Everyone gets their fifteen minutes of being a terrorist

You see, this is the problem with legislation built by people who don’t know very much about making law. The Terrorism Act of 2000, taken at its word, strongly suggests that fuel protesters, and anyone who justifies or condones their behaviour, are terrorists.

Actually, my presumption that the Act is poorly designed might not actually be true. It may well have been the governments intention to word the act in such a way that allows them to pick and choose who the terrorists are from day to day.

Offensive? Why? How?

This is a disgrace:

Advisers appointed by Tony Blair after the London bombings are proposing to scrap the Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day because it is regarded as offensive to Muslims.

Of course, I suspect that the fact that this plan will be offensive to different demographics makes absolutely no difference whatsoever.

They must be joking right? Right?

Home-bred traitors

I wonder, which home-bred traitors do you think this prophetic snippet is referring to?

The footsteps of th' invader,
Then England's shore shall know,
While home-bred traitors give the hand
To England's every foe.

Creepy......

Shhhh, keep it under your hats

About this shooting in London. Talking to a rozzer the other night he mentioned that the word in the thin blue line is that the chief rozzer is an upstanding chap, it is extremely unusual for specialist army help to be called in for a surveillance job (wee boy) and it is also hard to believe that an SO19/CO19 rozzer would put that many bullets into a suspected perp particularly when only a few months ago many in SO19 were banging on about handing their guns in.

There are whispers of more specialist army involvement in the whole shooting match.

Anyhow, not my opinion (I’ll wait for the report to come out I think) but it is good to know that the rozzers are as keen on a conspiracy theory as us little people are.

War on terror unsafe!

Via Oliver Kamm comes this bit of nonsense spouted by The Stop the War Coalition after the terrorism in London:

It is clearer than ever that the "war on terror" in which Britain has been so heavily involved has not, in fact, made the world safer from terrorism.

A bit like saying that in 1942 the “war against the Nazis” had not, in fact, made the world safer from Nazis. One could hazard a guess that it also made the Nazis a bit, you know, miffed. Upset. Angry even. ”Look, they are dropping bombs on us! What did I tell you!”

Jagged edges

What is this article actually saying? That the tolerance and embracing of other cultures and cultural requirements is another root cause of terrorism? It’s an interesting point of view and one that I was about to lay into until the act of constructing a counter argument forced me to stop and think.

The author suggests that the French are less tolerant of certain aspects of other cultures and that the British have seemingly lost interest in their heritage and that this has led to Britain becoming a hapless nation in the war on terror and radical Islam. London is described as easily the most important jihadist hub in Western Europe and, apparently, one American security group has called for Britain to be listed as a terrorism-sponsoring state though the author fails to supply details on who or what this security group is (never a good sign).

The article mentions the ruling in 2004 allowing schoolgirls to wear a jilbab in state schools:

As a result, by law British schools must now accept the jilbab. Not only that, but Prime Minister Blair's wife, Cherie Booth, was Ms. Begum's lawyer at the appellate level. Ms. Booth called the ruling "a victory for all Muslims who wish to preserve their identity and values despite prejudice and bigotry."

The article uses this as an example of the ”myriad French-British differences in treatment of radical Islam”. Now, I suppose you could argue that the need or desire for girls to wear a covering religion based ‘uniform’ is an aspect of radical Islam but you would be stretching reality to suggest that this particular example of tolerance causes terrorism. However, the article does not really suggest that. It merely uses it as an example of wrong-way-round cultural dilution and I think that is the subtext of the article and, if that is the case, then I think that the author is not as barking as I first thought.

Cultural dilution is not just a single aspect of multiculturalism, it is the very key to its success. If multiculturalism is to be a policy (and arguments about whether it should be or not can, and will, go on for a long time) that policy must recognise that preservation of identity and of values is an extraordinary dangerous policy aim. It fails to smooth off the edges of radicalism and preserves the very things that cause cultural friction in the first place.

