Know your enemy, except in Brown's UK

Investor's Business Daily:

Judging from the political correctness coming from British leaders, one wonders if the threat facing the West is terrorism or racism. You can't win a war if you don't know you're in one or who the enemy is.

Failure to recognize the nature of the war we're in and who the enemy is seems to be a theme of the government of newly instated British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. In words reminiscent of Bill Clinton's treatment of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, 10 Downing Street seems to think the latest terrorist plot is strictly a law enforcement matter.

As the London Daily Express reports, Brown has instructed his ministers, including new Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, to avoid using the word "Muslims" in connection with the current crisis. And indeed, in a BBC-TV interview last Sunday Brown did not refer to Muslims or Islam once — not even to say, as is often said here in the U.S., that a great religion of peace had been hijacked once again.

A Brown spokesman has confirmed that the phrase "war on terror" has been dropped, explaining that "there is clearly a need to strike a consensual tone in relation to all communities across the U.K." So, the stirring words of Churchill, Thatcher and Blair in moments of crisis have been officially replaced with Rodney King's famous lamentation, "Can't we all just get along?"

Smith has said that "terrorists are criminals, whose victims come from all walks of life, communities and religions." Which is certainly true. But the latest attacks, like the London subway bombings, are not random cases of arson and violence, but part of an Islamofascist war on the West that rages from Bali to Amman to Madrid to London to New York.

In responding to Smith's words, Tory backbencher Philip Davies wondered, "What purpose is served by this? I don't think we need pussyfoot around when talking about terrorism." As one reader asked on the Daily Express' Web site, "Well, if they aren't Muslims, what the hell are they? They sure aren't Methodists or Quakers."

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If Islam is a religion of peace and Muslims are as likely as anyone else to be victims, then they need to decide whether it's worse to be offended or dead, and oppose — as well as expose — those among them who support murder and terror. We should be free to look for them, even in a mosque.

Sun Tzu's maxim about the importance of knowing one's enemy appears to bump into the British left's political correctness brand. It is enough to make you think that liberalism is a disease. Denying the undeniable is no way to fight a war and win.

Victor Davis Hanson points out:

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I’m sure next week there will be more stories of some poor Westerner or Middle East reformer butchered somewhere by some suicide bomber yelling in extremis “Allah Akbar.” That will be followed almost immediately by a warning from a Western minister not to assume such killing is in anyway connected to Islam.

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Among the weird religious beliefs of the Islamist religious bigots is that by repeating the phrase "Allah Akbar" any act of homicide is OK. That is just sick and weird.