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The Times - A new year’s resolution for the chattering classes, by Dean Godson (research director of the Policy Exchange think-tank)
We shouldn’t fall for pessimistic propaganda on Iraq

That conventional wisdom holds that Tony Blair and George Bush made the world a much more dangerous place by invading Iraq. That we’re losing badly in Iraq, if we haven’t already lost. That Mr Blair is “riding pillion” to President Bush — and that if he didn’t do so, we would probably all be much safer.

In that sense, the Archbishop of Canterbury rounded 2006 off perfectly, declaring in this newspaper that Anglo-American “firepower” in Iraq had triggered an explosion of extremism that made life far harder for Christians across the Middle East. His line is reminiscent of the old Yiddish joke about two Jews in front of a firing squad in Tsarist Russia. One suggests: “Let’s make a run for it.” Replies the other: “Shhh, don’t make trouble.”

Hehehe

Never mind the ideological, political and physical assault on Christians all across the Middle East and Asia since the 1970s — fuelled by the rise of Wahhabist ideology. Never mind that Christian communities there have been in decline for at least a century. Rather like the Islamists, Dr Williams prefers to lay the blame for the deplorable condition of the Middle East’s Christians at the door of Great Satan and Little Satan. Short of blaming the Jews for the tsunami — as some Muslim radicals did in 2004 — the Archbishop did a wonderful job of letting the real sources of evil off the hook.

But Dr Williams isn’t alone. Earlier this month [Chatham House] produced a report, received with hushed reverence by the Today programme and others, asserting that Iraq was a “terrible mistake”. But what exactly was “news” about Chatham House denouncing Anglo-American “unilateralism”? Chatham House was never much in favour of robust action against totalitarianism, even during the Nazi and Soviet eras. Indeed, rather the reverse. As Elie Kedourie showed in his classic work The Chatham House Version, this “respected” instititution has long exemplified the moral defeatism of the English “radicals”. Its leading light, Arnold Toynbee, encouraged a premature retreat from imperial responsibility out of a misplaced sense of guilt, thus abandoning the Middle East to a “wilderness of tigers”. Plus ça change.

Indeed.

Chatham House has other recent “form”. Last year, it produced a report blaming Iraq for giving al-Qaeda a boost. No doubt Iraq has boosted al-Qaeda recruitment. But Iraq is a very long way from being the only source of radicalisation. One of the most interesting stories of the year that received scant attention in the British press was last week’s remarks by Jean-Louis Bruguière, the chief French investigating magistrate for terrorism. He revealed that France had averted three significant Islamist plots over the past 18 months, including attacks on the Paris Métro and Orly. Algerian Islamists were teaming up with veterans of Iraq. So would opting out of Iraq, as President Chirac did so dramatically in 2003, really have reduced our vulnerability?

One of the things that Lord Monckton said in that excellent letter telling off Olympia Snowe and Johnny Rockefeller, which I still have open:

But when the US administration sought to appoint Paul Reiter, a world expert on the mosquito, to the UN’s climate change panel, the panel vetoed his appointment because they knew he disagreed with the alarmist view that they were determined to purvey. It is easy to claim a “consensus” if scientists who disagree are excluded.

It’s easy to have a conventional wisdom if any of the news that disagrees with it is excluded. Back to Mr Godson:

Elements of the Muslim population are in so febrile a state that almost anything can send them into a tailspin. This year a minority of British Muslims has been offended by many things — from cartoons in obscure Danish newspapers to McDonald’s logos.

[Colin Cramphorn, the late Chief Constable of West Yorkshire] told me with dismay that an appreciable number of radicalised young Muslim men in Leeds believed that the London bombings were invented by the Jewish-dominated media. Why? Because they did not see any bodies being pulled up from the Underground!

Amazing how the workings of these minds go so well with the workings of the minds which find themselves in the MSM or on UN panels about global warming, eh?

…Singapore’s elder statesman, Lee Kuan Yew, sheds fascinating light on another question dominating discussion in the last year — are we losing in Iraq? Lee recalls that, not long after the Vietnam conflict ended, he argued that America may have lost in Indochina but that those 58,000 American lives were not sacrificed in vain. They bought time for the rest of East Asia to attain economic prosperity and stability — and the communists exhausted themselves in the struggle. Judged by the snapshot of 1975, America lost the battle. But in the longer term, it won the war for the wider region.

(Unless you’re a Vietnamese or Cambodian)

Many years hence, will Iraq come to be viewed in the same light? From 2005, the jihadi world was riven by a dispute between al-Qaeda’s Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his mentor, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. Al-Maqdisi stated that al-Zarqawi’s priorities were askew. Iraq was the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time. It was rapidly becoming a “crematory” for the flower of Islamist youth. No energies were left for wider Islamist revolution elsewhere in the region.

Although al-Zarqawi was killed, he has for now won the debate. Again, this fascinating controversy received too little attention in the British media — perhaps because it didn’t fit into the easy narrative of Anglo-American humiliation in Iraq.

Sigh

See, I link to this, and I quote it extensively, and a lot of you will read it, and I know that it’s been published in The Times, and a lot more other people will read it, but it won’t make any difference because those people are never going to change, there’s nothing we can do about it, and they’ve won, so it’s all pointless. But at least we can gather here and bitch and moan about it as it happens in front of our eyes.

Bah. Happy freaking New Year.