Europe is too soft to go to war with ISIS

"We are at war!" The French prime minister’s reaction to the Islamic State’s bombing of the airport and a Metro station in Brussels succinctly summed up the chilling reality that stares Europe in the face. Even so, European states and peoples don’t quite appear ready to do what it takes to join this war.

There seems to be an inexplicable liberal, white man guilt that informs policy-making in most of Europe and which pretty much translates into a combination of inveiglement, appeasement, benign neglect and abject surrender.

Hiding behind an uber-liberal social, security and political system, Europe appears just too open, effete and soft, and hence ill-equipped, to fight the proverbial barbarians that have entered its gates, and threaten its way of life.

Radicalism

It is in this sense that the bombing in Brussels, though shocking, is hardly surprising. Far from being the last of the terrorist outrages to hit Europe, it could well be the beginning of a long war of attrition that will strain to the extreme, European values, laws and systems.

The Brussels attack, therefore, really needs to be seen from two prisms: one is the medium and long-term factors that have led to the rise of Islamic radicalism in Europe, and in turn created the vicious cycle of a right-wing backlash that further fuels the radical wave; the other is the attack itself and what it portends.

In many ways, Europe in general, and countries like Britain, Belgium and France in particular, had this war coming their way. For years, European countries have harboured some of the most dangerous, despicable and depraved Islamists who misused the freedoms they enjoyed in their adopted lands to spread their hate-filled ideologies.

As long as the target of the ire of these radical Islamist preachers was some Middle-Eastern regime, it didn’t seem to matter to the Europeans what poison was peddled from their soil.

But it was only a matter of time before these same preachers turned their attention to the countries which gave them refuge and started making demands of a religious and cultural nature that added to the already existing reservoir of resentment and alienation among the immigrant communities.

Instead of nipping the Islamist propaganda in the bud, the Europeans gave them a long rope in the name of multiculturalism and liberalism. Ironically, the same Europeans who encouraged the immigrants to cultivate a separate religio-cultural identity, are today wondering why they were unsuccessful in assimilating the immigrants. Radicalisation of European Muslims is, therefore, not a recent (or post-Islamic State) phenomenon, but is something that has been decades in the making. Only it is now that the chicks are coming home to roost.

Somehow, the Europeans haven’t quite understood the millenarian mindset that propels radical Islamism, virtually making it a death cult.

Searching for solutions to the lure of jihadism in worldly or existential issues and pursuits like poverty, education, unemployment, racism, economic opportunities, social marginalisation, cultural alienation or historical "inequities" (incidentally, Muslim invasions and depredations never seem to enter the mind-space of either the Muslims who are "aggrieved" nor the non-Muslims who are "guilt-ridden") is to really miss the point. All these might be contributory factors but they are neither necessary nor sufficient to explain why a 20-something-year-old is ready to blow himself up.

Grievances

It is a sort of brain-washing that transcends real or imagined grievances, and unless this pernicious ideology and theology of committing mass murder as a sort of religious obligation is not wiped out both militarily and intellectually, this war isn’t going to be won.

This means that without defeating and dismantling the ideological and theological basis of radicalism, even if the abomination called Islamic State was to be decimated and made to disappear tomorrow, some other organisation would emerge as a manifestation of the same dreadful phenomenon.

As for the more immediate issue of the coordinated attacks in Brussels, it is still a matter of speculation if these had anything to do with the arrest of the sole surviving terrorist involved in the Paris attacks. Actually, a link or the absence of one is hardly a matter of critical importance.

If the arrest of Saleh Abdesalam prompted the attack because of the fear that the network would be exposed, it means that the ISIS cell was able to mount such a complex and coordinated attack in a matter of days.

Security

That they were able to do this at a time when there was a state of heightened alert in Brussels should send a shudder up the spines of security agencies, because it means that their systems are badly broke. Of course, to the extent that this particular network is being disrupted, degraded and destroyed should give some comfort. But it also doesn’t preclude the possibility of other such networks either existing or being set up.

If, however, the attack was a retaliation to the arrest of Abdesalam, and was carried out by a separate, unconnected network, then it demonstrates a frightening capability and reach on part of the ISIS.

The bottom line is that the Islamist terror wave isn’t going away anytime soon. Europe can no longer afford to behave as though it isn’t affected by Islamist terror or that it can buy or even appease its way out of trouble.

To survive, Europe will need to rethink its legal system, its concept of civil liberties and nationalism, its security architecture, its lack of investments in building both a military and intelligence capability (a task which had been pretty much outsourced to the US).

But if colonial hubris coupled with liberal, white man guilt continues to guide policy, Europe will be seen by the Islamists as a soft target, ripe for the picking.

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)