Britain - The Danger of Doing Nothing

The Times (UK) on why Iraq did not cause London's bombings.

But OK. Inconsistent but not necessarily wrong. The proposition is that we probably wouldn’t have been bombed last Thursday if we hadn’t been in Iraq, and we probably won’t be bombed in the future if we pull out.

I want us to agree one thing first. Someone would have been bombed. The jihadist campaign outside the Middle East first started when the omens for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement looked good, not bad. Then, just under seven years ago bin Laden’s people attacked the US embassies (no Bush back then) in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam and killed 225 people, the vast majority of them local Africans. That was before 9/11.

In November 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, 54 people were killed in a series of bombings in Istanbul. We remember the death of the British consul-general, which was described yet again as payback for Iraq. We forget the attacks on the Neve Shalom and Beth Israel synagogues a few days earlier. What exactly was that payback for? Attending bar mitzvahs, perhaps.

And it doesn't end there.

A year earlier a whole lot of German and French tourists were blown up outside the synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia. A few months later a Spanish restaurant and a Jewish community centre were blown up in Morocco. The chap who did it had been trained by bin Laden in Afghanistan. The radicals have blown up Shia mosques in Pakistan, before, after and during Iraq. They have blown up Iraqi Shias for being apostates. Closer to home, in spring 2003, two boys, one from Derby and one from Hounslow, travelled all the way to Gaza and then to Israel so they could blow the arms off a French waitress in an English bar in Tel Aviv.

What does all this tell us? First, that if they aren’t blowing us up, then they’ll be blowing up someone else. And you don’t get to choose who. Secondly, who or what they blow up is largely a matter of what’s available. Jews anywhere, Americans after that, Shia next and Brits probably a distant fourth. Africans for fun.

All of those who think London's bombings were the result of Britain's support for Iraq, need to read the whole thing.
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