All the "why us? and "what do these people want?" talk is beside the point. There will always be some deviant group seeking to get their way. Furthermore, as long as fame is our key currency, there will be a ready supply of hopeless young man to do their bidding.
They might not all come from the Middle East and their targets may not be the same ones but they'll be there. The damage they will cause and the pain they inflict will get steadily worse. There have always been homicidal maniacs. Now we have suicidal maniacs, which is worse.
The availability of cheap communications technology means the terrorist will always be just slightly ahead of the authorities. That's another thing you can depend on. As Stanley Baldwin said long before the last war, "the bomber will always get through".
In the light of this our talk of destroying the threat is as empty as their carefully blood-curdling rhetoric. The best we can hope is that this is contained rather than extinguished.
The price of that containment will be some curtailing of the things to which we have only recently grown accustomed. Easy movement across borders is one. Unlicensed communications platforms is another.
''..will be some curtailing of..Easy movement across borders is one.'
ReplyDeleteFirstly David well done for sticking your head above the parapet and revealing the piece of work that is David'right-wing nutter' Hepworth:)
Was travelling across Europe really such a drag pre-Shengen? I don't recall it being so. However you have reckoned without the quasi-religious zeal in which the 'pillars' of the EU are held by EU fanatics.
Yesterday morning on 'Today' I listened to MEP Guy Verhofstadt - Former P.M. of Belgium - and hardcore apostle of the creation of federal EU institutions to usurp national institutions. He was asked about his view on those who wish to re-instate nation border controls. The gist of what he said is as follows:
''The terrorists traveled from France to Germany and to Holland...'' He concluded with the observation that 'terrorism has no borders'. He seemed to be blithely unaware that he had just described a EUROPE that HAS NO BORDERS.
His answer to everything is more EU, naturally, and an EU Border Force costing goodness knows how much.
Now Security can join Economic and Political sovereignty as a sacrificial trinity on the alter of an unbending ideology. So don't bank on the curtailing of much.
How will us bombing help when the US have already been doing it for 18 months? About the only thing I agree with him on but I'm with Jeremy Corbin on this. Need to think through the wider impacts before we take any direct action.
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