Dominic Lawson: So, this is where we are now
You really should read Dominic Lawson’s piece in the Sunday Times. Here are some edited highlights for the lazy. But frankly, don’t read them. Read the whole article.
Never forget:
Radovan Karadzic’s defence against 11 charges of genocide did not get off to the best possible start at the Hague last week. The chief prosecutor at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia opened proceedings by releasing transcripts of tapped telephone conversations of the Bosnian Serb leader from 1991, which record Karadzic saying: “There are 20,000 armed Serbs around Sarajevo … it will be a black cauldron where 300,000 Muslims will die. They will disappear. That people will disappear from the face of the earth.”
What was the reaction of the Tories?
The Conservative government of John Major was the most forceful advocate of an arms embargo that would almost certainly have doomed the Bosnian Muslims to suffer further acts of genocide
And how did Western policy change?
…until in 1995 Bill Clinton browbeat the European Union into agreeing to airstrikes. These, backed by US-armed Bosnian and Croatian ground forces, forced the Serbs to abandon their plans to “ethnically cleanse” Bosnia and Croatia.
In 1999, when the Serbs began a similar ethnic cleansing policy against the Muslims of Kosovo, it was Tony Blair who supplied the political leadership for a military campaign against Milosevic. Britain and America — under the Nato umbrella — bombed Belgrade, most notoriously attacking the Serbian radio and television headquarters and killing 16 workers, including make-up artists and set designers. It is worth remembering that this bombardment, carried out in defiance of a United Nations veto by Russia and China, was most vehemently supported by Robin Cook and Clare Short, the two cabinet ministers who subsequently resigned over Blair’s decision to back America’s “shock and awe” assault on Baghdad without UN sanction.
Look where we are now:
Blair is hate figure No 1 for thousands of Muslims, even in his own country, many of whom subscribe to the view, propagated by Al-Qaeda and its Sunni acolytes, that the war in Iraq was anti-Islamic in its entire purpose.
…
I had a similar experience when I spoke at a public meeting near the east London mosque, organised by the Muslim group Dialogue with Islam. When I argued that the Nato attack on Serbia in defence of the Muslims of Kosovo hardly suggested a fundamentalist Christian hatred of Islam on the part of the British and American governments, I could see that I might as well have been speaking in Welsh for all the impact it had on that audience of Muslim men and women.
By contrast:
They responded warmly, however, to the argument of Sheikh Dawud Noibi, a leading figure in the Muslim Council of Britain, that the US-led invasion of Afghanistan was motivated by the need to ensure the construction of an American oil pipeline there, implying that the Americans had allowed the attack on the World Trade Center so as to provide a pretext for this colonialist investment. Noibi, by the way, was appointed an OBE on the recommendation of the Blair government: presumably this seal of the state’s approval was just another dastardly trick by the Brits to fool the public into thinking they were not determined to destroy Islam.
Paradoxically:
If Karadzic does take to the stand at the Hague we can expect him to boast that he was fighting the Islamist threat to civilisation while Britain and America slept. Against the charge of genocide, any defence will do.
What a pickle.
Is Dominic Lawson really right to be so pessimistic? To be honest, with the Home Secretary on the verge of buying into the “moderate Islamist” falacy, and embracing the MCB and its activists again, he probably is.
Comments
| 3 November 2009, 12:54 pm |
The link’s broken BTW
| 3 November 2009, 12:58 pm |
Greg has it right. Twelve years ago, most of the people currently making a noise on the Islamist front were doing their GCSEs, if not their 11+. The largest single piece of “give us our way or we’ll fill the streets” debacle, the Rushdie affair, was recent memory, and the then Tory government had given precisely no ground (while Hattersley, to his eternal shame, proposed that the book should be published in hardback for the rich folk but not paperback). The people currently being given the time of day by Labour should realise they’re enjoying the autumn of their influence, because come May 6th it’s going to be Winter.
The whole horrid victim-status communitarian Islamist crowd can only get traction through a perfect storm of Labour factors:
* Because Labour constituency parties come to a skidding halt at the cry of racism, anyone with a brown skin always gets the benefit of the doubt, no matter how deranged. Tory constituency parties, especially in places which return Tory MPs, may not be openly racist, but certainly won’t immediately surrender to the accusation.
* Tories don’t need the votes in inner-city ghettos where they won’t get elected anyway, so have no incentive at all to swap sacks of fraudulent postal votes for ignoring the problems of women, gays and others. Labour introduced postal voting on demand in part in order to remove the franchise from uppity women and secure Muslim urban seats. Tories don’t need those votes.
* There are probably enough deluded Labour swing voters whose votes depend on pandering to sectarian organisations that it’s worth doing. There’s no votes at all in that for the Tories, while there are a lot of potential Tory voters who regard pandering to the MCB as a bad idea.