The great thing about mixing cultures over decades and over centuries is that there is a natural propensity for the best things about each culture in the mix to stand the test of time, the worst aspects having been diluted to the point of impotence. Decreeing that individual students can decide their own dress code on the basis of cultural identity so that they might maintain their own values and getting this recognised in case law is bad multiculturalism. Maintaining identity and values is exactly the opposite of what multiculturalism should be, if anything, trying to achieve.

Preventing cultural dilution is exactly where we are failing and jagged edges and tension will be the result.

(Article spotted via Blognorregis).

Some of you may be wondering about my position on this whole multiculturalism thing. Well, here it is. I disagree with a policy of multiculturalism whereby the cultures of immigrants are seen as being automatically equal to British culture.

Immigrants who come here, as my parents did, are striking a bargain with Britain. They take what Britain has to offer (and they find it attractive otherwise immigration would not be on the agenda) and they may have to give up something of their own.

The demands by the young Britain to wear a jilbab in a state school is, in my opinion, overstepping the mark and not appropriate. It breaks the bargain and leads to friction. Heaven knows there were many people at my old state school that wanted to wear their own style of clothing instead of the uniform but, fact of the matter is, no matter how much you believe in a supernatural deity, the devil, Iron Maiden or whatever, you wear the uniform. Taking the school to court is the same as saying "hey, I know this is Britain, but my culture is just as important and, therefore, I am special enough to be treated differently from the way millions of other students have been treated for decades".

No, you are not. And if you think you are you are not as British as you should be.

Boris Johnson has a few things to say about multicultural society and Britishness in his recent posting:

So we have drifted on over the intervening decades, and created a multi-cultural society that has many beauties and attractions, but in which too many Britons have absolutely no sense of allegiance to this country or its institutions. It is a cultural calamity that will take decades to reverse, and we must begin now with what I call in this morning's Spectator the re-Britannification of Britain.

We saw what they did...

”It’s because of all the outrages that are going on across the World” he said, ”I’ve seen what happened in Chechnya, Bosnia, Iraq and the occupied territories and this is just a reaction to that” he suggested. ”We live in this World context and people need to take responsibility for what is going on. That is why they did it. No one cares about these outrages and Bush, Blair and you are in many ways responsible.” Paraphrased from the radio programme this morning on Radio 5 Live as far as my memory can recall.

And utterly wrong.

People do care. We see what’s going on and we weep. We get angry. We care about the lives of people we have never met. Their children, husbands and wives. We try to understand difficult political and territorial situations. We take in what we can and sometimes our support swings from one camp to the other. It’s terrible what those Palestinian terrorists did on that bus, it’s terrible what that Israeli soldier did in that street. Yes, it’s terrible. Yes, we agree.

Yes, we recognise the wickedness that exists in the world context and no, we don’t get the urge to perpetrate exactly the kind of evil that we so abhor.Exactly the kind of evil the terrorists try to blame us for. They, like the other perpetrators of evil, will be judged in the same way we judge everything we see. Not by some particular ideal or perceived historical or current injustice. Not by some words written in some book somewhere. Not by what one or other of our leaders say but by the actions of the people we are judging.

We know why those four pawns of darkness did what they did. We know they felt aggrieved by world events. We know they really do believe that their religion is the one and only true religion. We know they offered nothing constructive to the world context. We know they did nothing to help themselves and those they believe they care about. We know that they had no tolerance for the faith or way of life of other people. We know that they benefited from living in a free Britain. That they took the education, freedom and opportunity that was offered to them and we know that they walked onto crowded trains and onto a crowded bus and detonated bombs.

There is no point in telling us that these men were aggrieved. Marginalized. Made by our own hand. At exactly the same time they blew up their fellow train and bus passengers they blew any chance they had to make any kind of a point. To improve anything. We saw what they did and we judged them.

Please, leave it to the MSM of the World. They lap this kind of thing up

Bloggers and commentators suggesting that the Americans are scared due to the recent (but now rescinded) order to personnel to keep away from London are revealing a certain amount of anti-American prejudice.

