Radical left is being right stupid over terrorism

Appeasement is no way to win a war against Islamic extremists, says Ted Lapkin.

Australian Financial Review - 18 July 2005

The aftermath of the London terrorist bombings has demonstrated that the anti-war left is severely afflicted by the political equivalent of battered wife syndrome.

Many scarred and bruised victims of spousal abuse have a history of excusing and rationalising the actions of their tormenters. A stubborn unwillingness to accept the proposition that their partners are scoundrels plunges these woeful women into a morass of self-deception that only spawns further violence.

The radical left has shown itself to be similarly blind about the fundamental nature of Islamic extremism. After each al-Qaeda outrage, Western anti-war ideologues are quick to castigate their own countrymen for a catalogue of sins. With a perverse combination of self-loathing and adoration of the enemy, the far-leftist mantra preaches that if only we were nicer, the jihadists could not fail to love us. It's our own fault if Osama bin Laden doesn't realise what good people we are.

All the while, these militant academics, pundits and politicians engage in ridiculous intellectual contortions designed to mitigate the guilt of the terrorist perpetrators. When push comes to shove, some left-wing intellectuals believe Islamic extremism is simply an understandable reaction to the sins of the West.

The streets of Britain's capital city were still damp with innocent blood when this obscene dance of political self-flagellation began. Within hours of the bombings, British author Tariq Ali was blaming these attacks on George Bush and Tony Blair. The architects of the London bombings were exercising their just entitlement to vengeance for the "violence being inflicted on the people of the Muslim world", wrote Ali.

Here, anti-war columnist Phillip Adams sang from the same song sheet on the opinion page of The Australian. "Let's be clear about it," thundered Adams, "the people who died in the subway tunnels and on the bus were victims of the Iraq War." It was Britain's participation in the Òmurderous folly of an invasion" that killed London commuters, not the bombs planted' by Islamic extremists (The Australian, July 12).

Deakin University's Scott Burchill chimed in to decry the hidebound unwillingness of the "imperialist West" to consider the "legitimate grievances" of militant Islam. Until we "stop asserting the superiority of our values", warned Burchill, "we are unlikely to bring these attacks to an end", (AFR Review, July 15).

But the Spanish experience demonstrates rather conclusively that conciliatory overtures towards al-Qaeda sow the seeds of, not peace, but more terrorism.

After a bloody attack last year on Madrid's rail system, Spain's socialist government submitted to Islamic radical demands and withdrew its troop contingent from Iraq. But PM Jose Zapatero's craven act of capitulation did not necessarily purchase immunity to terrorism for Spain. In mid-June 2005, CNN reported that 16 members of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's network were arrested in Madrid while planning additional bombings against that city.

On September 11, 2001, Americans became aware that they were facing a war against an enemy of a kind they had never before encountered. Through bombings, decapitations and assassinations, it has dawned upon other democratic nations that, like it or not, they too are part of this same conflict.

Our enemies go by such names as al-Qaeda, Jamaah Islamiyah, Hamas and Hezbollah. They belong to a global jihadist movement that considers it a religious duty to wage holy Islamic war against the infidels of the West.

This is a war we did not start but that we dare not leave unfinished. We dare not leave it unfinished because our antagonists see the destruction of our civilisation as a necessary precursor to the expansion of their own culture.

Our jihadist enemies are fighting to create a society that looks a lot like Afghanistan under the Taliban. This is a vision that is repugnant to the foundation ideals of free people everywhere, Women barefoot, burka-clad, illiterate and unemployed.

Christians and Jews barely tolerated as second-class dhimmi citizens. No art, no science. A society dominated by poverty, oppression, backwardness and ignorance.

In the world according to radical Islam, it's the jihadist way or the highway, and these seventh-century dogmas represent the only acceptable outcome to al-Qaeda.

But the far left views the world through a political prism that distorts this essential reality. Fixated by a knee-jerk hostility towards all things American, Ali, Burchill et al refuse to recognise the existence of this conflict, much less the stakes that are involved. Thus, primal hard-leftist instinct is to appease bin Laden rather than oppose him.

Winston Churchill defined an appeaser as "someone who feeds the crocodile in the hopes of being eaten last". The sooner we accept the fact this is a war, the sooner we can go about the task of winning it.

Ted Lapkin is director of policy analysis at the Australia/lsrael and Jewish Affairs Council, a Melbourne think tank.