries without cause), then the consideration leads to blame.

As for your last sentence, it seems to be a non-sequitor. Why shouldn’t the government change its actions if they provoke terrorists? If there is some overwhelming material reason, you could be right. But if there isn’t, and the government has proven itself unable to protect its citizens against bombings, then your sentence makes no sense. If the Luxemborg government, as a matter of principle, decided to bomb the U.S., and the counterstrike destroyed half of Luxemborg, it would be a very poor argument to say, well, the cost shouldn’t count in considering whether to consider the operation. If costs don’t count, then state activity has no rationality whatsoever.

Chris, I recognize you were making a counter-example. But to make another example, the rape analogy is like the Tar Baby — however you touch it, you are in for a mess. It doesn’t model the argument about blame very clearly, and really can’t be made to. Instead, I think it should be crisply suppressed.

Chris – Anthony may find it difficult to do that because you’ve so carefully worded your post and comments that no-one can quite pin you down on anything.

However let’s go over what you do say. First you say you basically agree with Norman Geras, yet you say he is ‘treating us to a lecture’ – if you agree with what he is saying this is an odd phrase to choose.

Then you go on to say: ‘But as a general rule it seems to me wrong to rule out a priori that those who create the conditions under which bad things are done share responsibility for those bad things’.

Do you really mean only to apply this ‘as a general rule’? Because in the context of the post it is in, it looks extremely close to employing the blow-back argument as Anthony suggests.

If you completely agree with Norman Geras *in this case* – about the loathsome behaviour of Milne, Ali etc – but are just querying his causation and responsibility argument theoretically, today is a very odd day to pick to have that argument.

Then you go on to give your university lighting analogy – an analogy in which you clearly think that the university IS to blame. The university being analagous here to Blair. I assume you’re not denying that?

Then when asked outright whether you do think Blair is partially to blame, you say ‘the causal chain is too complex’.

You can hardly blame Anthony for being somewhat confused about what exactly you are and aren’t saying.

“I’m sorry if my so doing makes it difficult to assimilate me to some people’s pre-processed stereotypes.”

Looks like Peter Cuthbertson overcame any such difficulties, Chris. He’s taking you to task in a Harry’s Place thread:

http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2005/07/14/why_is_the_guardian_employing_an_extremist_islamist.php

Anthony, this is an odd view of recent history:

“Therefore, it would appear to me that you are in exactly the same position as the pro-war left are with Iraq, when it comes to Afghanistan given your support for its liberation.”

The liberation of Afghanistan was not motivated by the desire to ‘liberate’ Afghanistan — it was motivated by the desire to strike back at Al Qaeda. If A.Q. had operated from Sudan, the target of the invasion would have been Sudan. Because the Taliban mixed its interests with A.Q.’s the invasion was launched — after an ultimatum that the invasion wouldn’t be launched if the Taliban turned over the A.Q. leadership, which puts to rest the idea that the U.S. or Britain was primarily interested in liberating Afghanistan.

So the blowback argument is unaffected by support for that war. In fact, the argument begins by claiming that the goal of the Afghanistan war was botched. It was botched because the Bush and Blair people decided to use Afghanistan to bootstrap another and unrelated war that was in planning before 9/11. In the process of doing so, they neglected to pursue with the vigor becoming two militarily superior states the disruption of A.Q. They compounded the error by turning Iraq into a country unable to defend its borders against terrorists, even while making it attractive for terrorists to cross those borders. Thus, the war is serving as a terrorism generator. So the blowback argument is: the botching of the destruction of A.Q. left a threat on the flanks of the coalition; the time and conduct of the war on Iraq magnified that threat.

Roger,

that is a non sequitur. Whatever the reasons for the invasion of Afghanistan it is still seen as a grievence.

We were talking about negotiating, Brendan. As repugnant as it might be, that is possible with the IRA. That’s even possible with (some) “insurgents” in Iraq. There is nothing to “negotiate” with Osama or his ilk.

What’s that supposed to mean, Fergal?