The US military are stationed in many countries across the world and some of those countries have suffered at the hands of terrorists. No doubt similar orders were issued as a matter of procedure in the aftermath of those attacks and it is perfectly reasonable for a military officer to follow the same procedure this time round, particularly if he or she knows that other officers have issued similar orders in similar circumstances elsewhere on the globe.

It is not their place to make political decisions or alter usual procedure on the basis of political concerns. To be seen to be standing side by side the people of London in the eyes of the world and the world media is a political decision not a military one.

Reflections on a black day

I was at a funeral yesterday and, consequently, away from the keyboard. I was not very far away from the radio (travelling was involved which gave us the time to try and absorb some of what was going on in London) or from the mobile phone which I used to phone a number of friends who were due to be in London during yesterdays tragic events.

It was hard to keep a flurry of thoughts from entering my mind when I closed my eyes for the Lords prayer. It was hard to reflect upon a single life lost at the age of 95 when I knew that others were fighting for theirs right then in some hospital, on some pavement, in some dark and smoke filled tunnel. It was hard to keep my thoughts focused on the matter in hand when the curtains closed around that coffin towards the end of the service.

Sidney, farewell. You missed the tragedy by a week but no doubt the news of new arrivals will reach you soon.

And how we sang.

Jerusalem. Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire! I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land..

The whole congregation, loud and proud. And we meant it. Our spears, our swords, our chariots of fire. We will have peace in England and we will build our own Jerusalem but it will be a peace on our own terms and peace of our own choosing.

God bless the dead, the dying and the injured. God bless their families.

Funding terror - did you ever?

Exactly:

Irish America’s leaders, in other words, are showing exactly the same level of courage as they demonstrated when they looked away for 20 years or more as their supporters dropped $100 bills into the collection buckets so that the IRA could buy the guns and the Semtex that would kill and maim thousands of innocents at a nice safe distance of thousands of miles away.

The franchise you are looking for does not exist, move along, move along

The Honourable Fiend thinks he is some kind of Jedi master:

Q: Is there, in truth, actually an international terrorist organisation called Al-Quaeda?

A: No. And Fiend has very strong suspicions that if the Home Office and its subsidiaries were to tread a less illegal path with respect to anti-terrorism activities, that inconvenient fact might become slightly more apparent to the voters. And that would never do.

Your Jedi mind tricks don't work on me; however I do look forward to the day when the Fiend is right on this matter.

Modified anti-terrorism laws

The Home Secretary has stated in the Commons that he is extending the modified anti-terrorism laws to include British citizens (BBC R4 just now).

Obviously British citizens detained without trial (house arrest or whatever) do not have the same option as foreigners of being sent back to their country of origin.

That's the government's answer to the Law Lord ruling on the liberty of people detained without trial; to further impact upon liberty in Britain. Agree with the government on this issue or not, there is no denying that as a result.

I've got to say, I love the title from this post from the Honourable Fiend: Tough on human rights, tough on the causes of human rights. Tee hee.

When will this stop being news

Security papers 'found in street'. Again.

A new hope

So, I’m thinking that if Bush can pull off a victory in the US elections in spite of the combined might of the Democrats, popular film makers, fading performance artists and the biggest media machines in the world then why can’t he pull off a victory in the war on terror? I mean, if you can beat a corrupt ideology once surely you can beat it again?

The importance of accurate labelling

Animal rights activist

Yes, so?

Palestinian militant group Hamas has sworn vengeance after 14 of its members were killed in an overnight strike by the Israeli air force on Gaza.

Here's the problem though; it doesn't matter what Hamas threatens because no one believes they will do anything less than their worst regardless of what Israel does.

They, like the terrorists in Russia, have already dished out terror so far outside of the bounds of what is recognisably human behaviour that they can say anything they want, for as long as they like, on any subject they like and no sensible person will listen.

