The Reith Lectures

I've just been listening to some of the "Reith Lecture" on BBC Radio4. The speaker was Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former Director General of MI5. Her subject today was terror. We seem to be surrounded at the moment by programmes, both on radio & television, of that terrible day ten years ago when the Twin Towers were attacked.

At the time the Baroness was the Deputy Director General. She accompanied the Prime Minister & others on their trip to the United States to offer advice & support to the US government after the incident.

What struck me most, is that they should have listened to her more at the time. Experience with the Irish IRA had taught her, you can not defeat terrorism with violence or policing. All that achieves is martyrs for the cause. No, the way to defeat terrorism is to remove the motives that justify the actions of the terrorists. 

In this instance it would have meant making Muslims feel included in western society, to enable them to be as affluent as people in the West, certainly not to be threatened by the West.. Maybe try to get Israel into a more settled peaceful relations with its Arab neighbours, using political rather military methods. It wasn't to try to bomb Muslims into submission.  


I can't help thinking she was right. I've never understood the justification for going into Iraq. Much as I admit that Saddam Hussein was an evil man, it didn't mean we had the right to go in all guns blazing. Equally I'm damned if I can understand what we're doing in Afghanistan. I've no time for the Taliban but that's Afghanistan's problem & it is for them to sort things out. All I can honestly say that has been achieved, is that Muslims around the world, even moderate ones, must feel that Islam is under attack in the West. They are looked at with suspicion wherever they go, even when they have done nothing to justify it. They must end up feeling resentful if nothing else. On top of which many will now have family & friends killed, often for no reason except that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time when bombing or firing broke out. Is it surprising that increased/increasing numbers should rally to the extremist Islamic cause? It's certainly not helped with the iniquities of Guantanamo & rumours of torture there, & elsewhere committed by, or on behalf  of, the West.


None of the above is to deny support to our armed service personnel, fighting, getting wounded & dying in the subsequent wars. They were doing the jobs they were ordered to do to the best of their abilities. Most have shown great bravery & stayed within the bounds of what they were ordered to do. Their masters may have given wrong orders, but that does not detract from their efforts.