Denunciation+doesnt+work+,+Clarke,+Guardian



=**Denunciation doesn't work**=


 * Condemning terrorism to the exclusion of everything else will not equip us to deal with the threat we face**

Monday July 25, 2005 The Guardian**
 * David Clark

The last three weeks have witnessed the rise of one of the biggest and broadest political coalitions Britain has ever seen. It includes everyone from the intelligence services and Chatham House to Ken Livingstone and George Galloway, and is supported by two-thirds of the British public representing all shades of opinion in between. It is the biggest of big tents, and yet Tony Blair isn't in it. I am, of course, referring to the "useful idiots" who see a connection between western foreign policy and the rising terrorist threat.

It was by no means inevitable that Blair would find himself as the leader of an isolated minority insisting that nothing must change. His initial response after 9/11 was a model of the sort of approach many of his critics are now demanding, including, as he put it to the Labour conference in Brighton two weeks after, "justice and prosperity for the poor and dispossessed". If he were to deliver that speech today, he would be denounced as a "root causer" and an apologist for terrorism.

The turning point was Blair's realisation that President Bush wanted nothing to do with his vision of a just world order in which the rights and opinions of ordinary Muslims would receive the same consideration as those of everyone else. Forced to choose, he put obedience to Washington before his own humanitarian principles. It has been downhill for him ever since.

The argument of post-Brighton Blair and his supporters is that the bombers are simply evil and any attempt to understand them in a different context leads us to conclusions that reward terrorism and thus encourage further violence. This is the theme developed at some length by Alan Dershowitz in his book Why Terrorism Works. In it, he argues that "the real root cause of terrorism is that it is successful". If only we would stop giving in and stick to a purely punitive response, the terrorists would eventually get the message and give up.

In fact, the evidence for this is pretty thin - and that's putting it kindly. The examples of terrorist organisations that have succeeded in attaining their strategic goals are few and far between. What the "terrorism works" argument refers to is the willingness of governments to address popular grievances that terrorists exploit to recruit and mobilise support. Far from rewarding terrorism, political reform has usually played an essential role in defeating it.

The Malayan Communist party failed to establish a "dictatorship of the proletariat" in the 1950s, but only because Britain was willing to promote land reform and independence. Northern Irish Catholics have the civil and political rights they should never have been denied, but the IRA has no united Ireland to show for three decades of bloodshed. The Basques have regional autonomy within Spain, but Eta has collapsed with its ambition for an independent state unfulfilled. In each case, the terrorists failed in their objective and the authorities conceded no more than was just and right.

There have been exceptions to this rule. One of the most obvious, as Dershowitz himself notes, was the Zionist terror campaign that helped to drive Britain out of Palestine in 1948. Should we therefore dismantle the state of Israel and restore the British mandate in order to prove that terrorism doesn't pay? However logical this may be as an extension of their argument, it is a conclusion too far for Dershowitz and those who think like him. It would seem that some rewards for terrorism are more acceptable than others.

No one doubts that the bombers are in the grip of an evil ideology. The question, unanswered in the acres of newsprint devoted to rubbishing the suggestion that terrorism is a political phenomenon, is why this ideology has grown in its appeal to young Muslims. To put it in the simplistic Manichean terms favoured by some, why is there more evil around than there used to be? On this there is nothing but silence.

The moral denunciation of terrorism is psychologically comforting, and no less necessary for that in view of the trauma suffered by Londoners. While it is important to stigmatise terrorism, that in itself offers little prospect of bringing it to an end. Do suicide bombers really care what we think of them? Those who indulge in condemnation to the exclusion of everything else have failed to produce a single useful policy prescription, or even the semblance of a coherent analysis, that might equip us to deal more effectively with the threat we face. They have nothing positive to contribute to the debate about what needs to happen next.

To ditch policies that are essential to the fight against terrorism - for example, by handing Afghanistan back to the Taliban - would indeed be an act of appeasement for which we would ultimately suffer. But to argue that we must persist with our current strategy, however counterproductive and immoral it may be, on the basis that any change might be seen as a reward for terrorism, is the most foolish position of all. From Osama bin Laden's point of view, those who advocate it are useful indeed. To us, they are just idiots.

dkclark@aol.com**
 * **David Clark is a former Labour government adviser.


 * From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/comment/story/0,16141,1535455,00.html**