Hudson Fellow Irwin Stelzer, an adviser to Tony Blair, has written a superb two-pager for the Weekly Standard that shows the difference between the American response to 9/11 and the UK's to 7/7. Put simply, it is the difference between treating terror as a war issue and viewing it through the lens of law enforcement. Blair, at least as to matters domestic, cannot see a war; even if he did, he signed the EU's Human Rights Act, which ties the hands of governments in a web of restrictions only an ACLU lawyer could love.
Emblematic of Blair's--and his country's ambivalence is the tolerance of radical clerics in the Sceptered Isle's midst. Thus one radical known as the Tottenham Ayatollah--the location being the London area where he preaches--says attacks will continue until Britain vacates Afghanistan and Iraq, and that he hopes to see the Islamic crescent fly over not only 10 Downing Street but the entire globe. Yet he is allowed to continue to preach hatred and subversion in the middle of a war--because the UK treats this stuff as protected religious expression.
British conservative Party leader Michael Portillo points out that his country passed a law banning membership in the IRA, and should adopt similar laws to target groups that support jihadi terror. Portillo salutes Cherie Blair for apologizing for having said of Palestinian suicide bomb attacks: “As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress.”
That British police killed the wrong man after the 7/21 bombings should not lead to tighter restraints and thus cede a victory for terror. Mistakes are inevitable. An illegal refusing to stop for police immediately after a terror strike invites a shooting. So far Scotland Yard is hanging tough. If they stop hanging tough they will simply hang, so to speak, as Islamism runs wild.
Read Irwin's superb piece and get a bird's-eye view of how John Kerry would have responded to domestic terror strikes.
Stelzer: Londonistan
Muslim Cleric: Let Islam Flag Rule the World
Portillo: Stand Fast
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