The strength of Islamist terrorists today similarly arises from the vast territory of moral ambiguity in which they are able to operate within our societies. While those willing to join their ranks may be counted in the thousands at most in the West, there are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands more who excuse, justify, contextualise, trivialise and apologise for the terrorists and their actions. These enablers have no blood on their hands, technically. But their inability to categorically condemn violence taints them with moral complicity. Their insidious arguments must be energetically exposed and rejected.
Nor will our law enforcement and intelligence services be able to win this battle unless they are given the means to do so. Civil liberties will have to be curtailed, as they were four decades ago, under similar terms. Such suspensions of liberties have precedents, and require time limits and checks and balances. But they are indispensable. As the late Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau quipped to critics of his response to French separatists, “There are a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don’t like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is, go on and bleed. But it’s more important to keep law and order.” (Does his son and successor, Justin Trudeau, agree?)
Such measures can address the threat in our own midst. But like the 1970s revolutionaries, Islamic terrorists have the backing of states and rely on safe havens where they train and regroup.
If there was one shortcoming in the response to Marxist terrorism, it was the inability to confront and combat its foreign backers. During the Cold War Europe never capitulated to the Soviet Union (though it occasionally wavered). But it took a much more morally ambiguous approach to those in the Middle East who financed and sponsored international terrorism for three decades.
The risk today, as French President François Hollande mobilises for his own war against Islamic State, is the same. Europe may turn the screw on home-grown terrorism. It might lose patience with terrorism’s soft apologists. But unless it embraces a similarly uncompromising stance against those in the Middle East who have made the rise of Islamic State and its allure possible, it will not be able to banish the threat of Islamist terror from our own midst.
Nor will our law enforcement and intelligence services be able to win this battle unless they are given the means to do so. Civil liberties will have to be curtailed, as they were four decades ago, under similar terms. Such suspensions of liberties have precedents, and require time limits and checks and balances. But they are indispensable. As the late Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau quipped to critics of his response to French separatists, “There are a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don’t like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is, go on and bleed. But it’s more important to keep law and order.” (Does his son and successor, Justin Trudeau, agree?)
Such measures can address the threat in our own midst. But like the 1970s revolutionaries, Islamic terrorists have the backing of states and rely on safe havens where they train and regroup.
If there was one shortcoming in the response to Marxist terrorism, it was the inability to confront and combat its foreign backers. During the Cold War Europe never capitulated to the Soviet Union (though it occasionally wavered). But it took a much more morally ambiguous approach to those in the Middle East who financed and sponsored international terrorism for three decades.
The risk today, as French President François Hollande mobilises for his own war against Islamic State, is the same. Europe may turn the screw on home-grown terrorism. It might lose patience with terrorism’s soft apologists. But unless it embraces a similarly uncompromising stance against those in the Middle East who have made the rise of Islamic State and its allure possible, it will not be able to banish the threat of Islamist terror from our own midst.
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