NYP: APPEASING TERROR WON'T WORK, by Amir Taheri
New York Post  | July 20, 2005 | AMIR TAHERI
 

Chatham House, the London foreign-affairs think tank, has given its seal of respectability to the claim that Britain's participation in the liberation of Iraq allowed al Qaeda to transform a bunch of ordinary Muslim youths into the suicide-killers of July 7.

...[I]t is not clear how anyone could know that the suicide-killers were solely motivated by Britain's role in Iraq. The two claims of responsibility for the operation cite a variety of reasons, making it clear that the attack on Britain was part of a broader campaign against the "infidel" West.

And how could Islamist suicide-bombers be concerned only about Britain's participation in the war in Iraq — and not about its similar role in Afghanistan?

If the suicide-killers were al Qaeda Islamists, then they should be more angry about the destruction of the Taliban regime, which they regarded as the world's only genuinely Islamic government, than at the toppling of Saddam Hussein, whom they saw as an atheist and a purely tactical ally.

Why then does Chatham House prefer to focus on the British role in Iraq? It has nothing to do with reality. But in the circles to which Chatham House caters, it is politically fashionable to pretend that Afghanistan didn't happen.

...Saddam Hussein, however, was supposed to be a secular and Socialist ruler who could claim some kinship with the "useful idiots" in the West.

More important, from Chatham House's point of view, is that the "international community," meaning Jacques Chirac and Kofi Annan, swallowed the liberation of Afghanistan but made loud noises against the liberation of Iraq....

Those who look for excuses for terrorism do so only to justify a policy of appeasement....

The appeased terrorist concludes that, having won a battle, he should press for victory in his war against a weakened adversary....
 

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