Anthony, no non-sequitor there. Wars aren’t supported unconditionally. In fact, that is how they stop. Nations negotiate, or surrender. People change their minds, or grow dissatisfied with their leaders. Far from being a non-sequitor, the difference between a justified war incompetently carried out (Afghanistan) and a non-justified war incompetently carried out (Iraq) focuses on the difference between unavoidable blowback (coming from taking down Al Qaeda) and avoidable blowback (coming from not doing so).

Osama bin Laden is just a guy sitting in a cave somewhere (assuming he is alive), there is no need to appease him. But then, there’s a whole mass-movement out there with all levels of intensity, from strong dissatisfaction to desperation to psychosis. If we can appease 95% of them and bring the temperature down a notch for the rest, then it’s all over for the remaining 5%, they’ll disappear like, say, black militants of the civil rights era. But if we keep on digging this hole, it’ll only be worse.

In any case I am not even sure that Osama Bin Laden does want ‘us’ to get out of Iraq. In many ways this is the best recruiting agent he has ever had. What the pro-war bloggers forget is that after september 11th such a wave of revulsion swept the world that most people turned their backs on the extremists. What Bush has done is dug up the corpse of ‘Islamo fascism’ and breathed life into it. If we pulled out of Iraq (and, within a relatively short period of time, Afghanistan) I have no doubt that in the medium term (say ten to twenty years) extremist Islam would simply die a death (although don’t get me wrong, there would probably be some hardliners who would never admit the battle was lost).

Those who believe that Blair has to take some of blame for London bombings because of the anger of some Muslims at UK participation in Iraq and Afghan wars please answer the following questions.

If Britain had not participated in Iraq, but had played exactly the same role in Afghanistan, 1. do they think London bombings would not have happened?; 2. do they think Blair should still take the blame, it the London bombings had happened?

For myself, putting Iraq and Afghan wars in the same class is a big moral and analytical mistake. I think OBL and his followers would still be gunning for Britain for its participation in Afghanistan. So go ahead and blame Blair, but recognize that you’re recommending surrender to OBL. BTW, this is from someone who thinks that the Iraq invasion was and continues a big mistake.

Chris,

If just once you could do me the favour of at least reflecting accurately the arguments made on HP it would be appreciated.

But let me be clear – obviously the widest possible anti-terrorist coalition needs to be created inside the Muslim communities and beyond.

Clearly that involves people who opposed the war in Iraq. I have never suggested otherwise.

I would however disagree with your inclusion of an open supporter of terrorism, such as Al-Qaradawi, in an anti-terrorist coalition. The reasons should hardly need explaining should they?

But it really doesn’t matter who would fit inside your hypothetical alliance — sensible voices in the British Muslim community believe that Arab agitators from Islamist groups are a major part of the problem.

That is what counts.

abb1 says:
—-
This reminds me what Che Guevara said: “If you tremble indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.”

This is a particular type of obsessive
personality, and I don’t think it’s extremely rare. You can’t kill all of them, so just try to remove the freakin injustice or, at least, don’t perpetuate it.
—–

What happens when what one of these persons thinks is an injustice is a result of botched world view, and removing the injustice causes injustice to someone else? What if getting rid of the Taliban is deemed an injustice to Muslims by some of these types, while the Taliban is busy doing horrible things to Afghan women? The idea that these people are just oversensitive idealists is absurd.

doesn’t it also follow that a woman who dresses provocatively and attends a late-night private party where alcohol is present, with the knowlede that she is therefore potentially making herself available for drunken assaults, is at least somewhat responsible for that assaults that follow?

I’m not half so bright as Russell Arben Fox, so I’m sure he’ll see the holes in this, but here goes anyway…

On a gut instinct level, I’ve gotta shout no to this one – and no with all my heart – simply because there have to be some lines drawn somewhere, and some basic things we accept that no one should have to radically change their behaviour to avoid, and rape surely has to be counted as one of them. I’d also include in that list things like:

being black and not ashamed of it in 1955 Mississippi

using the tube or bus to commute to work in 2005 London.

No woman should have to think, ah well, guys can pretty much get as drunk as they want where and when they want, and wear what they want, without fear of being raped, but for us women, well, we should acknowledge that society isn’t yet ready for us to have these freedoms, because men do lose control, so we’ll just have to keep ourselves really in check.

