The Centre For Social Cohesion

Thanks to CSC for allowing this rather tedious disagreement to be aired. CSE, you have indulged me more than enough. I will leave bored readers with Mr. Denis's memorable phrase ringing in your ears: "I am a proud supporter of appeasement, in tandem with rearmament."

I have now left the scene to do more useful things than read Mr. Denis's odd history lessons about Bolsheviks.

In the meantime, back to SAUDI ARABIA, and a 'Sunday Times' report (4 Nov.):
"Saudi Arabia is hub of world terror"

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article2801017.ece

All right - with the Nazis if you prefer. They were as bad as the Bolsheviks, certainly. But were Britain and France right to guarantee Poland in 39? Did they in fact have a cat in hell's chance of defeating Hitler? I notice that President Roosevelt didn't bother declaring war over Poland. And the result of our brave demarche? Defeat, defeat, defeat for two miserable years. Had Hitler played his cards right, we'd have been sunk. It was only by virtue of his miscalculations that the romantic folly of Churchill was not rewarded - as it usually was (think of the Dardanelles) with terrible, abject failure. Yes, I am - today - a proud supporter of appeasement, in tandem with rearmament. I repeat, IN TANDEM WITH REARMAMENT - a point you have signally failed to register in my earlier postings. Now you will really be foaming at the mouth. But to give you pause, remember that Niall Fergusson has recently gone on record with a revision of his initially hostile view of Chamberlain. Having looked closely at the prospects of allied victory in 38, he has found - surprise, surprise - that they were slim. It is also the case that Bolshevik Russia was only too pleased to see capitalist democracy immolating itself on the altar of diplomatic idealism. I don't suppose you are aware that within a few months of starting the war with Germany, Britain was bankrupt? Was this good for the world? I daresay it was good for America, which had longed for many years to see the break up of the British Empire. Has that been of benefit to humanity? Are Mugabe, Kaunda, Kenyata the proud standard bearers of liberty and progress? There we see another example of diplomatic ideals in action - good bye colonial powers, hello communist starvation.

The obvious course for Britain and France in 1939 was to continue their grand strategy, which for twenty years had been to defend nothing but their vital interests. This was only right and proper, given the oceans of blood which they had seen spilled at Verdun and on the Somme. Note that Uncle Sam was signally unsympathetic to these sacrifices in 1919 and chose instead to demand money from its traumatised war-time friends. Had the western democracies - the European western democracies - simply coordinated their defensive efforts with a view to deterrence, the terrible sufferings of the second world war might have been avoided. All your gung-ho pro-war prattling achieves is a transformation of spittle into bloodshed, usually accompanied by defeat.

The borders I refer to are the borders of European states and their coastlines, which should once more be properly policed.

Stopping Islamist propaganda in London is - again - a policing issue. We don't need to overthrow a kingdom to burn a few leaflets, any more than we needed a nuclear war to defeat Arthur Scargill. Talk about taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Patient vigilance means just that - border controls, larger armies, better intelligence, a refusal to bow to Islamist pressure over issues such as the Danish cartoons, a demand that immigrants integrate or leave.

It comes down to a question of strategy - build a fortress or an army? Given the sheer size of the enemy, the fortress in your only option. Oh, and you should also be dipolmatically moderate enough to divide him from his chums.

Mr. Denis, are you in the real world? What "borders"?
Do you think the main Islamist strategy adopted by the the Saudis is to increase Muslim immigration? Have you dipped into
http://www.asecondlookatthesaudis.com

Our "military capability" -as proved in naval fiasco with Iran?

Yes, sure Mr. Dennis, if we leave the Saudis alone, they'll leave us alone, as disproved by the imperialist history of Islam. Are you aware that the Saudis are providing the means of spreading global jihad, including in the UK? "Patient vigilance" eh? That'll do the trick? It's not some cunning appeasement, is it? Something more subtle, that'll scare the Saudis off? But let's not offend them. eh?

I note you compare Islamists with Bolsheviks, not Nazis. Where would your "patient vigilance" have got you in 1939? Forget it. You're on planet complacent.

There is dignity and courage in politeness - even to your enemies. It does not involve "grovelling". And no - I in no way underestimate the dangers posed by Islam any more than I failed to see the perils of Bolshevism before the Wall came down. The question is how best to manage the conflict. I go for the "Cold War" option, otherwise known as containment. Just as Stalin and his successors had vast armies, kept at bay by the nuclear threat, so Islamic nations enjoy a dangerous numerical advantage in terms of conventional conflict. Besides, war is a blunt instrument at the best of times. I hope that nobody is suggesting a round of preemptive nuclear holocausts across the middle east to show who is boss. No, the sensible option is to maintain our borders, our freedoms and our military capability - to talk quietly and carry a big stick as Teddy Roosevelt said.