These are the parameters that extreme terrorism sets up and that is why I firmly believe that any who embark upon that road don't want a solution that involves anything other than an infinite conflict or the total destruction of those that they oppose.

Do not be persuaded to sanction terrorism

The terror in Russia is unimaginable. The killers and child murderers have de-humanised themselves and gorged on the blood of innocence. Remember that when you are asked by the media to consider the terrorists cause.

Don't they have a point? Doesn't Russia have a case to answer?
No! I will not consider their cause. Not as a result of this event. To do so would be to confirm the effectiveness of their tactics and I will do no such thing!

Don't say you did it for your countrymen,
Like all decent folk they spit on your name,
Don't say you did it for your children when
You've seen them cry and hang their heads in shame.

The Group Captain is liveblogging this tragedy from various feeds.

It's only natural

You know, I can’t hear an Irish accent without immediately thinking of violence. This is basically because after 20 or 30 years of listening to reports and interviews regarding IRA inspired violence the accent and the act are linked in my psyche. Now, as a rational person I know that the Irish are no more violent than anyone else and that the thought is nothing more than a reaction to what effectively amounts to a few decades of indoctrination; but it is there.

For that brief second, when I hear the accent, I think bombs.

This experience makes me believe that it’s stuff like this that will eventually corrupt the thinking of people who have been otherwise reasonable in their position on Islamist violence and its relationship to Islam.

After a while continued violence will eventually affect many people in this way and I believe it is a perfectly reasonable and expected reaction. It’s part of the human condition to be open to such conditioning and it is probably some throwback to an ancestral survival trait.

Now, most people will see this for what it is and will get over it but I suspect that many will not. This is the seed that is being planted now and this is why it is imperative that the Muslim world becomes more vocal and, perhaps, physical in defending its faith and its way of life against those that seek to corrupt it.

We were terrorists once, and stupid

I wonder who these two British traitors will blame when they finally get to face the reality of the situation in Najaf? I mean, you can hardly blame them for thinking that they might be fighting a successful campaign against the Americans from what we get to see in the press. When they finally receive the spanking they so richly deserve I hope that their 72 virgins (or whatever the number is these days) speak to them with that traditional BBC news broadcaster accent as a permanent reminder of their foolishness.

Terror for life

Source::

Security services have thwarted terrorist attacks in the British capital but the threat will remain for decades, the head of London's police force said Thursday.

``London has been a target of unsuccessful terrorist attacks and some have been disrupted,'' Sir John Stevens, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

``There are over a hundred people ... going through the courts in relation to unsuccessful attacks,'' he added.

``We and the security services, MI5 and MI6, are working incredibly hard and we have massive amounts of resources that we're using to make sure that no one breaks through and has a successful attack,'' Stevens said.

Asked whether he believed the threat from terrorism would remain for the rest of most people's natural lives, Stevens replied: ``I'm afraid I do.''

We all knew this though didn't we? That we'd be in it for the long haul. So what progress has the west made since the start of the war? What have our governments and our military done to improve our safety? What is our greatest victory?

State sponsored terrorism is an extraordinarily dangerous business to be in.

Like the tactics or loath them, its progress.

Wouldn't that be shocking...

...If the words spoken by Saddam at his trial mimicked the words spoken by the frothing anti-liberation leftists? Den Beste raises its possibility:

Another reason is that leftists are going to find a lot of their rhetoric being usurped by Saddam himself. Bush is a criminal, right? Saddam sure thinks so.

Would they even bat an eyelid?

Scorpions do maths

Those who would judge the whole coalition on the basis of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by some should ask themselves if they would judge all Muslims on the basis of the execution of US and Italian captives by a few of that faith. Or indeed by the preaching of murder and hatred by a few of its spiritual leaders. Or, perhaps, by the fire and ash that remains as evidence of the piloting skills of some of its congregation. Or by the missing limbs of a few decadent western holiday makers here and there. Or by killing of bus passengers by its faithful. Or by the murder of it’s fairer members for the sake of ‘honour’.

