Author: Val MacQueen
Publication: FrontPageMagazine.com
Date: March 23, 2004
URL: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12683
Last week, four British-born Muslims
were released from Guantanamo Bay and arrived in Britain to a hero's welcome.
The BBC's glowing kept Trotskyists, pinkos, Islamists and multiculturalists
all a-flutter. Every detail of their homecoming - from their reunions with
their families to their first meal on British soil - was reported for the
hungry Left in loving detail, as was their ordeal in the allegedly barbaric
Guantanamo Bay facility.
The Sunday Mirror newspaper ran
a piece based on an interview with one of the detainees, for which it paid
around $100,000. The detainee angrily described the camp's striptease hell,
claiming that innocent young Muslim lads who had never been out of the
Middle East before were tortured by watching slinky strippers! These Mata
Haris were charged by the diabolical U.S. military with extracting information
from the Muslims innocents. This turned out to be a fantasy. One described
being chained to the floor, being beaten senseless and injected with a
drug against his will, claiming that this episode had involved "possible
amputation."
More fantasies du jour involved
stories of how these four separate individuals came to be captured in the
first place. One claimed he had gone to Afghanistan from his home in Britain
to take a computer course, a somewhat quixotic choice of venue for someone
living in a first world country that has a reliable power supply. He protested
that he had no idea there was a war on. Well, of course not! Time for a
reality check: this individual could not possibly have missed the 24-hour
news coverage in Britain of the build-up to the war. He understood very
well that war was imminent and he went precisely because war was imminent.
Another said he'd gone to Afghanistan
to look for a wife. He'd have done better to try mail order, given that
all the Afghani women were banged up in burquas. And lobbing pick-up lines
at women you didn't know under the Taliban regime was a capital offense
- or at a minimum, grounds for a "possible amputation."
A third detainee, a father of three,
claimed to have gone to Pakistan to learn Arabic. Pakistan would make an
intriguing choice of venue, given that in Pakistan, they speak Urdu. He
was in Quetta when he suddenly realized there was a war on. Thinking with
lightning speed, he hired a local car and driver to take him back to Europe
pronto! (One wonders why he didn't just have the driver take him to the
nearest airport.) He claimed it slipped his mind that to get from Pakistan
to Turkey and thence on to Europe, he would have to cross Afghanistan.
A fourth had apparently taken a
fancy to go on a solitary walking holiday in Afghanistan and, wandering
around in isolation, somehow found himself on the battlefield.
Clearly, these are four very balanced
and responsible people, victims of an American cowboy's prejudice, imperialism
and arrogance.
And yet . according to The Telegraph,
quoting London's The Sun:
"(T)he Americans gave the first
detailed account of the circumstances in which four of the British Muslims
were captured in Afghanistan. In a statement, the American embassy said
one of the captives had received weapons training at an al-Qa'eda safe
house in Kabul. He was alleged to have been 'a weapons-carrying fighter'"
based in Osama bin Laden's cave stronghold in the Tora Bora mountains and
to have been wounded in fighting with coalition forces.
"Two others were alleged to have
trained at a military camp in Afghanistan, learning to shoot a Kalashnikov
and 'observing hand grenade, landmine and rocket-propelled grenade demonstrations.'
"These two and a third returned
to Afghanistan shortly after September 11, 2001, to fight jihad with the
Taliban. They lived in caves for several weeks and were issued with Kalashnikovs
and ammunition. They stayed with their unit, commanded by a known Taliban
leader, for three weeks and were captured near Konduz.
"According to the embassy, one
of the released captives 'states he considers the UK and U.S. governments
to be his enemies and traveled to Afghanistan after 9/11 for an organisation
known to be associated with al-Qa'eda. He also associated with al-Qa'eda
extremists in the UK.'"
According to The Telegraph's Diplomatic
Editor, Anton La Guardia, "The Government last night declined to comment
on the American allegations against the former Guantanamo Bay detainees
but in an implied rebuff to the United States embassy said they did not
pose a threat to security."
Read that again: "The government.in
an implied rebuff to the United
States embassy said they did not
pose a threat to security." Other than a couple of days of police
questioning when they landed back in Britain, they are at liberty to walk
the streets and consort with whomever they choose.
The majority of British people
say they approved of the war and have continued to approve of it despite
having found no WMDs. But there is a substantial minority who willfully
fail to understand why we fought the war and what we have accomplished.
They take a spiteful, triumphalist glee in lauding the returning Guantanamo
Bay internees as heroes - despite the fact that the likelihood is, not
only did they commit treason, but were responsible for British and American
deaths on the battlefield. One only had to go to the BBC's "Have Your Say"
website to read the appalling comments. Multiculturalists relished the
fact that British-born Muslims, brought up in the sullen ghettoes established
by their fathers when Britain and other European countries inexplicably
agreed to mass immigration of people with no intention of assimilating,
had triumphed over the might of the United States.
