I keep reading how the recent attacks in London and Glasgow failed. This strikes me as naive and narrow-minded thinking. The plots failed to kill anyone - that is true - but that was not their only purpose. Possibly not even their main purpose.
The point of terrorism is not simply to kill people. It is intended to create certain conditions through which a cause can be advanced. Death is merely a by-product.
The first intention of terrorism is to create a climate of fear, concern and insecurity. That is obvious. It is intended to "terrorise" the civilian population. The purpose of this is to make the civilian population doubt the ability of it's government to protect it. This is, of course, an irrational doubt because no government can ever protect it's people from indiscriminate acts of murder. However, what it does do is create the situation where the government are forced to be seen to act.
Objective achieved.
And this brings us to the second intention of terrorism. To cause disruption, inconvenience and cost. The government responds to an act of terrorism by embarking on a series of measures designed to demonstrate that they are acting. Hence we see long queues at airports, cars searched, people frisked, flights cancelled and armed police everywhere. All of this disruption and inconvenience is a direct result of last weekends attacks - and it cost millions of pounds of taxpayers money.
Objective achieved.
The third intention of terrorism is to cause a government to make concessions to a cause. The obvious example of that was in Madrid where a few murderous extremists were able to influence the outcome of an election. But it happens here as much as anywhere. In 1940 Churchill's response to the threat from Nazi Germany was "we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be", but a prolonged campaign of terrorism by the IRA led the government of Britain to the position that it was preferable to have a "peace" whatever the cost may be. The cost of that decision - apart from the fact that former terrorists now sit in Parliament - is that terrorists the world over now believe that their tactics will force concessions eventually. Indeed, the Islamic terrorism of recent years has yielded concessions far more quickly than the IRA ever managed.
Objective achieved.
The next objective of terrorism is to divert resources. This is a particular objective of Islamic terrorism. The intention is to force the police to concentrate so much of their effort into coping with terrorism that they are unable to apply themselves to the other aspects of their job - preventing crime and disorder. This is essential to Islamic ambitions because a crime riddled society craves morality, order and discipline - and Islam ostensibly offers these (particularly in a nation where the traditional Christian morality, order and discipline has been significantly eroded). As crime thrives so does the people's desire for something to act as a bulwark against that, and Islam - and particularly fundamentalist Islam - appears to many as an attractive option. So more people become Muslim and more Muslims become fundamentalist.
Objective achieved.
I could go on, but then this post would last forever. I hope I've got the point across that terrorism can not be considered in such simple terms of success or failure based on the number killed. There are a multitude of objectives behind terrorism and, in this latest attack, they have largely succeeded and will continue to succeed until we finally understand what the real motivation is behind their campaign and start to deal with that.
And, in case you are still unsure of what motivates Islamic terrorism - it is the establishment of Islamic ideology as the dominant global political force, the eradication of western liberal democracy, the destruction of Israel and the subjugation of unbelievers.
5 comments:
Here's our first nominee for the Harold Shipman (pbuh) Award:
"A doctor has admitted killing at least 35 Iraqi police officers and army soldiers by giving them lethal injections, reopening their wounds or engaging in other deadly acts while they were being treated at a hospital in the northern city of Kirkuk, according to Kurdish security sources and Kurdish television.
Kurdish television broadcast on Sunday what it said was the doctor's taped confession, in which he told police that he sympathized with the radical Sunni Arab insurgent group Ansar al-Sunna. He said that the group paid him to kill the men and that he did it because "I hate the Americans and what they've done to Iraq."
"I injected more than 35 policemen and soldiers, including officers and some who were slightly injured," the doctor, identified by a Kurdish security official as Luay Omar Taie, said in the taped statement. "I used to stop the breathing machines or cut the electricity in the operations room or reopen the wounds."
From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/26/AR2006032600236_pf.html
- Dr C. Riyal Kilah
Another objective achieved:
Apologies in advance for this, and if you want to pull it, that’s fine - but here’s the latest from the UK.