Perhaps because the criminally guilty troops constitute a larger percentage of the whole than the few Muslim executioners, murderers and professional haters they would consider my suggestion invalid. Let the scorpions think so. As they revel in their arithmetic they must look on in awe at our inability to judge whole families in court for the crimes of a wayward son or daughter.

Was that a helicopter Abu?

Are they leaving Arafat's compound because Arafat doesn't want them there or because they don't fancy living too close to Arafat?

Channel 5 poll on that offer

Channel 5 news ran a phone poll last night on whether Europe should accept Bin Laden’s offer of a truce or not. I went incandescent.

I had this reaction for two reasons.

Firstly because the guy is a terrorist and the only course of action that should be taken when a terrorist offers you a deal is to stick you fingers in your ears and say “La, la, la, la, la”. To do anything else is to legitimise terrorist tactics. “Hey, you do this for me and we will stop killing you on your trains and in your shopping centres”. You certainly don’t run public polls on the subject.

Secondly, I don’t recognise Europe as an entity that can accept or decline such an offer.

Speaking as a non Muslim

Yes, I know that the vast majority of British Muslims are peace loving and patriotic.

Yes, I respect your choice of religion and I know that you respect mine.

Yes, I know that British Muslims are sometimes arrested and released without charge and I know that this also happens to non Muslims.

Yes, I know that when a local Muslim is arrested as a suspected terrorist your first thought is, "holy shit there was a fucking terrorist living near me" instead of "oh look, they are picking on us Muslims again".

A message from Israel

So, what message is Israel sending out with the recent assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin?

I think you need to be contemplating a career path in the upper echelons of Hamas to really get it.

Men with many shadows

In response to revelations by US officials that four of the five Britons released from Guantanamo Bay were far from innocent wedding party-goers Melanie Phillips asks:

Why are the British authorities passive in the face of all this?

It’s a fair question. Why, Melanie asks, haven't these four been arrested and charged with treason?

I’m guessing that there simply isn’t the evidence to convict in a court of law. The Telegraph article that Melanie links to says:

Officials at the American Embassy in London sent a letter containing detailed allegations about the four men

The key word here is allegations and as far as I can tell there is no indication in the report that these were accompanied with corroborating evidence.

Now, that is not to say that the UK and US governments are not convinced of the culpability of the released men, it’s just that they feel there is nothing they can lawfully do to keep these men locked up.

However, this does not mean that the British authorities are, as Melanie puts it, passive. These four men can be considered useful sources of intelligence even if they are not in custody and I suspect that the authorities and, more specifically, the intelligence services will be very busy.

The spooks are, after all, on to them.

The Spanish vote - revisited

The left and the right are barking at each other over this Spanish vote thing.

Woof woof.

Grr, woof.

Which side are you on?

Me, I’m on the side that thinks it’s a bad idea to remove troops from Iraq right now. One of my reasons is that it’s what the terrorists want. Consequently, I think that those that voted for the new government in Spain knowing this was on the agenda have given the terrorists something they desire.

Those that voted for the new government on the basis of the troop withdrawal alone at the very least deserve the title of deserters in my opinion.

Those that voted for the new government thinking that it would save them from further attacks are appeasers.

Those that voted for the new government because of their socialist policies, economic intentions etc. and who were not particularly interested in the Iraqi thing could, at a push, be described as deserters. You know, more interested in something other than this war on terror thing but it’s not so clear cut in my mind. They may well think that this whole war on terror is a bit of a paper tiger but I find that hard to swallow given the recent events in Madrid.

Anyway, it’s a bit of a mixed bag but none of it brings anything positive into the war.

What?

13%!

Attacks on the US by al Qaida or other groups were viewed as justified by 13% of the 500 British Muslims questioned.

Another 15% said they did not know whether the such attacks are wrong or right.