Mr. Dennis, you make 2 fundamental mistakes:

1.) you underestimate the aggressive, supremacist 1,400 year nature of Islam, as practiced globally by Saudi Arabia; you think, left to its own devices, it may well reform itself into a democratic society.

2.) the 'policy' you advocate is one of 'patient vigilance' towards the Saudis; you seem to see no other choice than that between Brown's 'patience vigilance' i.e.grovelling dhimmitude, and that of some interventionist neo-conservatism. The are other more convincing analyses and policies, see, for example:

http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/11041

I am neither defeatist nor - I trust - superficial. Indeed, it is superficial to confuse a policy of cautious defence - such as mine - with one of capitulation. It is equally superficial to imagine that peace can arise from perpetual "preventive" war, which is what the neo-cons are urging upon us. Superficial again is the assumption that "we must do something" when the wisest course might be one of patient vigilance. Is it profound to behave as though inside every Islamic society there's a western democracy struggling to get out? Is not such a view in fact purblind, arrogant and provincial? We have seen what happens when we "decapitate" the government of an Islamic society. All hell breaks loose. Not only that, but we add to the ranks of our enemies in all sorts of ways - not least when the very popular Islamist fruitcakes take that society over. I repeat, the best and soundest policy in the face of the current threat to the west is one of border controls, anti-terrorist operations and a firm reassertion of western freedom within the western sphere. Equally we should thank heaven for the Mubarraks and Abdullahs of this world, who at least blunt the otherwise razor sharp sword of the jihadist enemy. Shortly before the Russian revolution, a group of liberal and conservative intellectuals - the "Vekhi" circle - made exactly the same point about the Tsar's army - that it was in fact protecting civil society against enemies far worse than mere "reaction". The very same is true of all those corrupt regimes so despised by the wonks and hawks and nerds who make up the "neo-con" movement. These people have not understood the first thing about conservatism. It is above all things a belief in caution; the virtue it prizes most highly is humility - an especially useful trait when we consider the sheer complexity of life. No true conservative would haul on the jackboots, kick Abdullah off his throne and expect an Arab Ronald Reagan to come trotting out of the desert in order to take control. Only an ignorant, remote and superficial person would think that. Only - dare I say - a certain sort of American...

Mr. Dennis,

Your fatalism and acquiescence towards Saudi Arabia, and its support of Islamic jihad continues. You are, in your defeatist, superficial way, merely saying that there nothing which we in the West can, or should do about the Saudi regime.

I will not play the dhimmi.

Mr. Dennis misses the point: the enemy we must resist is that of Islamic supremacism, which is personified in the person of King Abdullah.

To adopt a fatalistic attitude towards Islam in the West is what the jihadists want. To understand the extent of Saudi global jihadist activites, and the need to oppose them, see:
' A Second Look at the Saudis '
http://www.asecondlookatthesaudis.com/

The point is not that the Saudis are awful. It is that the only possible alternatives are worse. There is no chance, given the state of Saudi society, that anything even partially resembling liberalism could gain power. Even if by some miracle an enlightened prince were to become the Sultan, he would find himself swept from the throne or tempted to behave like a brute in order to keep it. Yes, but they are corrupt, say the idealists. Corruption, my friends, middle eastern corruption, is one of the west's greatest assets. It is because the generals and the princes and the ministers like "women and champagne and bridge" that they don't rain bombs down on the western world, in which such goodies find their home. True, they use oil money to fund - and to distract - the extremists. What would a more zealous regime do? For that is your only alternative. True, the Saudis sometimes insult and denigrate Christians and Jews. How would a more forthright Islamist conduct himself? Remember, he is the only likely successor to an overthrown Abdullah. He would be foaming at the mouth, of course, and threatening us with imminent destruction, like sea-green incorruptible Ahmadinejad. Worse, he would represent another country unequivocally on the side of Islamic reaction. Equivocally is at least better than that. We should never be idealists where foreign policy is concerned. It is a peculiarly American and/or left wing mistake. In the field of international relations, the world is nothing but a Hobbesian jungle. Kill the python and you advantage the cobra. This is surely the lesson of Iraq, now falling slowly but surely to bits, to the great delight of the mad mullahs. On this, Cameron, who seems to be emerging in genuinely tory colours at last, is right. The lodestar in foreign policy is the national self interest - Saudi arms deals - tempered by a resolve to choose the lesser of two evils - the lazy Saudi prince, not the boss-eyed fanatic. The effort to bring untarnished good to any part of the world - to do it quickly and to do it by force - is MADNESS. It represents the sort of futile, wishful thinking typical of civilisations in decline. We must not enter that spiral, but should conserve our energies - focussing first and foremost on things like border control. Good heavens, if we can't even rely on persons born and brought up in places like Yorkshire not to become Islamic terrorists, how on earth do we expect to get "women's rights" going in an Islamic stronghold like the Gulf? East IS East, as the poet rightly told us and if we go on as we are, provoking and alienating them at the same time as letting large numbers in, the West will be nowhere at all.