Islamic preacher Abu Obeida, an Algerian asylum seeker in Britain, has allegedly said that Islamic law requires Muslims everywhere to come to the assistance of Ba’athist Socialist Iraq if it is attacked by the West.
British journalist A.N. Wilson decries British and American threats against the Iraqi regime in his article called War on Iraq is madness, claiming that Anglo-American actions make Abu Obeida’s call to British Muslims to take up arms against British forces seem quite reasonable.
But it is the achievement of Tony Blair’s government that he has managed to make Mr Obeida and his friends sound like the voice of common sense.
Of course one should not think for a moment that A.N. Wilson has qualms about governments using violence, particularly against their own nationals, as he favours the forcibly sterilisation of social undesirables. Thus given his taste for violence backed state enforced eugenics I suppose his de facto support for Ba’athist National Socialism is not so hard to understand, i.e. he favours the type of regime which could actually implement the sort of views he holds.
Saddam may be a brute to his own people, but surely, by the standards of international law, this is less threatening than the Israeli occupation of territory that is simply not theirs. Think of Mrs Thatcher’s reaction when General Galtieri “did an Ariel Sharon” on some barren little rocks in the south Atlantic.
So Saddam Hussain, who used poison gas to exterminate entire towns which opposed him, who invaded Kuwait and before that Iran, is less of a threat that Israel? And Wilson’s history seems to have airbrushed out the fact Israel is in occupation of the West Bank and Gaza because its neighbours repeatedly attacked Israel first. I was not aware of any recent British attacks on Argentina prior to General Galtieri’s military occupying the Falklands but perhaps A.N. Wilson is privy to some secret history which I am not aware of.
If I were young enough for military service and was compelled to fight either for Iraq or America, I would fight for Iraq, on the simple grounds that the Iraqis and their surrounding countries should be allowed to work out their own destinies without Western bullying. If I feel that, how much more strongly would it affect a young British Muslim?
And there we have it. Presumably if A.N.Wilson were old enough to have been available for military service in 1939 and was compelled to fight either for Nazi Germany or Britain, he would have fought for Nazi Germany, on the simple grounds that Germany and its surrounding countries, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, the Netherland, Beligium, France and Austria, should have been allowed to work out their own destinies without British, and later American, ‘bullying’.
No doubt… after all, his views of forcibly castrating and spaying the underclass would have been very well received in Berlin in those days.
Anyone know what led this Abu Obeida character to be seeking asylum in the first place?
It’s even funnier in its full glory. Wilson has always had dubious views about lots of things; I think he’s some sort of CofE fundamentalist cum Tory bigot.
The honourable thing for him to do now is to offer his services as a British mujahideen fighter for Saddam.
An opinion piece called Saddam’s useful idiots pollute the British Left by Michael Gove in today’s Times starts
You can vaccinate key military personnel against smallpox. But you can’t inoculate the British Left against its own strain of wilful stupidity.
I used to think Lefties were basically good people barking up the wrong tree but I’m in the throws of doing an Ann Coulter and siding with Rachel Lucas in just calling thems wankers and not bothering to even attempt to reason with the unreasonable.
the piece goes on
Those on the Left who argue that action against Iraq is justified only with United Nations backing are subcontracting their moral judgment to the butchers of Tiananmen Square, the Baathist dictatorship of Syria and Africa’s choicest murderers.
yep, wankers
Don’t pay any attention to A.N.Wilson. He writes more rubbish that any writer in the UK. This is mainly because he is the world’s most prolific column writer and he once boasted that no column takes him longer than 10 minutes or so to write. He was a teacher. Although he only lasted one term. A teacher who knew him told me he was as bad at teaching as he is at writing.
Why do these fellows equate getting rid of Saddam with “War on Iraq”? Remember when stopping the medieval Taliban and smoking Al-Qaeda out of their caves meant “Attacking Afghanistan”? The best remedy against them is liberating the respective place and then reminding people of the stupid comments they made. Not that I think they will change, just that this will “vaccinate” the people against their influence.
Regarding Abu Obeida, he was perhaps escaping the military repression against the Algerian FIS and GIA islamofascists, whose behavior made the Taliban look like Sunday school teachers.
Hatred of Jews, eugenics – sounds familiar… I wonder what the A.N.Wilson’s initials stand for? ‘A’ ‘N’azi perhaps?
A. N. Wilson is an almost self-parodic ‘Young Fogey’ (not so young any more). He’s a right-wing exemplar of that peculiarly puerile journalistic phenomenon of the compulsive contrarian. There is no point so sensible that Wilson will not find some trumpery excuse to disagree with it. He’s written some spectacularly puerile nonsense in his time, but this one really takes the cake. The notion that Iraqis have any say in their destinies is so bizarre as to make me wonder what colour the sky is on Wilson’s planet.
The Monday morning op-ed page in the Telegraph is always a disappointment. I quite simply refuse to read Wilson’s column, and Trevor MacDonalds Potry Anthology is quickly disposed of. The picking safter that are usually fairly miserly.
You are abysmally ignorant of the historical record if you believe that Israel was attacked by its neighbors in every war.The 1956 and 1967 wars and the 1978 and 1982 Lebanese invasions were clearly initiated by Israel.I find it particularly appalling that British citizens are so ignorant about 1956 war in particular.
In 1948 the Arab countries only acted after Israel had violated the borders prescribed in the Partition resolution, expelling and massacring Palestinians in the process.The 1973 war was only launched by Egypt after Sadat had exhausted every avenue to get peace talks started on the basis of UN Resolution 242, a Resolution which the US and Britain voted for and which Israel itself recognized in the Aug, 1970 treaty which ended the War of Attrition.
It is this sort of blinkered ignorance from the people of Europe and America which have allowed a small splinter introduced into the Middle East by the West to become a running sore, a festering wound and perhaps soon a rotten appendage.
When the Israelis are finally forced out of Palestine, they will only have their leaders and the Westerners like you who enabled their folly to continue unchecked so long to blame.
And you are abysmally ignorant of how to actually read an article… can you point out where you saw me write that “Israel was attacked by its neighbors in every war”.
If you had read a few more of my articles on Samizdata.net you would see I am far from reflexively pro-Israel: I am largely indifferent to it in fact.
Your remarks indicate you are a ‘trigger phrase’ reader, which is to say you see a remark not damning Israel (your ‘trigger phrase’) at which point you more or less write the rest of the article yourself in accordance with what you assume I believe via the filter of your preconceptions.
In short, your comments are really not about what you read in my article at all.