Blair's two faces of terrorism

[Briar]

Blair's two faces of terrorism

Spot the difference: the Prime Minister declares war on al-Qaeda while making peace with IRA murderers

Geoffrey Wheatcroft

Ever since he became Prime Minister and began cutting a deal with the IRA, but still more since the 11 September attacks nearly four years ago, Tony Blair has tried to answer a conundrum: how can terrorism be utterly and unforgivably wrong in one case, but tolerable and negotiable in another? Why is murderous Islamic militancy so different from murderous Irish republicanism?

...
Leave aside the question of just how much of a landmark last week really was. The IRA's 'ceasefire' in August 1994 was followed for years by more murder, mutilation and gangsterism. If there was a real landmark it was surely in September 2001. After the IRA had enjoyed widespread American support for that long campaign of killing, the Americans finally learnt for themselves what terrorism meant, and the game was up: the IRA could never again return to full-scale violence.
...

He said by way of extenuating the IRA that he could not imagine them killing 3,000 people. That is not merely a dubious argument: as so often with Blair, it is based on premises which are simply false. If the IRA did not kill many more innocents it was not for want of trying. Long before Osama bin Laden had set up shop, the IRA were blowing up pubs and hotels and then moved to office blocks and what they called big-city 'spectaculars'. Their bombs in the City of London caused hundreds of millions of pounds' worth of damage, and might easily have taken thousands of lives.
...


Beyond all that is something more disturbing still. If there is no moral distinction between Adams and al-Zarqawi, and Adams's objectives are certainly no more honourable or rational than al-Zarqawi's, there is one objective difference: Adams is white. No doubt Tony Blair doesn't consciously think in terms of 'darkies' or Mahometan savages, but the grim and very dangerous truth is that the terrorists he will never negotiate with or give an inch to are Asian by birth or descent and Muslim by religion, whereas the terrorists he propitiates are Catholic, Aryan, white Europeans...

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1539675,00.html

[fedsron2us]

1. Blair will not give 'one inch' to terrorists

unless he is told to do so by his US masters. I think that if Tony Blair, Martin McGuinness, Radovan Karadzic and al-Zarqawi were stranded together on a desert island they would find that they had plenty in common. All of them have lots of innocent blood on their hands.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. 'Celebrity Lord of the Flies'?

It might be the most popular reality TV programme in history, if we could find a way of stopping all of them coming back.

[Briar]

3. kick

Too good an article to let it sink...