I'm getting increasingly annoyed with the way that both the left and the right have responded to the post 9-11 world in which we live. In my opinion, many on both sides disregard important issues when considering how to respond to the threat posed by al-Qaida and their jihadist fellow travellers.
Let's start with the right. First off, bravo to most conservatives for understanding three important points:
1. Terrorism is a big problem.
2. Something must be done about it.
3. Bin Laden isn't interested in accomodation with the West, he wants to win.
Where I strenuously disagree with the right is about how al-Qaida should be fought. For me, the West's policies - particularly in Palestine and Iraq - are encouraging the growth of al-Qaida. It's really not a complicated equation. F-16s bombing Ramallah and Ramadi equals lots of angry Muslims. Unfortunately some of these people will end up joining or supporting al-Qaida and co as a result. The more support al-Qaida has, the more dangerous it becomes.
There are many ways to confront the jihadist menace, but starting a totally unnecessary war in Iraq isn't one of them. Any conflict in Iraq was bound to lead, as this one has, to the deaths of thousands of Muslim civilians. Thus, I haven't the faintest clue what Bush means when he says that his invasion has "made us safer". Nothing could be further from the truth.
Most conservatives are loathe to acknowledge the connection between Western actions in the Middle East and support for al-Qaida. Instead of analysing why groups like al-Qaida exist, too many conservatives simply say "they're evil" or "they hate our freedom"; mantras which, conveniently enough, absolve Western governments of any blame for the current situation.
So much for the right, what about the left? Again, the picture is mixed. On some points progressives demonstrate clarity of vision, but on other matters they seem to have their hands over their eyes. First the good stuff. Lefties tend to see the connection I outlined above between Western policy and Islamic terrorism. They also see that changing policy will help to reduce the terrorist threat. Furthermore, leftists avoid the silly playground talk of "good" and "evil" in which conservatives like to indulge.
But while those on the left are quite right to point to Western misdeeds in the Middle East as a relevant point, they are quite wrong if they think this is the end of the story. In my opinion there is a sick strand of jihadism, bent on world domination, which exists independently of any Western action. Thus even if, by some miracle, Iraq were to become an Arabian Switzerland and Arafat and Sharon were to dance through Jerusalem hand in hand, there would still be some extremists trying to kill civilians in Europe and the US.
At least some of those who suport al-Qaida are not interested in changing this or that policy of their enemies. Their aim is an international caliphate, the global victory of their bastard form of Islam. To think that a change of policy from the West would be enough to persuade everyone to put down the RPGs is simply wrong.
Yet too many on the left are unwilling to admit this salient point. Just once it would be nice to read an article by Tariq Ali, or John Pilger, or Noam Chomsky which discussed the threat from Islamic fundamentalism. Just once, with no caveats, no qualifications, no invocation of Western perfidery. Just a simple "no" to fundamentlaism - any fundamentalism.
I fully understand why conservatives don't want to get into a discussion about the activities of Western governments which encourage the growth of terrorism. It's not in their interest to ask these awkward questions. But I can't understand why the left, when confronted by a blatantly fascist organisation, is so reluctant to call a spade a spade.
Let's be clear here: no matter how much one opposes the war in Iraq, no matter how strong one's support for the Palestinian people, al-Qaida stands against everything that leftists believe in. As secularists, as believers in rationality and the Enlightenment, we can have no truck with the medievalists in al-Qaida. It's no good raging against the absurd creationists of the American Bible Belt if we don't also oppose another insane form of religious fundamentalism in the Middle East.
I only wish that more on the left would follow the lead of German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. The leader of the Green Party was among the most outspoken critics of the war in Iraq, famously hectoring Donald Rumsfeld to his face on the eve of the conflict. Yet he is also someone who has spoken in the following terms:
"the Middle East is at the epicentre of the greatest threat to our regional and global security at the dawn of this century: destructive jihadist terrorism with its totalitarian ideology."
It's a shame that more people don't think like Fischer.