You might want to put this up as a full post:
Off topic, but vitally important for us to know. And what are the equivalent numbers for other Western countries?
http://haddock-somethingfishy.blogspot.com/2007/07/scary.html
“” Scary ?
from Daily Telegraph letters page today;
Ethnic Border Guards
Sir - There are certainly very serious questions to be asked about the manning, mission and effectiveness of the Border and Immigration Agency of the Home Office, previously the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (Letters, July 5). It says its role is “securing our borders, enforcing our immigration laws and managing migration to the benefit of the UK”. Its catastrophic failure to perform these functions correctly is plain for all to see.
When I said to a previous Home Secretary that the controls at our ports of entry were “beacons of political correctness”, he replied that I had made a demeaning remark. I therefore asked the Home Office what proportion of its staff in the various immigration, identity and passport services were from ethnic minorities.
Given that ethnic minorities are estimated to form about 6.7 per cent of our total population of working age, I was alarmed to receive the reply that, of those staff whose ethnicity was recorded, 29 per cent of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, 30 per cent of the Immigration Service and 14 per cent of the Identity and Passport Service were from ethnic minorities.
While it is only right and proper that all law-abiding bona fide citizens, regardless of ethnicity, should have equal opportunities, the manning of our front-line immigration services is curiously disproportionate. It does not promote confidence in the agencies responsible for the control of our borders and therefore the security and integrity of our nation.
Geoffrey Van Orden MEP, Conservative Defence and Security Spokesman, Brussels “”
[[SHM adds: Note: “of those staff whose ethnicity was recorded …” - so how high is the actual number in these departments? And how many are Muslims?
The government CAN’T be doing this out of sheer incompetence. No one, not even this bunch could be that incompetent. They MUST have an agenda.
How many jihadis are getting through that even the intelligence services and police don’t know about? THIS IS SERIOUS STUFF!… we need to know]]
Go have a read, with Captain Haddock’s usual pithy comment added on.
PS I think our countries, people and cultures are being betrayed by our leaderships - knowingly.
http://www.fredoneverything.net/index.html
This is two years old, but it is a valid today and inro the future as it was then. It's ageless.
Click "Fred Columns", and scroll down for 'Paris Burns' - column number 295. As you scroll down you will repeatedly see columns that you will want to read. Fred produces the most wonderfully sardonic writing I've ever read. I wouldn't be surprised if only an American could indeed write like this. Enjoy yourselves.
Paris Burns Again
Let's Roast Frankfurters
November 7, 2005
Paris burns, crackling and popping as merrily as a Yule log when England was still Merrie and still English. Moslems prance about setting things alight, cars incinerate briskly, and the police suck their thumbs. Diversity. Oh yes. And more to come.
Time and again these days, national governments let in all sorts of people who belong somewhere else. Pretty soon the country has so many that the government comes to fear them. At that point the problem passes beyond easy solution. So politicians paper over everything, and make concessions to buy a year’s peace. The newcomers breed and increase. By and by the remaining possibilities are acquiescence or civil war.
Which latter, boys and girls, isn’t impossible.
The assiduously courted invasion usually rests on a curious idealism that I find hard to credit in adults. The notion is that we are all just people, brothers under the skin, that all we need is love and understanding, black and white together, kum bah ya; only a few reactionary forces need to be stilled to bring about universal bliss. This happy thought doesn’t surprise me among students in high school. Politicians aren’t.
Has no one noticed that diversity doesn’t work? Putting together peoples with little in common begs for trouble, usually with success. It is the chief source of the world’s bloodshed and enmity.
Look around you. Start with Canada, where the Brits and French detest each other. Drop down to the USA, where black, white, and brown wait uneasily for no one is sure what; the lid is held on by Washington, which acts as a sort of federal Tito. There are Hindus and Moslems in India, Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, blacks and whites in South Africa, Moslems and Buddhists in Thailand, Turks and Germans in Germany, Vietnamese and Montagnards in Vietnam, Moslems and animists in the Sudan, Jews and Moslems in Israel, Cambodians and Vietnamese in Cambodia, Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, Indians and Mexicans in Chiapas, Basques and Spaniards in Spain, Indians and Fijians in Fiji.
But what have facts to do with foreign relations? It is much more entertaining to base policy on adolescent theories and see what happens.
When the anticipated melding fails and riots ensue, the response is to try to buy, or legislate, the impossible. Invariably the cry arises that the government hasn’t done enough for the indigent arrivals. We must spend more money on welfare, on schools, on special programs to raise the unraisable and mix the immiscible. It is our fault really. We need to change our outmoded attitudes, require classes on ethnic sensitivity, celebrate the culture of the new incompatibles. We will have National Islamic History Week, and children will make mosques from construction paper. That will fix everything.
