Use of force working against terrorist
Janet Daley:
...
"This is not politics as we know it. It is not war - or even terrorism as an act of war - as we have previously understood it. It is a kind of mystical nihilism. Defeating it is going to take all of the organised energy and commitment that the rich, decadent West can muster. It will also involve quite a few concessions with what we regard as our ancient freedoms. But that's how it is. The right to live is not just the most important entitlement in a free society: it is the one on which all the other rights are predicated. There are no civil liberties in the grave.
"That is the conclusion that has clearly been reached in Washington, which is why Mr Bush has apparently embraced (by failing to condemn) Ariel Sharon's policy of targeted assassination of Hamas leaders.
"Washington and Israel - and London, too - are, for the moment, in the same game. Their goal is not, as the anti-Zionist media lobby believes, the extinction of the Palestinian cause in the interests of US-Israeli imperialism. It is the eradication of an international terror network that uses the fate of Palestinian refugees as a pretext when it suits, but is actually dedicated to a transcendental vision of Arabic conquest of historical territories.
"These lands that al-Qa'eda has chosen to see as the Muslim birthright include a good deal of southern Spain. The Madrid bombing was more to do with this spiritual vendetta than with the presence of Spanish troops in Iraq. That, presumably, is why Islamist terrorists, such as those who blew themselves up when efficiently traced by Spanish security forces, continued to be active in Spain even after the election of José Zapatero as prime minister.
...
"All of this is mixed up with the local difficulties in the Middle East: the Arabists of the Foreign Office (and the BBC World Service), not to mention the governments of Old Europe who have their own Muslim ex-colonials to appease, cannot see why we have to go to the brink for what one French ambassador famously called the 'shitty little country' of Israel. They have not yet grasped that al-Qa'eda with its lunatic raving about a new Muslim ascendancy has made Israel's struggle central - both practically and symbolically - to the survival of Western interests. When Mr Sharon assassinates the leaders of Hamas who have committed themselves to a non-negotiable programme of murder and extermination, he is doing no more than accepting the rules of the game as laid out by al-Qa'eda and practised by its franchised Palestinian branches."
Janet Daley:
...
"This is not politics as we know it. It is not war - or even terrorism as an act of war - as we have previously understood it. It is a kind of mystical nihilism. Defeating it is going to take all of the organised energy and commitment that the rich, decadent West can muster. It will also involve quite a few concessions with what we regard as our ancient freedoms. But that's how it is. The right to live is not just the most important entitlement in a free society: it is the one on which all the other rights are predicated. There are no civil liberties in the grave.
"That is the conclusion that has clearly been reached in Washington, which is why Mr Bush has apparently embraced (by failing to condemn) Ariel Sharon's policy of targeted assassination of Hamas leaders.
"Washington and Israel - and London, too - are, for the moment, in the same game. Their goal is not, as the anti-Zionist media lobby believes, the extinction of the Palestinian cause in the interests of US-Israeli imperialism. It is the eradication of an international terror network that uses the fate of Palestinian refugees as a pretext when it suits, but is actually dedicated to a transcendental vision of Arabic conquest of historical territories.
"These lands that al-Qa'eda has chosen to see as the Muslim birthright include a good deal of southern Spain. The Madrid bombing was more to do with this spiritual vendetta than with the presence of Spanish troops in Iraq. That, presumably, is why Islamist terrorists, such as those who blew themselves up when efficiently traced by Spanish security forces, continued to be active in Spain even after the election of José Zapatero as prime minister.
...
"All of this is mixed up with the local difficulties in the Middle East: the Arabists of the Foreign Office (and the BBC World Service), not to mention the governments of Old Europe who have their own Muslim ex-colonials to appease, cannot see why we have to go to the brink for what one French ambassador famously called the 'shitty little country' of Israel. They have not yet grasped that al-Qa'eda with its lunatic raving about a new Muslim ascendancy has made Israel's struggle central - both practically and symbolically - to the survival of Western interests. When Mr Sharon assassinates the leaders of Hamas who have committed themselves to a non-negotiable programme of murder and extermination, he is doing no more than accepting the rules of the game as laid out by al-Qa'eda and practised by its franchised Palestinian branches."
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