Disagreeing with Melanie

I hold Melanie Phillips in high regard. She has been consistently brave and, I believe, correct about just what we're up against in the war on terror.

So she deserves to be taken seriously when she sounds a warning about David Cameron's foreign policy speech:

If anyone doubts just what David Cameron has allied himself to in his anti-neocon speech, they should read the latest entry on the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK website. The MPACUK is a profoundly anti-Jew, anti-Israel, jihadi website whose utterances are simply vile and terrifyingly extreme.

Yet, as she should know, there's a big difference between the MPACUK saying positive things about the Tories and the Tories saying nice things about the MPACUK. I think the MPACUK's construction of the speech is simply wrong, as they are about many things.

I certainly agree with Melanie that William Hague was mistaken to criticise Israeli bombing as disproportionate, but, wrong though I think he was, that does not make him a supporter of the other side in the war on terror.

I am afraid that suggesting that Cameron's speech allied him to the MPACUK is ridiculous, whether it is Melanie or the MPACUK drawing this conclusion.

And as for calling the Tories "jihadi-cons", that simply goes too far, Melanie.

Comments

[emanuel appel]

a letter from America

dear Daniel,

I disagree with you. If one takes a pacifist line during a crisis, say after Dunkirk, one objectively becomes an Axis supporter.

[Anthony Cormack]

This is bonkers. Crazy. Since when does aligning with John McCain make you a pacifist or a coddler of Islamic extremism? Some of the response to the Cameron speech has bordered on hysteria (I do wonder whether some of the critics have actually bothered to read it).

Cameron's speech supported the Anglo-American relationship, backed the War on Terror, didn't bang on about pulling out of Iraq, supported in principle the employment of "hard power" and the whole bundle.

What do people want? I'm pro-American, supported the Iraq War and collaborate regularly with US military officers, as well as having friends in both US and British military uniform who have served and are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it strikes me as bizarre that a situation seems to have arisen in which a stance that is broadly supportive of the US and the war in general and that is no more critical of President Bush in particuar than are John McCain, William F. Buckley, George Shultz, Fareed Zakaria, Frank Fukuyama, Eliot Cohen, Chuck Hagel, Tony Zinni, John Warner, Anthony Cordesman, large swathes of the US armed forces and even, these days, some of the contributors to the NRO "Corner" (not to mention the population of the USA as a whole) can be damned with shrieks of "appeasement" and accusations of selling out.

People need to get a grip. Seriously.

[Hip Gnosis]

Dear Daniel,

I am sure that Hague did not INTEND to become a supporter of the other side in the war against terror. But his comments do make him precisely that. Here's how:

Imagine a world in which every terrorist action, regardless of where in the world and against whom, drew a horrified, passionate, vehement cry of protest from every government on the planet, from every broadcaster and newspaper, from every human rights organisation, and from every inter-governmental organisation. Imagine a world in which no politician and no writer attempted to "understand" the "root causes" of terrorist mass-murder. Imagine a world in which the genocidal pronouncements -- not to mention intentions -- of an Ahmadinejad or a Nasrallah were met with the moral shock and massive, unequivocal condemnation that would properly accrue to anyone attempting to repeat the Holocaust.

Does that not seem like the world that SHOULD, perfectly obviously, exist? Yet that world does not exist. In a sane world, in the world that SHOULD exist, Hezbollah would never have kidnapped IDF soldiers and launched Katyushas into the Galilee because it would have known it would receive no sympathy but only universal condemnation. In the world that DOES exist, however, Hezbollah recognised that terrorism is a strategy that cannot fail to win. It was a no-brainer: provoke Israel with a terrorist action, then hide behind civilians. Set things up so that as many civilians die as possible when Israel lashes out in self-defence. Then watch with glee as Israel is condemned around the world.

The fact is that the way the world condemns Israel when its actions result in the unintended death of Arab civilians makes terrorism against Israeli civilians the perfect strategy for Israel's enemies. Were it not so -- were we to live in the sane world that, surely, we can all agree SHOULD exist -- there would be no terrorist Hezbollah such as we see today, for its terrorist strategy wouldn't even get as far as being a dead end -- it would be a non-starter altogether. Had Hezbollah not known it could count on the Chiracs and Annans and Tuomiojas of this world to come out in swift and heartfelt rebuke of Israel for the Lebanese civilian deaths Hezbollah had designed into the scheme, it would never have started the war. Hezbollah succeeded because it knew in advance that the world would condemn Israel for pretty much anything it tried to do.

That is why, and how, publicly condemning Israel for a "disproportionate" response amounts to supporting terror. It is part -- a small part but a part -- of the moral equivocation in world opinion that makes terrorism a worthwhile strategy to pursue. This craven immorality on the part of Western leaders and the media is creating the only conditions in which the terrorist strategy makes any sense at all.

You are right to believe that Hague does not feel himself to be a supporter of terror. But he is one. So are most European leaders, most of the European media, and, I fear, most Europeans. They themselves don't realise it yet. By the time they do, it may be too late.

Kind regards,

Hip

[emanuel appel]

a letter from America

Dear Daniel,

Is shooting a nun in the back a good "proportionate" response to the Pope's gaffe?