Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Hungry Minotaurs   [Victor Davis Hanson]

Gordon Brown’s uncoupling of terrorism from Islam and the relegation of the ‘war against terror’ in Britain to the rubbish heap of history is all predicated on a simple hunch: that an attrited al Qaeda cannot muster the money, savvy, and contacts  to repeat a 9/11-style attack in Britain.

Hence the leisure of political-correctness that results in demonization of those  who use wire-taps, detention facilities—and war—to stop jihadism.

So we know the script to come, but, like Oedipus, can’t stop it: more uncovered plots, an occasional terrorist near miss, and then finally a big bomb that kills hundreds.

And at that point, it gets Orwellian — what will a UK do if the perpetrators were suspected of residence at one time in Pakistan, Iran, or Syria? Or had financing and sanctuary provided by an Arab state? Surely not send in the gunboats or rely on the mayor of London for a stiff upper-lip.

Instead, elites will probably shrug and say these are the wages of doing business in today’s “have/have not world,” a sort of acceptance that a few British must periodically be harvested for the greater good of keeping “the British way of life”—best summer up like the Athenians, in the days before Theseus, who sent their annual tribute of 14 youths to the Minotaur’s labyrinth to pacify angry King Minos.

07/04 08:42 AMShare