But hatred of the most benign great
power in history trumps treason any day.
Within a couple of months, London's
Trafalgar Square, which celebrates the victory of the Battle of Trafalgar
in 1805, led by Britain's greatest naval hero, Admiral Lord Nelson, will
have a new sculpture. It was Nelson's triumph over the French at sea which
foiled Napoleon's plans to invade Britain. In the center of the square
is a 200-foot high column topped by a statue of Lord Nelson. Three other
plinths in each corner of the square, celebrate three other British military
heroes. There has been controversy for 160 years over who should occupy
the fourth plinth.
London's Marxist mayor, Red Ken
Livingstone, held a contest for a statue for the fourth plinth, without
any military or heroic reference. I will leave the reader to imagine what
dross got onto the short list. Red Ken has now made his choice: The fourth
plinth in this square for heroes is to be occupied by a 15-foot high sculpture
of a naked, armless, truncated legged, pregnant dwarf. In other words,
the Square will soon celebrate everything Britain historically is not:
weak, vulnerable, exultantly victimized and surpassingly ugly.
Of course, it is a deliberate assault.
It is intended to be an affront to British history and to deface a square
dedicated to men who made the British Empire great. Even five years ago,
Livingstone and his gang may have had the will, but not the nerve, to place
this hideous statue in Trafalgar Square. But they have become emboldened
by a country which the Left has succeeded in turning against itself. After
all, we celebrate treason, now. George Galloway is an official guest of
the mayor of London. And this weekend, thousands in the NION, ANSWER appeasenik
militia gathered in that same Trafalgar Square to "protest" the war in
Iraq - 10 months after we won it. That we won makes their hatred even more
bitter.
How did this dark virus - this
HIV of the soul - find its way into the body of Britain? Yes, more than
50 percent of the adult population supports the war and harbors warm feelings
for the United States; but a virus doesn't only occupy 50 percent of a
body. Once it's in, it works relentlessly to colonize that body. And without
intervention, an immune-mediated virus has the power to destroy the host
on which its own survival depends.
Just over a week ago, the Spanish
voted out the party headed by Aznar, an ally of the "Coalition of the willing."
On the Wednesday, an opinion poll had put Aznar's party ahead by five points.
On Thursday, a terrorist outrage was perpetrated upon the Spanish citizenry
in Madrid. All the signs pointed to al- Qaeda.
On the Sunday, Aznar's party was
defeated by five points. In other words, a 10- point-change between Wednesday
and Sunday.
Reasonable people have tried to
excuse the Spanish, saying that three million who hadn't intended to vote
were angered by the government's initial claim that the outrage was perpetrated
by the Basque separatists, ETA, saying the government lied to them and
so they decided to vote after all. Three million people who were going
to stay home (out of an electorate of around 20 million) suddenly decided
to vote within two days?
Other reasonable people have said
democracy has spoken. Around 80 per cent of the Spanish never wanted to
join the Coalition. Aznar forced it upon them, so they voted his party
out. This was the will of the people.
But what kind of will is it that
balks at defending freedom, toppling an evil man and helping to install
democracy in an area of the world that has never known it before - in the
knowledge that democracy is the only way to defuse the danger posed to
the West from the terrorist-breeding theocracies and thugocracies? Spain
was once a caliphate of the Islamic empire and is only too aware that the
Islamofascists want it back.
While the free world shared their
shock at the attack on their soil, the Spanish themselves were in full
throttle appeasenik mode. Five million of them gathered in public squares
carrying candles and "saying no to terrorism." They milled in passive silence
holding signs that read "Paz" ("Peace"). The virus was in. The immune system
was turned off.
Which is worse? That the majority
of the Spanish never wanted to play a part in defending Western civilization
in the first place, or that they handed al-Qaeda the perception that they
had dictated the result of an election in Europe.
Does it matter?
Spain, with nary an "excuse me,"
turned against the Coalition and joined the Axis of Weasel, handing al-Qaeda
a priceless perceived victory. Al-Qaeda now believes its act of terrorism
set the agenda for a European election. The weakness of spirit in a country
that bred the conquistadors, a country that conquered the vast New World
from Tierra del Fuego to beyond the borders of Texas and California, and
whose language is spoken by hundreds of millions, is incomprehensible.
So Spain, a former caliphate, joins Old Europe in the critical ward.
In continental Europe, I fear,
HIV has turned into full-blown AIDS of the soul.