Instead the problem gets worse. The majority population becomes angrier, but has no recourse. The government is against them. The immigrants can loot and burn, and nothing is likely to happen to them: Punishing their misbehavior would engender more violence, which the government wants to avoid at any cost. If the citizenry defend themselves, as for example by shooting arsonists, the government will put them in prison. Citizens have much to lose; the malefactors do not.
A spring is thus wound.
Moslems in particular are poison. A failed civilization, Islam sends its unsuccessful, thus double failures, to Europe. They gravitate to slums because they can do nothing else. Cohesive, angry, ineffectual, with no loyalty to their new home, they neither flourish nor assimilate. Resentment grows among them. And so the cities burn.
Which is interesting. In the United States, the hostility of Islam is often attributed to American support of Israel. Beyond doubt, there is truth in this. It does not explain the riots in Paris, the papered-over violence in other European countries, the Islamic terrorism in Russia and in southern Thailand, the anti-Christian fighting in East Timor, or the terror in Kashmir. Moslems are trouble.
Immigration is not prima facie a bad idea. It depends on who you let in. Some immigrants can assimilate. If for example the United States allows the entry of moderate numbers of reasonably educated Chinese, nothing untoward will happen. The Chinese share such crucial European traits as studiousness and respect for law. In fact they are superior to the white population in both respects. Consequently they arouse little hostility and not a little admiration. They may congregate for a generation or so in Chinatown, but the term designates a place where a lot of Chinese live, not a hostile ghetto.
Other immigrants cannot assimilate. Most especially practitioners of Islam cannot prosper in Europe. Watch.
Incomprehensibly, permitting their entry has been a deliberate decision. Europe could have kept these swarming newcomers out by simply not letting them in. No visa, no work permit, instant deportation. It didn’t. Now France and Holland are on the edge. Amsterdam could be the next Paris. England, once a delightful land of safety and civility, becomes in parts a North African slum. I have no sympathy. They made the choice. But why did they do it?
For that matter, if Washington wanted to end the illegal immigration of Latinos, it could do so in a paragraph: Establish a fine of five thousand dollars a day for employing illegals or renting them accommodations, half of it to go to the person turning the offender in; require proof of citizenship for welfare in any form, or use of the schools; allow police to demand a green card at their discretion; put the army along the border with orders to shoot. It won’t happen, of course. I don’t care, but let’s not be surprised at the consequences.
What the French need to do, but won’t, is to send the army into the Islamic slums, round up the whole lot, and put them ashore on the beaches of North Africa with a box lunch and a coupon for three free Dunkin Donuts. It isn’t a pretty answer. It’s a lot prettier than what seems to be coming down the pike.
Ah, but there is the little matter that the enlisted ranks of the French army are heavily Moslem. Again, the more you let in, the less you can do about them. For France, I’d guess that the war is over, though the fighting just begins.
People and governments by nature temporize, avert their eyes from forthcoming catastrophe, eschew the needful but unpleasant, and do not readily believe that the status quo can abruptly change. But it can, and does, and is. Meanwhile absurd intellectuals write pointless articles in glossy magazines. Soon it will be too late for civilized answers.
Then what? That is the question.
Really enjoyed you two above!
Both on the ball, and highly topical. Good stuff. Thanks.
With regards France - I've said on this blog before that I believe it won't be long before we see the first Muslim enclave developing in that country.
It is my opinion that Marseilles will effectively be an Islamic republic inside France within 15 years - the first of many. Remarkably, Sir Alan West believes the battle will be all but over by then - I wonder which side he thinks will win.
Mark Steyn has been in the van trying to wake people in Europe to the demographic issue, but we don't listen - we keep allowing more and more, thousands upon thousands of muslim immigrants into our European nations for the short term gain of "doing the jobs we won't do" (we bloody well will if they pay enough and if there are no benefits to fall back on for the slackers) and we fail to recognise the simple fact that 100,000 immigrant muslims today will mean 400,000 muslims in 25 years and 2,000,000 in 50 while at the same time our own population declines.
Dangerous.
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