'Extremism in Defence of Freedom'

Common Sense
John Maxwell

Some of my Jamaican readers want to know why I have recently written so much about events outside of Jamaica instead of paying more attention to what's happening here. The reason is quite simple: the developments I write about are having or will soon have momentous effects inside Jamaica, and we need to be prepared for that.

Shortly after 9/11, I wrote a column titled "Bin Laden's Bees" in which I forecast how I thought al Qaeda terrorism would develop. In that column I compared Al Qaeda to a colony of bees. If the Queen is killed the worker bees simply transfer a few of the late Queen's most recent eggs to Queen cells, where, instead of developing into worker bees, they develop into queens. The first emerging new queen - or the most vigorous - then kills the remaining queens manqué and the hive goes on.

A forensic officer examines a car near to where a suspected terrorist bomb exploded on a bus in Woburn Place and Tavistock Square in London 07 July 2005. Explosions ripped through three underground trains and a bus in London, killing at least 56 people and injuring more than 700 in a wave of 'terrorist attacks' a day after the capital won its bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games and as G8 leaders met in Scotland. (Photo: AP)

In the same way, I said, Al Qaeda could not be defeated by killing Bin Laden. Terrorism would continue as long as there was enough fuel for its anger. It was my thesis that terrorists are driven not so much by ideology as by a sense of grievance, a perception of hopelessness and helplessness in the face of injustice.

So, I am perhaps one of the few who has not been surprised that two Jamaicans are among the Al Qaeda terrorists. One, Richard Reid, tried to blow up himself and a planeload of people shortly after 9/11. The other, Germaine Lindsay, was among the assassins of 7/7 in London.

Last week the British Home secretary, Charles Clarke, announced that Britain was establishing a global list of extremists who would face automatic vetting before being allowed into Britain. Clarke said the database would list "unacceptable behaviour" such as radical preaching, websites and writing articles intended to foment terrorism.

Presence on the list means that people would face exclusion from the UK. Mr Clarke also said he planned a new offence of "indirect incitement to terrorism", to add to the current offence of direct incitement. The new offence "targets those who, while not directly inciting, glorify and condone terrorist acts knowing full well that the effect on their listeners will be to encourage them to turn to terrorism".

This would seem to be a recipe to exclude from Britain anyone the government considered to be opposed to its policies.
If Clare Short, a former member of Mr Blair's Cabinet, were a foreigner, she would no doubt be excluded by Mr Clarke's list.

Last week she said: "Some of the voices that have been coming from the government that talk as though this is all evil, and that everything we do is fine, when in fact we are implicated in the slaughter of large numbers of civilians in Iraq and supporting a Middle East policy that for the Palestinians creates this sense of double standards - that feeds anger."

Mr Clarke's list would also probably include me, since I believe that the British and American policies on terrorism are not only wrong, but totally foolish, hypocritical and unrealistic. In Mr Clarke's view, that probably amounts to condonation of terrorism.

While Mr Clarke's list would probably catch Ms Short and me, it would certainly not have caught any of the 9/11 bombers nor any of those whose bombs spread carnage and terror in London two weeks ago. Indeed, Mr Clarke told the House of Commons that the four London bombers were "cleanskins" - with no convictions or known terrorist involvement.

As I pointed out shortly after 9/11, those terrorists were apparently clean, decent, upstanding young men, some with young families, who had never been in any kind of trouble. They were all or mostly all, middle class types - bourgeois - if you like, whose very conventionality or ordinariness was what allowed them to bypass US airline security with such ease.

In a speech to a Labour Party conference on Saturday, July 16, Prime Minister Blair said "What we are confronting here is an evil ideology. It is not a clash of civilisations. All civilised people, Muslim or other, feel revulsion at it. But it is a global struggle and it is a battle of ideas, hearts and minds, both within Islam and outside it.

"The extremist propaganda is cleverly aimed at their target audience. It plays on our tolerance and good nature; it exploits the tendency to guilt of the developed world; as if it is our behaviour that should change; that if we only tried to work out and act on their grievances, we could lift this evil; that if we changed our behaviour, they would change theirs. This is a misunderstanding of a catastrophic order.

"Their cause is not founded on an injustice. It is founded on a belief, one whose fanaticism is such it can't be moderated. It can't be remedied. It has to be stood up to. And, of course, they will use any issue that is a matter of dissent within our democracy. But we should lay bare the almost-devilish logic behind such manipulation.

