Laughing at the present/Thinking about the future

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mind over chatter

Previous gaffes cannot justify appeasement

 

My father-in-law (who as far as I know isn't a terrorist) sets off airport security alarms wherever he goes. He has two chunks of German-engineered metal where his hips used to be, and because of this the poor bloke has to carry a certificate when he travels. He finds it amusing, but naturally the men from security don't. At least in Britain the security staff are friendly: in Europe, Africa and the States they are appalling, snarling uniform-freaks who never say please or thank you - except in Austria, of course. It's hard to snarl in sing-song German.

I have three objections to the ridiculous level of security we now enjoy (funny word, that) in UK airports. First and foremost, it's trite: did you pack your own bags? Have you got any bombs in your suitcases? The whole ritual has become a rote of checking boarding cards and asking questions to which the answer - unless you are completely mad - is always going to be 'no'. I sincerely doubt if it deters a single virgin-seeker.

Second, it's giving the unbalanced folks precisely what they want - evidence that they have the power to inconvenience us, to make us suspicious of people around us, and to frighten everyone. My last two air trips involved queues, wasted water bottles, tying and untying shoelaces, putting on and taking off belts, jackets and watches, and persistent requests to see my boarding card. On December 23rd in Manchester Airport, the Terminal One queue for airside snaked all the way back to Terminal Two -and then twice round that terminal.

Lastly - and this is the contentious bit in our bonkers society - it is a blanket system in which everyone is treated to an equal level of suspicion. Why? To date, there is not a single instance of a caucasion convert to Islam of any age being involved in any act of terrorism. The British Muslim Council already complains that its community is being targeted. 'Nowhere near enough' might be the considered response to this double-think: as in West Indian society thirty years ago, the chief problem lies with the cultural opinion leaders - not those in charge of keeping citizens safe. Yes, many police are racist; and yes, giving Johnny Infidel a bloody nose is found highly enjoyable by Islamics everywhere. Targeting suspicion in that scenario isn't racism - it's common sense.

There are a couple of observations I'd make about this charade. Above all, I think the disturbingly large minority of Middle Eastern and Pakistani Muslims who find the former playboy and all-round psychopath Osama Bin Laden heroic need to, shall we say, enjoy some of the benefits Ozzie has brought to us all. It's not a question of how to start this process so much as where to end it: for example, tens of thousands of Islamics visit friends and relatives here each year - maybe that should be stopped for a while. Maybe those going the other way should be aware of the fact that they will be treated with the same respect, but a much higher level of intrusion, and considerably more need to prove why they're travelling. For reasons of both security and practicality, we ought to have stopped all immigration four years ago - so maybe we should make a start with a ban on all Islamic immigration - without exception.

Spiteful? Well, not really: the community that travelled alongside the bombers for years needs a reality check on whether the West really is going to lie down forever in the face of clearly idiotic religious aims. Harsh? Of course it is. Dangerous to our liberty? Definitely - but far less so than everyone being watched by cameras 24/7 (which is where we're heading) or allowing a totally intolerant and anti-democratic form of fundamentalism to take the mickey without fear of reprisals - and thus be idolised as the scion of decadent Western culture. Nobody is more opposed than I to the idea of futher eroding civil liberties; but when things get this silly, the majority of people who do want democracy and responsible freedom are infinitely more important than a minority misogynist rabble who quite clearly don't.

As I have written many times before, these people are our generation's Nazis. They should be treated accordingly.

The second view might lose me even more readers. When George W Bush and his coterie of 'intelligence' gatherers cooked up 'dossier' of reasons to invade Iraq, like many Brits I was torn. On the one hand, Americans do not on the whole understand the Middle East, Arabs, Islamic sectarianism, or just how much most people in the world loathe them - Muslim or not. On the other, the WOMD argument terrified me (as it would anyone with kids or other loved ones) and then (as now) I felt the Ba'athist regime had been a safe haven for various shades of barmpot. I also knew Hussein to be an evil, murderous tyrant. On balance, then, I was in favour of the police action.

Quite quickly of course, sanity resurfaced: there were no nasty weapons, the 'intelligence report' about it was a fake, a civil servant was told to shut up and then wound up dead....and the initial 'shock and awe' nonsense frankly made most people feel sick. Within weeks it emerged that the main target should have been Iran - and to be serious for a minute, it might have looked better still if the first task had been the elimination of Mugabe the Mass People-Bulldozer. Within months it was clear that the Americans were making a cod's bottom of endearing themsleves to the Iraqi people, while the extremists were arming anyone and everyone against the idea, and bombing everyone in Baghdad who was for it.

After the Tube bombings - once the initial jingoistic London Can Take It drivel had evaporated - most people woke up to a final reality: the entire invasion had been a recruiting sergeant for young radical Muslim thickies all over the world, and our reward for helping a mendacious American administration was a huge increase in UK security - plus lots of ludicrous hype about Al Q'eida's tightly-knit global long-reaching all-powerful arm of evil.

The net result here in 2008 is that whatever we do now about the extremist Islam problem, it will be wrong. For the folks who worship at the Mosque, we are the baddies - end of story. Just as the First World War's victors were cast as the bad guys by Hitler over the Treaty of Versailles, so we are now taunted by the likes of Ahmadinnejad - because he suspects that we are in an impossible situation. And he's right.

My contention is simple: if we're bound to be wrong, we have nothing to lose. Bush and Blair may have cried wolf over Iraq, but appeasement will never achieve anything. It is this decade's convenient solution waiting to turn into the next decade's intractable problem.

In the States, pollsters are already establishing with some clarity that beyond getting the boys back home, voters couldn't care a damn about the Middle East in general or Islamic extremism in particular. Once the recession begins to bite ever more painfully during the year, this isolationism must surely gather speed - as so often in the past, the US is about to abandon a military adventure, and leave everyone else to clear up the mess. Either Obama or Clinton will be in the White House come 2009, and they both want out as quickly as possible.

We are no less guilty as a nation for this sorry episode, but saying sorry in the face of a reality perverted by madmen is not the answer. Iran is a serious threat, and Afghanistan is a line which must be held. We must do everything to ensure Turkey remains democratic and secular. Having bungled the first battle of this war through the distractions of Mammon and political ego, to withdraw from all interest and involvement now would be a catastrophic mortgaging of everyone's future.