Definitely there are precautions one should take and acknowledgments and compromises one should make, but at the risk of sounding like some sort of libertine, surely having several drinks and dressing how one wants should be a human right (yes, I know it’s not in many or all Muslim countries) and not fall into the category of “potentially making oneself available” for rape. We’ve moved past that as a society, or are doing are level best to do so. And it may well help us to do so by not being willing to give ground on an issue such as this. (NB: I’m not doing any analogising to the terrorist issue here. My personal belief is that basically you should do what you think will result in the greatest good. Sometimes you give a bit of ground and compromise, even if you have to hold your nose. Other times you hold your line, come hell or high water.)

By the same token as this rape question, you could take it a bit further and argue that any parent who allows his child to play outdoors is potentially making that child available for being molested in the park. Yeah, technically they are, just by letting the little ones outside, but… to harken to the title of this post somewhat, society has to agree that lines are drawn in certain places. Where those lines are drawn shift over time. Long ago, society agreed that under no circumstances should parents be blamed for putting their children at risk of molestation simply by allowing them to live normal lives. That’s what it’s about, I think: normal lives (yes, I know that’s a bit undefined). And for women in their early-20s or so, dressing sexily and drinking heavily is “normal life”, and they shouldn’t have to alter that. (Which isn’t to say that if suddenly it became the norm to inflict lots of damage on oneself or others – eg by consuming one’s bodyweight in crystal meth, as it apparently is in some communities in the rural US – that the “norm” shouldn’t be altered.)

Right now, society (America and Northern Europe, anyway) has just about (but not entirely) come to the agreement that women, like men, should be allowed to dress and drink as they please, and that if men can’t control themselves, it is the man’s fault, and not at all the woman’s. Otherwise, we get into way more relative moralism than decent people can bear, I think.

Anyway, as I say, Russell’s got at least three more brains than I do, so I don’t expect to “win” this discussion, if he desires to bat me around a bit – not, of course, that I would expect such treatment from one so clearly civil. Which reminds me…

I would like to say, if Harry’s reading, that one of the things that I particularly like about CT is that, even at its most heated, it’s not nearly so fierce and venomous as the comments at his site. I do think those comments reflect, to a degree, the overall tone of the site – ie the authors’ approach to how the present their arguments. I know I can simply choose not to visit, but there really are some things to be learned there. That’s meant as constructive criticism – completely unasked for, of course.

Cheers

slocum, presumably we would then be feeling as secure as the French (Schengen agreement rescinded today) and our Muslims would be as happy as theirs. And things would be better how?

Jasmindad, what if your world view is botched and you are one of the good people whose inaction allows the triumph of evil? I think abb1 is making a pragmatic point, not a moral judgement.

If Iraq was going better and the inital justifications had panned out, it would be both a lesser provocation and a better trade for any side effects. But if the invasion of Iraq is supposed to have made us safer the bombings are hardly a good advert for that.

To my understanding no one knows what alleged grievances preceded the London bombing. Attributing it to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is premature. Supposedly planning for the Madrid bombing began before the beginning of the Iraqi war. When did the planning for the London bombing begin?

In calling for dialog between the UK and various factions, you are making the assumption that there exists some middle ground. On numerous occasions, Muslim factions have called for a return to the caliphate which includes its entire original territory (Spain, Italy, India), and Sharia law to be the primary law of the world. What exactly where you willing to compromise?

dsquared –

“the point I was trying to make is that even liberal Muslims who accept the rights of homosexuals and do not endorse terror in Israel, are still going to get a load of abuse from the “Decent Left” as it is currently constituted, because they opposed the Iraq War.”

This seems an unnecessary accusation. Have you evidence of this?

Ultimate responsibility arguments are problematic. If Bush aggravated extreme Right Christians by supporting Israeli withdrawal from all the occupied territories, would he be responsible for any terrorist attacks from them?

The answer would surely be yes. His actions did lead to such results. But it does not follow that he should have done any differently.