So a lot of men with beards are going to wake up on the morning of May 7th to find themselves cast into the outer darkness. An incoming Tory government will just tell the MCB, the MAB and all the rest to get stuffed, and the louder they do it, the more popular they become with their voters. What’s not to like? Token Muslims like wossname that made a fool of herself with Griffin will be thrown over the side, and the MCB will get less traction with government than it can possibly imagine.
| 3 November 2009, 2:25 pm |
An incoming Tory government will just tell the MCB, the MAB and all the rest to get stuffed…
You mean all fierce like – with the same resolve they showed to fulfill the promise they made to call a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty – ‘Meet the new Boss – Same as the old Boss’
Welcome to Balkanised Britain.
| 3 November 2009, 2:56 pm |
Token Muslims like wossname that made a fool of herself with Griffin will be thrown over the side, and the MCB will get less traction with government than it can possibly imagine.
Eh? Who? What?
Baronness Warsi? How did she make a fool of herself with Griffin?
| 3 November 2009, 4:15 pm |
Baronness Warsi? How did she make a fool of herself with Griffin?
By being almost entirely incoherent.
| 3 November 2009, 4:28 pm |
“My interlocutors were neither stupid nor insincere. It was just that they were wired in such a way that precluded them from seeing the US as anything other than the global foe of Muslims.”
Isn’t this a prime example of a foreign policy success – Bosnia and Kosovo – negated by a domestic policy failure? The British version of multiculturalism, with its polyglot approach and commitment to preserving cultural differences, encourages the development of a Muslim community parallel to and isolated from mainstream society. Self-appointed “community leaders” are then allowed to control the narrative within those communities, to a point where their version of events becomes the accepted truth.
A pretty pickle, and one that if it is to be undone, will probably take a generation or more of hard work both within the Muslim community and within government. The current government, meanwhile, remains hamstrung by its long-held delusion that the Northern Ireland situation provides a useful analogy for combating Islamism, hence its commitment to searching for and engaging with “moderate Islamists”.
Epic fail on all fronts.
| 3 November 2009, 5:14 pm |
Self-appointed “community leaders” are then allowed to control the narrative within those communities, to a point where their version of events becomes the accepted truth.
The whole concept of `community’ is fascinating. At one level, it’s simply a euphemism for `low quality’ and `not for people like us’ — community school, arts project, transport, hall, leader, care. I live in a community, with its own section in the leasehold reform act to boot, but I don’t notice there are any leaders: the white middle classes are assumed not to need them.
But the concept of a community leader is interesting. Are they Judenraht? Tribal leaders? Trade Union Leaders? Deliverers of votes? Whatever, government appears to regard good relationships with them worth any prince, including a few honour killings.
| 3 November 2009, 6:15 pm |
What will happen if the Tories win the next election? All those Islamacists who have a strongly developed sense of entitlement aren’t going to just give up and go away. Would the Tories really be steadfast in the face of fierce opposition and unrealistic demands? I just think it will all get a whole lot nastier. (Especially when you factor in the public spending cuts.).
| 3 November 2009, 6:15 pm |
The whole concept of `community’ is fascinating.
I imagine it would be if you’re a patronising middle class right winger, you probably wouldn’t know a community if it came round to take you to the guilotine.
The concept is fairly simple. I’m a scientist. As much as I would love it if the Government asked me and every other scientist what we thought about a policy which would affect science, it’s obvious that they’re not able to. Therefore they ask a few eminent scientists what they think, in the hope that these scientists, being experienced, would let them know if they’re going to stuff things up too badly. I imagine the armed forces, the police etc. probably have a similar arrangement. Industry also has this relation with Government, but they call them lobbyists. You can also see that many companies have “community” relations departments, for keeping on the good side of the local people.
| 3 November 2009, 7:57 pm |
Listen up, Muslims – the West fought for you
I think De Gaulle’s remark (not original) after WW2 is pertinent: “We will amaze you with our ingratitude”. Do not expect gratitude from anyone but the most liberal Muslims, for the others merely complain that the West was too slow to react.
Scotland is far better off as a result of the Thatcher reforms, yet all the Scots remember is the loss of their smokestack industries, hence the virtual eradication of Conservatives in Scotland. Sorry, David, gratitude for getting you out of a hole, particularly one you got yourself into, is rarely forthcoming.
| 3 November 2009, 10:59 pm |
David, O/T but just noted at a US blog that Sheihk Qaradawi (?) is apparently consultant on a movie about Mohammed.
http://wizbangblog.com/content/2009/11/03/so-who-will-play-mohammeds-nine-year-old-wife.php
| 4 November 2009, 12:02 am |
It really is a very good piece indeed.
But sadly, it’s not just the all too common frothing Muslims who can’t see past the US is evil demagoguery with it’s Pavlovian response to the standard cues…Neocon, Zionist, Bush, Blair, Wolferwitz . That ’single narrative’ and Pavlovian response to these cues extends to great tracts of the mainstream in the UK, and is endemic amongst our major broadcasters. And it’s not entirely limited to the Left.
the Home Secretary on the verge of buying into the “moderate Islamist” falacy, and embracing the MCB and its activists again
Who cares what the current Home Secretary is about to do? He’s going to be out of a job in 6 month’s time at the latest. What’s the Tory position on the MCB?