"there can never be a friendship between the British democracy and the Nazi Power. We have sustained a defeat without a war. . . and do not suppose that this is the end. This is only of beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup . . . "
--Winston Churchill,
October 1938 Parliamentary Speech on Munich Agreement
Before he became Britain’s wartime prime minister, Churchill was making a name for himself prodding his country to rearm against Hitler’s rise. At 64, Churchill was so right. Now Tony Blair, a British senior statesman after having served as prime minister for a decade but who celebrates only his 56th birthday tomorrow, is warning the world about extremists within Islam.
Blair laid out his warning in a recent speech before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Blair said the extremist ideology, as a movement within Islam, “has to be defeated,” and is so deeply rooted, that “our strategy for victory has to be broader, more comprehensive but also more sharply defined. . . it is not going to be won except over a prolonged period. . . akin to fighting revolutionary Communism. . .”
How many people within the Obama administration, those who buried the words “war on terror,” preferring instead “man-caused disasters,” well, how many of these folks are focused on a “prolonged” struggle akin to that which we waged against Communism? Blair may be as much in the wilderness today as was Churchill in 1938.
Here’s more from Blair:
”Look there are people in this world who are crazy,” a friend said to me the other day, “leave them to be crazy.” Except the problem is that they won't leave us in the comfort of our lives. That's not the way the world works today.
Blair identifies six elements to a successful strategy against Islamic extremism:
1. Understand we have not caused this phenomenon but we can help beat it. Terror is the enemy of progress. The responsibility for terrorism lies with the terrorist and no-one else.
2. This battle can only be won within Islam itself and the fact is we have allies. The world of Islam includes large parts of Asia including Indonesia, the world’s largest predominantly Muslim country.
3. We need hard and soft power. We have to persuade where the battle is for hearts and minds. We have to fight where we are being fought against.
4. Where we are called upon to fight, we have to do it. If we are defeated anywhere, we are at risk of being defeated everywhere.
5. Reject the view that democracy is unattainable or unaccepted in the Islamic world. It will be hard to accomplish. But it is only by the embrace of greater democracy that this battle will be won.
6. Re-discover confidence and conviction in who we are, how far we've come and what we believe in. We are standing up for what is right. The body of ideas that allows us to vote in and vote out our rulers, that provides a rule of law on which we can rely, and a political space “more transparent than anything that went before isn't decaying. It is in the prime of life.”
Blair indirectly rejects the foreign policy “realists”--the Henry Kissinger school enjoying a post-Bush comeback under Obama--when he attacks the foreign policy
of the world weary, the supposedly sensible practitioners of caution and expediency, who think they see the world for what it is, without the illusions of the idealist who sees what it could be; those who regarded politics as a Bismarck or Machiavelli regarded it. . . all a power play; a matter, not of right or wrong, but of who's on our side, and our side defined by our interests, not our values. We should remember what such expediency led us to, what such caution produced.
The former Labour Party chief also cautions us against “abandoning the market or open economic system,” saying instead we should adjust the system that “has delivered amazing leaps forward in prosperity for our citizens and we shouldn't, amongst the gloom, forget it.”
Because Islamic extremism is cloaked in religion, Blair believes part of defeating it lies also in religion, “in a consistent and clear critique of its religious error by religious leaders within Islam; and in the burgeoning initiative for dialogue, understanding and action between the different faiths of the world.” He adds, “The more we reach out across the world of faith, the more the extremists and reactionaries within all faiths can be challenged.”
To Blair,
This war needs to be at the centre of policy, properly resourced, properly serviced. It needs to go down into the education systems, ours as well as theirs, into collaboration between institutions of learning, into arts and culture. Foreign policy needs to be completely re-shaped around such a strategy. And, of course, the Israel-Palestine question must be resolved.
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