9/11 pre-dated Afghanistan and Iraq. What we would need to do to appease bin Laden is not possible if we believe in liberal values. Had the West not intervened in Iraq and Afghanistan then no doubt the terrorists would have found other reasons for their actions. After all, Australia was targeted for its role in the liberation of East Timor.

Neil said:
———
Ultimate responsibility arguments are problematic. If Bush aggravated extreme Right Christians by supporting Israeli withdrawal from all the occupied territories, would he be responsible for any terrorist attacks from them?

The answer would surely be yes. His actions did lead to such results. But it does not follow that he should have done any differently.

——–

Exactly right. The idea that we should simply avoid doing something, not on the ground that it is wrong, but on the ground that it might provoke someone with a grievance, and *this is the right moral calculus to use* is silly. This is not to say that pragmatism is not a relevant consideration, but it cannot be confused with moral responsibility issues.

Neil went on:
9/11 pre-dated Afghanistan and Iraq. What we would need to do to appease bin Laden is not possible if we believe in liberal values. Had the West not intervened in Iraq and Afghanistan then no doubt the terrorists would have found other reasons for their actions. After all, Australia was targeted for its role in the liberation of East Timor.

Again, exactly right. If it had not been Iraq, it would be Afghanistan. If it is not Afghanistan, it would have been our defending Rushdie’s rights to write. If it is not Rushdie’s rights to write, it would be not allowing British Muslims the right to be ruled by Sharia. OBL has made his goals very clear — they will be far more harmful to the Muslims of the world than to the West.

Chris:

“No, not “name calling”, but an accurate characterization of someone who used to go around brandishing a copy of Denver Walker’s Quite Right Mr Trotsky”

Err, that book was actually fairly popular in the 1980s with a big chunk of the non-Trot membership of NOLS (national organization of labour students) – some of whom are now (or, well, before the last general election, at least) in positions of considerable responsibility.

Walker was nutty as a fruitcake, but for the budding Trot-basher it was a useful primer for some choicer quotes of Mr. Bronstein.

Also useful for the Leftist Trainspotter types was “As soon as this pub closes”, which was a short but comprehensive geneology of the ultraleft in the UK.

Brendan: “…part of the motivation for the 9/11 atrocity was precisely because Osama believes that the USA is ‘instrumental’ in putting in place and supporting a variety of ‘puppet governments’ in the middle east, not least that of Saudi Arabia.”

I yield to no one in my loathing of the Saudi rulers, but OBL’s objection is a bit rich. So you think that somehow we would be more moral by removing support from a medieval, fanatical, tyrannical Wahhabi government and letting even more medieval, fanatical and tyrannical guys under OBL take over?

……

Brendan then segues into, “…So the issue of the Kurds seems irrelevant. Just ask the Kurds in Turkey.”

This is intended to be a reply to Soru saying, “If the UK had been instrumental in leaving saddam in place, in the same way it was in delaying action over Bosnia, would a hypothetical suicide bombing of London by a Kurdish or Shi’ite group have been ‘understandable’?”

I don’t see at all how you are being responsive to Soru. Lots of people here are ready to assign Blair a share of the moral responsibility for the London Bombings on account of UK’s acts of commission in Iraq. Soru is asking a reasonable question about the moral responsibility in acts of omission, enough to “understand” any Kurdish or Shiite terrorism in UK?

It is absolutely clear to me that we should not allow one decision about our political direction, moral stances, or any other aspect of our lives to be influenced in any way whatsoever by what deranged murderers might think of them.

Well, that’s just exactly the attitude of deranged murderers on both sides.

David all
Are you serious? Have we all forgotten Timothy McVeigh so quickly? What about the Ku Klux Klan? They haven’t gone away you know. Or what about the bombing of abortion clinics and the murder of doctors who perform abortion? To insist that these acts are not ‘typical’ of Protestant type Christians is of course the point. The actions of Osama Bin Laden are not in fact typical of the actions of the average Muslim either.

