Waiting for Disaster

Christopher Hitchens thinks the London attackers may have been homegrown. In an article in Slate, Hitchens argued the attacks were timed to coincide with specifically British public events, the G8 meeting in Edinburgh, the successful Olympic hosting bid and the imminent extradition trial of the hook-handed Mullah Abu Hamza al Mazri. Therefore:

This would mean that the cell or gang was homegrown, rather than smuggled in from North Africa or elsewhere. Or it could mean coordination between the two. In any event, there are two considerations here. The first is Britain's role as a leading member of the "Coalition" in Iraq and Afghanistan. The second is its role as a host to a large and growing Muslim minority. The first British citizens to be killed in Afghanistan were fighting for the Taliban, which is proof in itself that the Iraq war is not the original motivating force. Last year, two British Muslims pulled off a suicide attack at an Israeli beach resort. In many British cities, there are now demands for sexual segregation in schools and for separate sharia courts to try Muslim defendants. The electoral strength of Muslims is great enough to encourage pandering from all three parties: The most egregious pandering of all has come from Blair himself, who has promised legislation that would outlaw any speech that could be construed as offensive to Islam. Since most British Muslims are of Asian descent, a faint sense exists that criticism of their religion is somehow racist: In practice this weak-mindedness leads to the extension of an antiquated law on blasphemy that ought long ago to have been repealed but is now to cover the wounded feelings of Muslims as well as Christians.

But if Hitchens is correct, and he may well be, then really effective countermeasures cannot be limited to a roundup of the usual suspects or the destruction of a few hundred or thousand Jihadis in the Pakistani northwest frontier. It must necessarily reverse the dynamic Hitchens is describing: the creeping growth of the radical Islamic political infrastructure under the mantle of political correctness. It means closing mosques, deporting people, outlawing the spread of certain conspiratorial associations. In a word, it means stepping on every sacred shibboleth the Left has worshipped these last half century. It's doubtful whether the loss of less than fifty people in Britain will be enough to effect such a sea-change unless the Brits are made of even sterner stuff than they credited with having. Winston Churchill knew the dynamic of appeasement well.

If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

This doesn't mean that internments or anything of the sort should be started. But it does make the case for dismantling the radical Islamic infrastructure as early as possible because that is far less painful than having to dismantle it late.