A British columnist scores the dhimmitude of British officials in the face of involvement of Muslims from that country in the global jihad.
“Britain is fighting a war — and we are too soft on our enemies,” by Con Coughlin in the Telegraph, March 12 (thanks to all who sent this in):
It’s not just soldiers who win wars. Governments also have a crucial role to play — and to judge by the response of most Western governments to the threat we face from radical Islamism, we are simply not competing on equal terms with the enemy.
No one can claim that we in Britain don’t understand the nature of the threat we face.
Oh, I can. There doesn’t seem to be any indication that British authorities understand the jihadist and supremacist imperatives within Islamic texts and teachings, or have considered seriously the fact that those texts and teachings are considered authoritative by the putative moderates with whom they have chosen to deal and on whom they have placed all their hope.
In recent months, there has been a succession of reports highlighting the increasingly pernicious influence British Islamists are having on the Nato-led campaign to bring stability to Afghanistan.
After senior officers confirmed last year that British Muslims were fighting with the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, it was revealed that RAF Nimrod surveillance planes monitoring Taliban radio stations were surprised to hear insurgents speaking in strong Yorkshire or Midlands accents.
More recently, officers based at the main military base at Lashkar Gah revealed that they had found British-made components in roadside bombs used to attack coalition forces in southern Afghanistan, sent to Helmand by Muslim sympathisers in Britain. This week three British Muslims, part of a terrorist cell whose leader was convicted of plotting to kidnap and behead a British soldier on video, were jailed at the Old Bailey for supplying equipment to the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
The active involvement of radical British Muslims in the Afghan insurgency has led senior officers to claim that they are engaged in a “surreal mini-civil war” in Afghanistan. And yet, for all the compelling evidence that British-based Islamist radicals are actively participating in a jihad against Britain and its coalition allies, the Government, together with those who have opposed our involvement in the War on Terror from the start, seems determined to give the Islamist radicals the benefit of the doubt.
Even when incontrovertible proof is found that British Muslims are aiding and abetting the enemy in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the Government’s instinct is to try to cover up their involvement, for fear of further inflaming Islamist sensitivities….
Read it all.