"If it is the plight of the Palestinians that drives them, why, every time it looks as if Israel and Palestine are making progress, does the same ideology perpetrate an outrage that turns hope back into despair?"

Mr Blair conflates the doctrines of Al Qaeda with the beliefs of those who may or may not be acting on its behalf. For this he was rebuked by John McDonnell, chairman of the 500-strong Labour Representation Committee, at which Mr Blair spoke. McDonnell said "Please do not try to tell us that the war in Iraq played no part.

This assertion is simply intellectually unsustainable. Now is the time to prevent further violence by renouncing violent solutions ourselves. "For as long as Britain remains in occupation of Iraq, the terrorist recruiters will have the argument they seek to attract more susceptible young recruits to bomb teams. Britain must withdraw now."

The problem is much more complicated than Blair appears to imagine. It seems to me likely that the terrorist cause depends not so much on Al Qaeda as on the perception of injustice on which Al Qaeda feeds.

Like bees, potential assassins do not have to be told how to think. And what is even more terrifying is the paradox that it is from among the most westernised young men that terrorism will draw its recruits. Muslim youth in madrassahs in Pakistan may be imbued with the most insensate hatred of western civilisation, but they are unlikely to be able to do much about it.

The people who are really dangerous are the young, idealistic men who live in societies which preach human rights, justice and civilisation while practicing racism, injustice and contempt for the rights of the powerless.

Tony Blair asks: "If it is the plight of the Palestinians that drives them, why, every time it looks as if Israel and Palestine are making progress, does the same ideology perpetrate an outrage that turns hope back into despair?"

The answer is simple. The world has watched Israel's total defiance of UN resolutions for 60 years. And while Israel was supposedly negotiating in good faith with the Palestinians last week it was also announcing plans to build a wall across Jerusalem.

As the Independent reported on July 12: "Israel's decision to press ahead with a barrier that will separate 55,000 Palestinian residents of Jerusalem from the rest of the city has provoked a storm of criticism, prompting the Palestinian prime minister to state that the fence will make "a farce" of Ariel Sharon's peace talks with the Palestinian Authority.

Prime Minister Ahmad Qureia said the move was "theft in broad daylight" of land Palestinians hope will form part of their future capital."

The European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, arriving for the talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, said: "We think that Israel has the right to defend itself, but we think the fence which will stand outside the territory of Israel is not legally proper and it creates also humanitarian problems." In situations like these, the hypocrisy is blatant, the injustice patent. No one needs Al Qaeda to point that out.

American Justice in Haiti

In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, the most important man is the American ambassador, Mr Thomas Foley. It was he, accompanied by a detachment of US Marines, who arrived before dawn in February last year, to 'assist' the lawfully elected President of the country to leave. The president called it a kidnapping, and it is hard to see how else it could be described.

Now, Mr Foley has done a good deed. He has apparently arranged that the Catholic priest, Fr Gerard Jean Juste, will not be summarily executed by the assassins who now rule Haiti. Fr Jean Juste went to Haiti on a visit last week and was arrested and beaten up by goons working for the government.

Fr Jean Juste has been living in Miami since his release from prison in October last year. He went back to Haiti to visit his flock after the UN mission - MINUSTAH - attacked and slaughtered an uncounted number of poor slum dwellers two weeks ago.

He was then arrested, charged with something that happened in Haiti while he was in Miami, released, then beaten up when he attended a funeral, re-arrested and thrown into prison, this time, allegedly, for the murder of the journalist whose funeral he was attending.

Also arrested was his friend, Professor Bill Quigley, an American professor of law. Action by Haitian activists in the United States has apparently gained the priest some security in his prison cell, but no one, except Ambassador Foley, can say whether he lives or dies within the next few days.

Extremism in Defence of Freedom

Forty years ago I wrote an editorial in Public Opinion, (of which I was then Editor) titled "Lyndon Goldwater." In the 1964 presidential election, Lyndon Johnson had just wiped Senator Barry Goldwater off the political map, ridiculing his statement that "Extremism in defence of Freedom is no vice". And then, as soon as he had been safely inaugurated, Johnson decided to bomb Vietnam, just what Goldwater had argued for.

Anyone for tennis?