ON SUNDAY morning, not long after the latest terrorist attack, PM May, in her statement following the Cobra Security Committee meeting, expressed her indignation that her government and all of its security apparatuses had not been able to stop three deadly terrorist attacks on the UK in the last three months. She said that terrorism was now inspiring more terrorism and that the source of this was a trend in Islam.
‘In terms of their planning and execution, the recent attacks are not connected. But we believe we are experiencing a new trend in the threat we face, as terrorism breeds terrorism, and perpetrators are inspired to attack not only on the basis of carefully-constructed plots after years of planning and training – and not even as lone attackers radicalised online – but by copying one another and often using the crudest of means of attack.’ So don’t blame MI5!
She added that extreme measures were necessary to deal with this inspirational terrorism saying: ‘We cannot and must not pretend that things can continue as they are. Things need to change, and they need to change in four important ways.’
She continued that since the outbreak of unconnected terrorist attacks: ‘Are bound together by the single, evil ideology of Islamist extremism that preaches hatred, sows division, and promotes sectarianism,’ that defeating this ideology ‘is one of the great challenges of our time’.
She added that more than bombing the Middle East or maintaining a permanent counter terrorism operation is required: ‘It cannot be defeated through military intervention alone. It will not be defeated through the maintenance of a permanent, defensive counter-terrorism operation, however skilful its leaders and practitioners. It will only be defeated when we turn people’s minds away from this violence – and make them understand that our values – pluralistic, British values – are superior to anything offered by the preachers and supporters of hate.’
So what’s required is mass brainwashing, and where this does not work permanent imprisonment i.e. internment no doubt!
May considers ‘we need to become far more robust in identifying it and stamping it out – across the public sector and across society. That will require some difficult and often embarrassing conversations, but the whole of our country needs to come together to take on this extremism – and we need to live our lives not in a series of separated, segregated communities but as one truly United Kingdom.’
This means ‘we need to review Britain’s counter-terrorism strategy to make sure the police and security services have all the powers they need. . . And if we need to increase the length of custodial sentences for terrorism-related offences, even apparently less serious offences, that is what we will do’.
However, putting on the handcuffs all round will not defeat terrorism. It in fact will encourage more domestic terrorism. It is ridiculous to believe that the growth of terrorist attacks is a mental, ideological problem and nothing at all to do with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the 2011 invasion of Libya and the murder of Colonel Gadaffi, then the shipping of thousands of Libyan Islamists to Syria to remove the sworn enemy of ISIS, President Assad, and now the carpet bombing of Mosul and Raqqa by US and UK airforces with massive civilian casualties!
In fact the UK is sponsoring the massive armament of Saudi Arabia and Qatar who are notorious for being the main financiers of Islamic terrorism, of ISIS and other movements such as the Nusra Front.
To assert that the source of Islamic terrorism is a false understanding of Islam and not the slaughter of millions of Muslims by the imperialist powers is nonsense. Only last month, Foreign Secretary Johnson said that if the US requested that the UK join it in attacking the Syrian enemy of ISIS, President Assad, then the UK would do so without even any discussion in parliament.
If May was serious about smashing ISIS she would propose an immediate military alliance with Assad, Russia and Iran to do precisely that and in record time. But the UK ruling class has other plans. They are arming Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States for a war with Iran!
The only way forward for the working class at home is to throw out the May government on June 8th, and for a Labour government to immediately recognise the State of Palestine and to meet with the Syrian, Russian and Iranian governments to discuss joint action to smash ISIS and the Nusra Front once and for all.
