A Tangled Web

Wooing the Supporters of Terror!



According to a report by the London-based think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Iraq war has 'galvanised' Al Queda in its terrorist putsch against the West in general, and the USA in particular.



It goes on to say that 'the war in Iraq has focused the energies of Al Queda and its supporters'. I don't suppose it ever occurred to the 'academics' at the IISS, or the pacifist newshounds at the BBC who broke the story of this report, that large chunks of these terrorists were, in all probability, present within the territory of Iraq during Saddam's dictatorship. They would probably like us to believe that masses of the Al Queda faithful converged on Iraq like some terrorist version of the Pied Piper tale, or that Al Queda membership forms were distributed in copious quantities amongst the idle revolutionaries of that benighted country and the wider Islamic world, as soon as the invasion took place.



Finally, in a breathtaking display of unctuousness, the IISS contends that the Americans must take care to win 'hearts and minds' by tempering their 'unilateralism'. I suspect that the vast majority of American citizens are not particularly interested in courting the sensibilities of those who, inter alia, perpetrated or supported the beheading of Nick Berg, or the destruction of the World Trade Center.



This is a war for the very survival of a structured global order. It cannot be conducted like a school-hall musical, partial to the appeasing whims of self-important pen pushers.