More Texas, less Knightsbridge

Actually, even though I believe the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and the Major of London when they say that it is inevitable that terrorists will succeed in attacking London they are, frankly, beginning to annoy me.

I’m not sure it’s the kind of message that these men, the ones that have some responsibility for our safety, should be giving out to us, to the rest of the World and to the terrorists themselves. Its message is hardly a warning to anyone planning a terrorist act.

Stronger talk please. There are cowards with bombs watching.

Can it be true?

Is it really true that the Spanish have allowed their election results to be influenced by a single act of terrorism?

Frankly, I don’t think the answer to that actually matters. What does matter is that the terrorists will believe that the tool they have chosen (that is large scale murder) actually works on Western democracies.

It now falls to another Western democracy to prove that it does not.

The BBC are doing one of their have your say thingies.

The terrorists did it

Understanding a particular terrorist group's cause is only ever necessary for one reason and one reason only. It has nothing to do with negotiation, nothing to do with sympathy and absolutely nothing to do with appeasement. The only reason to consider a group's cause is as a source of intelligence to help catch or kill those terrorists. Period.

The killers in Madrid. ETA or Al Qaeda? The question is basically one of which division of terror is responsible for the attack? Where is this division likely to be operating from? Who do we know who has contacts with this division? Do we have any of them in custody? Who can we lean on? Where do we need our resources? How can we kill them?

As soon as you start using bombs, guns, knives, gas etc. you give up any right to a sympathetic consideration of a cause. Effectively you have made the decision to fight until you die.

Go here to read some of the terribly sad submissions to the BBC comments section on the Madrid attack. This one by Patricia had me struggling:

My sister has just called me. She is a doctor and works in Hospital Clínico in Madrid, far from Atocha Station. She had a 26 year old girl who can't talk, with many injuries, and her mobile rang. My sister answered and it was her cousin, trying to find her. She had to tell her to call the family and went there. She's now in the intensive care unit. There are priests in the hospital... is just terrible.

The old war on terror

Just so you know, this is the kind of thing that we in the UK have had to deal with for decades. Terrorism is not new to us.

A bomb has been defused outside a pub in north Belfast.

It was found in York Road at about 0230 GMT on Thursday after a telephone warning.

Army bomb experts carried out a controlled explosion on the device.

A number of items were taken away for examination.

By the way, any visiting tourists who wonder why there is such a shortage of bins (trash cans) on our London transport system it's because that's where terrorists used to hide their bombs. We thought it best to remove them.

The squid's the star

I suspected as much. It looks like the only accurate news in this recent 'Osama found' posting is the squid I had for dinner. Unless, of course, this Reuters report is as unreliable as the Sunday Express one in which case we can file away this whole sorry episode under the news made up by hacks category.

Here's a picture of the squid again, just so we have something rock solid in this posting too.

For real.

Osama bin Laden news

The good news is that there's a report out that Osama bin Laden has been located and is surrounded by US special forces. The bad news is that the report comes from The Sunday Express which I know, from personal experience, can be extremely unreliable.

I saw many of the front pages this morning whilst out shopping for squid and cookies and the Express was the only one with the story so it looks like an exclusive.

The squid - cooked - yum!

Poodle cake

Feeling down? Need a little cheering up? This Telegraph article has what you need to brighten up your day. It's packed with wholesome goodness, with a distance ourselves from the French crispy biscuit base, a federal Europe is unworkable chicken poop creamy filling and a we want a successful Iraqi democracy icing. The only thing that's missing is a get rid of the BBC license fee cherry on the top but we can forgive them for that. After all, goodness in moderation is healthy.

Germany is seeking to distance itself from France's tight embrace and realign itself more closely to Britain and America, senior German officials signalled yesterday.

"We have to be careful that we are not identified with every word that the
French president utters. We must have our own identity and be a little more clever."

I can hardly stand it and it's only the beginning.

