Yet More Sydney Morning Stupidity

This Richard Ackland piece in the Sydney Morning Herald has to bee seen to be believed. Ackland boldly asserts that the fact that Islamists recently bombed London is proof that the civilised world is losing the War on Terror. I suppose that is an arguable proposition.

Ackland then says:

Now all the billions of dollars, the airport security, the round-the-clock watch on infrastructure, the new-fangled anti-terrorist laws, the entire apparatus seems incredibly misdirected in the face of a home-grown terrorist who is knocking up bombs in the bathtub in Leeds, who crosses no borders, who does not need a visa and whose training kit is on the internet.

[...]

It is hardly a novel thought, but the metropolis is a ready-made theatre of operation for terrorists. If it's not a mass-transit system at peak hour that can be bombed, it is a convention centre, a shopping mall, a busy theatre - whatever. It can be done at the choosing of the attacker. Circumvention, if it occurs, invariably is fortuitous.

That is a fair point; Ackland recognises that there is an internal threat from terrorists that needs to be countered. Such is his affliction with Bush Derangement Syndrome, however, that he then goes on to spout this drivel:

What has been fascinating, though, is the way Blair has responded to this attack. Unlike Bush, Blair has not immediately looked to invade someone. Instead, he has talked about the need to address the hatred that is being taught to, and absorbed by, some Muslim youths.

Her Majesty's government can hardly "invade" Leeds. Last time I checked, the British government is supposed to be in control on the ground there.

In terms of the prescription for dealing with the hatred being taught to some Muslim youths, the British government ought to consider this. In the rush to be "understanding" of fanatical Islam, and "sensitive" to Islamists' "concerns", it is worth asking whether multiculturalist pandering has encouraged law enforcement to turn a blind eye to the preaching of fascism in the name of religion. The numerous so-called "ethnic sensitivity" courses and the like undertaken by law enforcement in the UK and the US might be part of the problem as opposed to part of the solution.

In the wake of the bombings, many on the left rushed to blame the Blair government, and had the naked chutzpah to say that the invasion of Iraq, or the plight of the PLO Arabs was somehow a cause of terrorism in London. Not so. If any blame can be laid at the feet of the British government, it is for excessive pusillanimity in dealing with fanaticism and religously inspired savagery. The British government, when dealing with its domestic Mohammedan community, is unwilling to call a religious fascist a religious fascist. To paraphrase (in a slightly different context) former Tory Prime Minister, John Major, it is time that the government learned to condemn a little more and understand a little less. There is certainly no need to shed tears over "disrespect" for the Koran. It's a book, for heaven's sake.

If the solution to your supposed problems is savagery and the slaughter of the innocent, I don't care what your alleged grievance is. Give up murder and the bomb, and then, perhaps we can talk; until then, in the words of Arik Sharon during the Six Day War, "Let everything tremble!".

Many US commentators have been so taken by Blair's Churchillian performance abroad that they have failed to notice that his domestic policy reeks of Chamberlainesque appeasement. Indeed, the UK government is willing to inconvenience the citizenry with surveillance cameras everywhere, and proposals for ID cards, and other next-to-useless counter-measures without daring to go to the source of the problem, for fear of offending an important ethnic constituency.

Ackland does in fact make a case for intensive surveillance of Mosques; control of Islamic education, censorship of Islamic literature and a general law-and-order crackdown on Islamic associations and communities in the United Kingdom; for that is where the hatred is being fermented - it is not the Jews or the Anglicans or the Presbyterians who are blowing themselves up to get in good with the Almighty. If they saves lives, moderate Moslems should support such measures.

Funnily enough, I don't think that is what Ackland was trying to say.