A Week Has Gone By
My thoughts, of course, are with those who were caught up in the bombings a week ago in London. It’s not helpful necessarily to blame the terrorism entirely on our country’s involvement as Bush’s poodle in the Iraq war. Plenty of us were against it, and maybe time will tell, but a line can’t reliably be drawn between that and the motivations of the perpetrators - at least for now.
In more general terms, though, I have to say I reckon we’re not doing ourselves any favours by acting like we’re the world’s policemen. What tactical advantage are we gaining by our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan when it’s sadly all too possible that the threat is at home? The WMD argument is dead in the water. Human Rights as justification is fine, except don’t imagine we’ll follow that to its logical conclusion: next stop Saudi Arabia! No? Zimbabwe? Egypt? Burma? Turkey? Certain bits of Cuba?
There is no question that any nation has not only a right but a duty to defend itself against any bona fide threat. I only quarrel over the manner of that defence. The total budget for a full-scale military involvement is toe-curling and I’ve often wondered what the CIA and MI6 would be able to do with even a tenth of that money. If we assume (probably perfectly safely) that the hard core of fanatics who actually carry out the atrocities are beyond our reach in both ideological or practical terms, we still have any number of ways to get close to them by exploiting the peripheries: their supporters, both active and passive. Whilst the suicide bombers are hell-bent on their vicious task, perhaps those that provide the safe-houses, the fake documents and the information can be broken or bribed. I have no qualms about my taxes being used to grease a palm if it means stopping the kind of horrors we’ve seen recently. Full-scale military action is far more, in this case, to do with being seen to be doing something about the threat than really tackling it. It’s tactical planning by tabloid. I can’t think of anything more frightening.