Membership Has Its Privileges
But Tony Blair had only a few precious hours to savor what was perhaps the only benefit that membership in the Coalition of the Willing has brought him, before the bill came due.
Blair's stammering reaction to the July 7 horror was, of course, shock.
But probably shock compounded with despair and the realization that, after dodging the bullet for all these years, his high-stakes gamble of stubbornly following the U.S.A. into its Iraq adventure had finally brought a direct, bloody consequence to the British homeland.
Blair will probably survive politically. But the unspoken reproach of the victims and their families will surely gnaw at his heart.
Meanwhile, the U.S. media provides him with some useful misdirection. Unavoidably, there is a Blame Europe angle to the coverage.
With its clear antecedents in the Madrid bombing, the London attack indicates that Islamist extremists can operate effectively within Europe, even as they appear unable to strike at the United States.
Peter Singer of the Brookings Institute opines:
"There is a lot of research that shows that (the European Muslim community) is far more disenfranchised than in the US. It is certainly not integrated within the political system, the economic system, and so you have a sense of anger within the community that there isn't the Muslim minority community in the US, and that makes it likely that terrorist groups are able to in a sense find, if not support, a breeding ground, an environment in which they can operate a lot easier than they can in the US," he said.
It's not because we got all the good Muslims.
It's not liberal coddling, Gallic venality, trendy multiculturalism, or the other bugbears of the Right that puts a Muslim security problem at the heart of Europe.
The reason can be seen by looking at a map — and at history.
The Old World doesn't have a straightforward clash of civilizations, with a clear, reassuring line dividing the good white people from the crazy swarthy people.
Europe has a symbiotic relationship with Islam. They share the Mediterranean Basin and mingle in the Balkans and Lebanon. Southern Spain was once conquered by Arabs. Sicily served as a crossroads for a two way cultural and economic traffic between Islam and Christianity. Pakistanis in Britain, Indonesians in the Netherlands, and Algerians in France bear witness to the colonial heritage that links and divides them. Guestworkers from Turkey form the indispensable underclass buttressing the German welfare state.
European reality — if only a despised and hidden corner of it — is tied up with Islam. It's one thing for George W. Bush to play upon xenophobic fears of a distant and alien religion and declare de facto war on the Islamic Middle East. It's another thing for the Europeans.
The attacks serve as an unwelcome reminder to Britain how close Europe is to the Islamic world geographically, politically, socially, and in the international equation of terror — and how close Britain is to Europe.
The July 7 attacks may place Britain at a crossroads.
Will it continue to stake its security and future on the trans-Atlantic alliance under the disastrous leadership of George W. Bush and face the unnerving prospect of serving as just another piece of terrorist-attracting flypaper in America's clodhopping effort to entangle the Iraq insurgency?
Or will it join the club of European nations that maintain an uneasy but intimate relationship with its Muslim underclass and the Islamic heartland — and obtain partial immunity from further attacks?
After July 7, the privileges of membership in the Euroclub may be too attractive to ignore.
Copyright 2005 Peter Lee
Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at peter@halcyondays.info.
