At the Telegraph, Con Coughlin lays out what’s wrong with Britain’s effort to fight Islamic terrorism to-date, saying:
No one can claim that we in Britain don’t understand the nature of the threat we face. In recent months, there has been a succession of reports highlighting the increasingly pernicious influence British Islamists are having on the Nato-led campaign to bring stability to Afghanistan.
After senior officers confirmed last year that British Muslims were fighting with the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, it was revealed that RAF Nimrod surveillance planes monitoring Taliban radio stations were surprised to hear insurgents speaking in strong Yorkshire or Midlands accents.
Surprised is probably the wrong word to use in that sentence given the murderous 7/7 bombing British Muslims carried out in London nearly 4 years ago. Dismayed might be closer, for it reveals the true nature of Britain’s – and all of Europe’s – Muslim problem: It is at once internal and foreign.
Britain, Coughlin goes on to say, has been soft on Islamic extremists in a vain attempt to smooth the ruffled feathers of Muslims at home, some of whom have provided materials used in roadside bombs in Afghanistan, harassed British soldiers returning from the war theater, and rioted in the streets of London, among other misdeeds. The government’s response has been weak at best, as demonstrated in the case of Binyam Mohamed, about which Coughlin wrote:
When the former Guantánamo detainee Binyam Mohamed claimed that British intelligence officials were complicit in his torture, the main focus of the controversy was the alleged collusion of ministers, rather than precisely what Mr Mohamed was doing in Afghanistan.
Indeed, that is the pertinent question, yet it did not seem to get asked, possibly for fear of offending Muslim activists in Britain itself. There are two legitimate reasons for westerners to be in Afghanistan at this moment: military and journalism. Mohamed was and is neither. So why was he there? Three guesses and we don’t need the last two, do we?
Ultimately, these fears must be overcome and faced if the country is to carry on as Great Britain. The only other available option leads inevitably toward what Melanie Philips might call the Londinistanization of the country that was the leading force in western civilization.
Coughlin:
The worldwide campaign against Islamist-inspired militancy is highly complex. But if the West to wants to prevent further terror attacks, we must first distinguish between those who are on our side, and those who are not.
As uncomfortable as it makes some of us, the fact is that there are sides to be chosen and judgments to be made. It’s imperative that this fundamental fact be acknowledged at all levels of all nations, not specifically as a call to war but rather as the overt realization that this is the way things are.