duchess of malfi wrote:While I do not share any of those beliefs I do think that they have the right to have them. Just as much as I have the right the right to believe in the equal right of all humans, that people should study math & science, and that people should have the right to beleve or not believe in the religion of their choice.
They may have a right to
have these beliefs. That does not give them the right to
act on them. Particularly when these are some of the actions that those beliefs entail:
- Killing thousands of unarmed and innocent civilians in random terror attacks.
- Murdering hundreds of thousands of their own people in 'ethnic cleansing' operations, and burying the dead in unmarked mass graves.
- Forbidding women to receive any education whatever, to own property, to choose their own husbands, to receive wages for their work, to walk in the streets on their own, or to take any active part in society.
- Ritually mutilating the genitals of millions of female children.
I'm sorry, but there is
no equivalency between the actions of al-Qaeda and its ideological friends and those of the U.S. and its allies. In the entire history of warfare, no army has ever fought with such extreme care to avoid civilian casualties as the allied forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. And no army has ever fought with such murderous intent as the radical Islamist factions in this war, who not only target civilians specifically, but make terror the principal object of their strategy.
Was it a mistake for the West to arm the Taliban and al-Qaeda during the Cold War? I don't think so. At the time, they were fighting against a Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan, which was intended as the first step in the subjugation of the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. The Soviets had never moved south before, and had no reason to do so in 1980, except conquest. They, too, had to be stopped. The radical Islamists do many evil things, but the Gulag Archipelago was worse, and it was backed by a nation that could legitimately claim to be the strongest military power on earth.
As unsavoury as the mujahedeen were in tactics and ideology, they were the only force on the ground capable of opposing the Soviet invasion. One has to choose one's allies from the sort of people actually participating in the war, and King Arthur was not an option. From 1941 to 1945, the Western powers sided with Stalin against the Nazis, because Stalin was the lesser of two evils. From 1945 to 1989, they sided with various dictators and fanatics against the Soviets, for the same reason. Now the Nazis and the Soviets are both gone, and it is time to deal with those dictators and fanatics who have proved that they will not leave us in peace. This is ugly, ghastly, obscene, and necessary; it is the ABC of history. As George Orwell said long ago: 'Men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard them.'
My heart goes out to the people of London at this time. It does not go out to mean-spirited people like Mr. Galloway, who proclaims that the leaders of the great Western democracies are the real criminals, and insinuates that the victims in London deserved what they got because they voted for Tony Blair.
Without the Quest, our lives will be wasted.