The latest indications of Berlin's quest for a rapprochement with London and Washington came two days after Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister, abandoned Berlin's dream of creating a European federal state.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Mr Fischer said the Iraq crisis had exposed the divisions within Europe and brought home to him the need to accept diverse traditions and history.

Oh my, the goodness! Feel the goodness!

Now German officials say they are also ready to offer limited help in Iraq. "We have an interest in success in Iraq," insisted one official. "Unless there is stability and some kind of democracy there could be a negative domino effect across the region to the detriment of everybody's interests in the West."

Brrp, I'm stuffed. I couldn't eat another thing.

The long game

The BBC reports that some MP's think that the war in Iraq may increase the chances of terrorism against British nationals and British interests in the short term. This author thinks that the war in Iraq is likely to decrease the chances of state sponsored terrorism against British nationals and interests in the long term.

Unless, of course, we loose our nerve and fail the Iraqi people in the midst of all the bleating that's going on.

Some things just need propagating (again)

Psssst, pass it on.

It's not what you said, it's the way you said it

One difference between people who suffer and people who watch suffering on TV was highlighted in Paul Bremer's press conference on Sunday. When Bremer stood at that podium and said “We got him!” Iraqi’s at the conference started cheering, shouted “Death to Saddam” and wept. The TV watching intelligentsia criticised Bremer’s phraseology.

The tramp's the star

I was away from the TV for most of the weekend except for an hour or so down the pub. I was out of earshot so couldn’t hear what was being said which was a little frustrating because they kept showing pictures of some old tramp being examined by a doctor. What was that all about?

Operation Secret Turkey

I'm not sure I believe this. It says Bush flew to Baghdad today in secret to have dinner with some United States officials and a group of American troops:

Mr. Bush sneaked out of Crawford on Wednesday in an unmarked car, then flew to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, where a few advisers and a small number of reporters sworn to secrecy joined him. They then flew on to Baghdad International Airport, arriving around dusk.

It's like in the films.

No, not yet

Andrew Sullivan thinks that:

Now is surely the time to bring Turkey into the EU and to reassure them of our solidarity.

First things first, there's still the little problem of a divided Cyprus to sort out before this can happen.

What the Turks did to Cyprus and to the unfortunate Cypriot families caught up in their invasion cannot be forgiven just because they have been subjected to terror in their own country. Letting them into the EU without resolving the Cyprus problem will be a disgraceful slap in the face for the Cypriots. It cannot be allowed to happen.

A condemnation but....

Denis MacShane thinks that UK Muslim leaders need to condemn terrorist attacks more clearly and with stronger language. This has provoked anger among senior Muslims who branded his suggestion as "disgraceful".

So, into the situation steps Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, offering us this condemnation of the terrorists:

"The Muslim community has consistently condemned terrorism and we condemn this latest attack on the British consulate and HSBC in Turkey."

I would hardly call that strong language but each to his own I suppose. Then we get:

"The attacks only emphasise that the disastrous war in Iraq has not reduced the risk of terrorism, as our own governments had us believe beforehand, but has exacerbated it.

We do not need lectures from a representative of a government that has conducted an unlawful war against Iraq"

And there we have exactly the kind of thing Denis MacShane is on about I guess. A dry condemnation with the passion saved up for the 'but'.

Civil war

In a crystallising post over at One Hand Clapping Donald Sensing suggests that the current terror war is actually a Muslim civil war. It's the al Qaeda view of Islam versus the more moderate and, let's face it, peace compatible view of Islam.

...the Muslim world is faced with defining what Islam really is. If al Qaeda is not in fact the keeper of the true faith, then the rest of the Muslims must unite to destroy al Qaeda just to ensure the survival of Islam itself. They need to understand that the present crisis is not primarily that of Islamists against the West, it is the Islamists against everybody who does not toe their line.

My emphasis.

It seems that the key to this war on terror is to persuade the moderates that this is actually the case, though I suspect that further atrocities in Islamic countries will leave little doubt. However, recognising a position and actually admitting to it are very different things and I think we have a long period of denial ahead of us.