Jasmindad

i wasn’t really arguing ‘against’ soru, more adding context. Most of us, for example, can get straight in our heads the idea that Marxists have a point when they talk about the various ills of Capitalist society, while also understanding that in most cases the Marxist ‘cure’ would be worse than the original disease. Equally, I can hold the following two thoughts in my head at the same time:

Osama Bin Laden has a point when he talks about the various US puppet states littering the Middle East

Osama Bin Laden’s solution to this problem would actually make things worse.

CF my point about Hitler and Versailles.

I also find the conditional tense in Soru’s argument strange. Of course the UK and the US were to a great extent responsible for keeping Saddam in place when it suited them, and most Iraqis (unlike most British people or Americans) are well aware of this, which is why they don’t trust us. And they are right. I don’t trust us either.

I also don’t accept that there are ‘sins of commission’ per se from individual countries. There may well be of the international community as a whole but that’s a different matter. I don’t see that the US and the UK have such sterling moral records that it is their (our) duty to ride in on our white horses and save the day whenever anything goes wrong in the world.

For example, the syntax over Bosnia in Soru’s statement is highly ambiguous and misleading. The Tories ‘appeased’ the Yugoslavian government over not because they were spineless and weak (omission) but because they were on the side of the Serbs (comission). The sin of the British in the 90s was not that we did ‘too little’ but that we did entirely too much (cf Douglas Hurd).

I doubt very much that (for example) Chinese or North Korean terrorists will attack us for not overthrowing their own governments (after all, they know the state of their countries is nothing to do with us). I find it quite easy to imagine Saudis or Turkenistanis or others attacking us for supporting and, in many cases, creating their dictatorships.

Are you serious? Have we all forgotten Timothy McVeigh so quickly? What about the Ku Klux Klan? They haven’t gone away you know.

Actually, they mostly have gone away. The KKK is a very small shadow of what it once was. The ‘militia movement’ seems equally inert (I can’t remember the last story I read about it, and I live in a state that was home of one of the most prominent ‘militias’). The whole Ruby Ridge/Waco/Oklahoma City ‘cycle of violence’ now seems as finished as, say, the anarchist bombings of the early 20th century.

One of the problems with debating pro-war advocates is that they so often substitute a fantasy object for the reality they are supposedly defending. Such a fantasy object is the secular, democratic Iraq that the Coalition is supposedly putting in place in Iraq. In reality, the Coalition first degraded the very notion of secularism by associating it with known frauds (Chalabi) or former terrorists (Allawi). Then, with the situation out of control, the Coalition acceded reluctantly to an election — an election that was due to Sistani’s pushing, not the Coalition’s wishes. The results of that election prefigured the election in Iran. The fundamentalists won. And they are systematically putting in place an Islamic republic on the modified Taliban line. The minor things — like Sistani’s new name for Iraq, “The Islamic Federal Republic of Iraq” go along with the major things — such as Sistani ruling by fatwa in the day to day affairs of Iraq, and the truly frightening things — the imposition of Sharia law, enforced by the British military, in Basra for one. This is a city that has now substituted Thursday and Friday for the weekend days, as Saturday is the holiday of the Jews. Ah, those anti-semitic lefty protestors can’t compete with the practical anti-semitic rightwing pro-war people on the anti-Jewish front! Actually, to be fair, most of the pro-war people aren’t anti-semitic. They simply have their purple inked thumbs up their private organs, and have turned from the real effects of the policies they support to the fantasy war on terrorism supposedly being fought by the brave neo-con intelligentsia.

In Edward Wong’s NYT piece about the mini-theocracy being created in Basra (which differed from the usual fantasy NYT pieces about the secular free marketers aching to declare Basra and southern Iraq independent. That group, which includes Chalabi, has already proven it has no electoral support whatsoever, but American newspapers like to see America in every foreign country they report from), there was this nice image of the results of the invasion, to contrast with the fruits and flowers that flowed to the Coalition forces coming in:

“The growing ties with Iran are evident. Posters of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Iranian revolution, are plastered along streets and even at the provincial government center. The Iranian government opened a polling station downtown for Iranian expatriates during elections in their home country in June.”

So please, let’s end the joke about fighting Osama bin over the soul of democracy — on one side, you have sharia and anti-americanism, and on the other side, you have sharia and the use of americans to wipe out sunni. That’s this war.