sirenianshores

A commentator writing in Der Spiegal this week berates his fellow Europeans for their apparent surrender to Islamic extremists.

“Hurray! We’re Capitulating!”
By Henryk M. Broder

The prevailing feeling among Muslims is that they are being abused by the West. What should we do about it? We might as well surrender. After all, we’re already on our way.

Key excerpt:

As different as the West’s reactions to the Muslim protests were, what they had in common were origins in feelings of powerlessness and helplessness. Critical souls who only yesterday agreed with Marx that religion is the opium of the masses suddenly insisted that religious sensibilities must be taken into account, especially when accompanied by violence. The representatives of open societies reacted like the inhabitants of an island about to be hit by a hurricane. Powerless against the forces of nature, they stocked up on supplies, nailed doors and windows shut and hoped that the storm would soon pass. Of course, whereas such a reaction may be an appropriate response to natural disasters, such a lack of resistance merely encourages fundamentalists. It completely justifies their view of the West as weak, decadent and completely unwilling to defend itself.

I think the general premise of the article is ridiculous. Comparing the current situation to 1930s Germany is hysterical and does not help the debate and any constructive way. Unlike Nazi Germany, the Islamist extremists have virtually zero military power, no industrial capability to sustain a large-scale war and only a small tiny fraction of the same manpower. As much as certain commentators try to make out otherwise, Europe’s Muslim population is only about 20 million - a very small minority compared with the rest of the native Europeans and more moderate immigrants from other countries. Even less if you narrow it down to just the extremists and exclude the Moslems who only want a peaceful existence. In reality, all they are capable of is small-scale terrorism, which Europe countries have been dealing with, mostly successfully, for decades. The examples of which would be: IRA, ETA, Red Brigades, Red Army faction etc.

Of course the left side of the political spectrum is often guilty of hysterical political correctness in which it is taboo to discuss issues of race and immigration, which doesn’t help the debate either.

It is also a misconception to say that Europeans are asleep to the danger of religious extremism. Perhaps that may have been the case previously, but the Danish cartoons incident and the controversy over Pope Benedict’s remarks were major setbacks for the Islamic extremists. Their efforts to whip the Moslem world into a fury backfired on them badly. Their “Day of Anger” was a PR blunder which awakened European minds. The net result is as far as European attitudes are concerned, is that patience for religious extremism on the part of Muslims has taken a nosedive. The more vocal the extremists become, the more Europeans will oppose it.

It is true to say that many European politicians have not faced up to this reality. The perception of politicians like Tony Blair is that while he talks a big talk about a war for our survival, he is appeasing the more radical Muslims back home, and he is also sending too small amounts of under equipped troops into the war in Afghanistan which is being fought in a half-hearted manner. This is even worse considering the fact that, unlike Iraq, the war in Afghanistan had majority support among Europeans.

Fortunately attitudes are changing among the politicians - although somewhat slowly. Taking Britain as an example, members of Blair’s own party are openly challenging the more extreme aspects of Islam - such as Jack Straw’s remarks that Muslim women should politely be requested to remove their veil while visiting his constituency office. Furthermore, there are now more calls for a greater emphasis to be placed on teaching school kids about native British culture and history instead of the foreign multicultural version. The Dutch are now trying to openly discourage extremists from immigrating to their country by showing them videos on arrival of scantily clad women, gays kissing etc - the implication being that if they have a problem with that kind of social freedom and openness, then they shouldn’t be immigrating to a country which values those freedoms. Finally, if the mainstream centrist parties failed to do the job, the more right wing parties, like the BNP, will step in to fill the vacuum and happily do it for them. While no sane person wants that to happen, it does provide an incentive for the mainstream parties to face up to reality.

As important as it is to face up to religious extremism, what Europeans should not do is emulate the worst aspects of the Bush administration’s incompetent handling of the war on terror, with its botched invasion of Iraq and half-hearted effort in Afghanistan. The article stresses the importance of dealing with the looming threat of a nuclear Iran. The sad reality is the international community is limited in what they can do about the Iranians. The options of sanctions and diplomacy will likely have a limited, but not decisive effect. Invasion is out of the question - it would have even less chance of succeeding than the Iraq war did, even if enough troops were available. Probably the only realistic option left is precision air and ground strikes by special forces directed by what will hopefully be good intelligence - although I have my doubts about whether or not the intelligence will be good enough.

Another strategy would be to support opposition groups within Iran. There is plenty of resentment among the Iranian population towards the ruling regime for this to have a chance of success. I suspect the Bush administration will oppose this, unless they can find an opposition group they can control directly in order to further their own strategic interests. If they cannot find a sufficiently pliable group, they will oppose the entire strategy in favour of using force to influence the situation. If the Bush administration attacks Iran, the track record suggests they will inevitably end up botching the job. I think the better option may be to let the Israelis handle attacking Iran. They are probably the only ones with half decent intelligence on what is happening inside Iran.