Canary WharfThe other day Roy at Alicublog had a post up examining certain of the yappings about Terror and The Mohommadan Menace emanating from the cesspit known as The Corner. Roy specifically pointed to an exchange between Michael Ledeen and Mark Steyn where the pair compete with each other to heap scorn upon new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for his foolish remarks to the effect that “Islam” and “terrorist” are not in fact synonyms. Both agree with fellow lunatic Victor David Hanson that this is a Bad Idea because it reeks of

the leisure of political-correctness that results in demonization of those who use wire-taps, detention facilities—and war—to stop jihadism.

And if that bit of demented gibberish isn’t enough for you, Hanson has more (these guys never run out):

So we know the script to come, but, like Oedipus, can’t stop it: more uncovered plots, an occasional terrorist near miss, and then finally a big bomb that kills hundreds.

And at that point, it gets Orwellian — what will a UK do if the perpetrators were suspected of residence at one time in Pakistan, Iran, or Syria? Or had financing and sanctuary provided by an Arab state? Surely not send in the gunboats or rely on the mayor of London for a stiff upper-lip.

What’s funny about this (apart from the ramming together of Oedipus and Orwell, which I don’t have the space or the stomach to discuss right now) is that there is in fact precedent for an Evil Arab state financing terrorism in the UK. That state was Libya, which in the 1970s and 1980s supplied the Provisional IRA with rifles and plastic explosives. (It was the Semtex that was most significant). The arms shipments stopped after the capture of the Eksund in 1987 — the ship that was carrying about a third of the total PIRA order. The events leading up to the interception of this shipment were complex, but they involved, basically, good intelligence and police work: not, you will note, “war.” “Wire-taps and detention facilities” may have been involved; and who would complain about their usage, if that usage is in accordance with a due respect for civil liberties? (Something the British did not always carefully observe, to say the least — and always to their great cost and embarrassment.)

Indeed, the lessons of Northern Ireland and the complex, tortuous peace process over the past several decades would seem to militate against precisely the kind of approach to the problem of terrorism advocated by the Corner-boys — which may be why they are so resistant to learning these lessons. Look at this bit of madness from Steyn:

Thanks to the IRA, the British have the best counter-terrorism police in the western world. However, for that very reason, they’re looking at it through an obsolete template. MI5, the Special Branch and all the rest think it’s the 1970s all over again – that the bad stuff can be held down to what Her Majesty’s Government used to call, somewhat cynically, “an acceptable level of violence” – ie, every so often a few people will be blown to pieces in railway stations and shopping centers, and it’s awfully bad luck if you happen to be one of them, old chap, but for everyone else the problem will be small and containable.

The difference is the shifting facts on the ground – the demographic weakness that leads to elderly Englishmen receiving geriatric care from Iraqi doctors straight out of Baghdad Medical School. The IRA’s campaign took place among a largely static population. One could make generally safe extrapolations about the likelihood of holding things down to an “acceptable level”. But in the same three decades as Northern Ireland’s “Troubles”, hitherto moderate Muslim populations in south Asia and elsewhere were radicalized by the Wahhabist export drive; and Islam became the principal source of population growth in every major English city.

Why the British would think it is the “1970s all over again” by treating the Muslim Menace now like it did the IRA threat back then is rather a mystery. What the British actually did in the 1970s as opposed to what they did in Steyn’s imagination is rather different. That would be internment (the Malkin Solution, heh):

The final straw, which escalated the violence to an insurgency, was the 1971 introduction of Internment without trial by the government of Northern Ireland. Using legislation from the Special Powers Act, Stormont introduced interment in August of 1971, with 342 men picked up in the first dawn raids. Since the British Army was instructed to carry out the Internment raids, they then became the focus of Catholic anger and demonstrations. The most famous of these anti-Internment demonstrations resulted in the Bloody Sunday killings in Derry in January 1972, when British solders fired into the Catholic crowd, killing thirteen people (Rowthorn and Wayne 1988, 42). By March of that year, the British government had dissolved Stormont (to rule directly from Westminster), Internment was in full swing with the implementation of the ‘Diplock Courts’, and the IRA had reconstituted itself fully by providing defence from police and Protestant paramilitaries to Catholic areas. The Troubles, which have lasted thirty years to date – resulting in thousands of deaths and millions of Pounds of damage – moved on that fateful morning from small-scale clashes to a full-blown sectarian conflict.

The historical evidence is quite clear that while it may be satisfying to Get Tough from the Perch of Punditry, draconian approaches simply have not worked in the past and will not work in the future. This is particularly the case when the authorities have poor intelligence about the communities on the receiving end of the harsh measures, as was the case with the British in NI in 1971: indeed, the IRA leaders of the time welcomed and in fact tried their best to promote internment, as they knew well that nothing would so quickly or effectively politically radicalize Northern Irish Catholics behind the nationalist cause.

One is left with the conclusion that either those gleefully advocating repressive measures are deeply misinformed, or they just like spouting off in a warlike fashion. Either way, what they advocate just does not work.

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