Andrew:
You posted, inter alia:
“Looking at Northern Ireland, I don’t think that it is much of a precedent
either. As you know, most Brits on the mainland have never considered that
province to be fully, well, British. They didn’t in 1970. They don’t now. I
suspect that, if you’d polled them in 1970 most mainlanders would have said
that they wanted the people of Ulster to sort things out for themselves,
almost regardless of what resulted. That hasn’t changed over all this time,
and I think it’s that attitude, rather than weakness in the face of terror,
that has allowed the UK to acquiesce in the rise to ‘respectability’ of the
loathsome Gerry Adams.”
Replace “Northern Ireland / Ulster” by “Iraq” or “the Middle East,” and you
pretty much make my point.
And I am sorry to be cold eyed about it, but the pluck and spirit you see
right after a bombing, though certainly cheering, has nothing to do with,
and no effect on, long-term policy trends. After the Christmas bombing of
Harrods department store in (?) 1987, Dennis Thatcher ostentatiously went
shopping at Harrods. I cheered him then, and I would cheer him now. But
look! Here comes Gerry in his limo…
Rich:
I would not expect people to say anything else in today’s circumstances; but
see above. Blair himself does not have a strong grip on the electorate –
he was re-elected in May by just 36 percent of them, remember — and while
his party troubles seem to have subsided, his party is still Labour, with a
base of loony ant-American leftists. (That Ken Livingstone who so stirred
your blood on the telly this morning — the Mayor of London — back in the
1980s had a bust of Lenin in his office.) The Iraq War is deeply unpopular;
the War on Terror widely scoffed at. I suppose the scoffing will subside
for a day or two, but no-one’s mind will have been changed.
I am afraid that in democratic societies, terror and counter-terror play out
on a calculus of benefits and losses, as seen by the broad public. “What is
the benefit to us, to me and mine, of a strong forward counter-terrorist
policy? If my govt. can cut a deal and get us off the hook with the
terrorists, as they did with the IRA, what is the downside?” These are the
questions people ask. The answers may not be the ones you like.