Chairwoman – fine words indeed. So what about the Israeli Lobby in the USA wagging the big Bush dog to do as they pay him to do?

What about here where the Friends of Israel group lobby Blair and dictate a policy most of the country disagree with? Surveys show that the electorate don’t agree with Blair on I/P and yet the Blair doggy didn’t listen.

The vast majority of British people want a just solution to the I/P issue and yet a small, rich minority can influence policy to the point the Blair will waggle the carrot but beat with a stick.

Again most people in the UK support the Palestinian aspiration to statehood, and yet Blair allowed a minority to waggle him and do precisely nothing on this issue despite his promises at the time of the Iraq War vote to do something about this issue. He actually left office and now wants to do something!

What you forget is that politicians are not there to listen to the people, they are there to serve themselves. If politics was about listening to the people then Britian wouldn’t have joined the USA. If politics was about listening to the people the we wouldn’t have top up fees.

The dog is wagged by money and future after dinner speaking circuits.

Sorry but you are selective in reading history. Small groups of people with cash have always influenced politicians. That is how Oil companies, arms manufacturers etc. gain influence.

It is precisely why Blair was so careful to cultivate friendship with Murdoch and Black. Strange how Blair found it more important to speak at the News International function than do what his electorate was asking and engage on Lebanon.

Such antics show that a small minority wag the dog as long as it has money and media power

“”There was an emotional intensity of being war leaders with much of the world against them. That is enough to put you on your knees and get you praying together.”

I’m finally beginning to laugh again.

Anas – I am very, very careful about syntax, and I made it very, very clear that it was not a ‘Muslim’ issue.

So, because some Muslims see the FP argument as a way of arguing against pursuing a murderous and fundamentally injust foreign policy — which they choose not to do on the grounds of its murderousness and injustice apparently — the FP argument is now null and void And of course the FP argument “[legitimises a] motivation to injustice”. Just as when a crime investigator tries to uncover the motivation to a crime s/he obviously legitimises it. And yes, anyone who makes the connection is an apologist for terrorism. What a great way to have an open debate on an issue.

No group of 3 million out of a total of 66 million can be allowed to dictate government policy.
That’s it. It doesn’t matter who the group is, what their gripe is, or even whether they are right or wrong.
The tail must never be allowed to wag the dog

Yeah, those wacky Muslims. Don’t they understand our culture and civilisation? Don’t they know that it’s the major corporations and the small percentage of the wealthy who should be allowed to dictate policy?

Unlikely. Even in Muslim-dominant countries, politicised Modernist Islamist movements, whether in the form of Jamaati Islami, Muslim Brotherhood, and their Maududian and Qutbdian offshoots, are struggling to gain mass acceptance. They’re oddities and querios in their own lands in spite of the fact they’ve been around since the 1940s. If they’re in the political wilderness in their own backyard, I hardly think they posses electoral or mass-movement appeal in the west.

I don’t know how true that is — about the mass acceptance of Islamism in Muslim countries. What about Hamas? Don’t the MB also have strong support in Egypt, despite the attempts of the totalitarian govt (our friends) — and in fact would probably win a fair election. I think the MB and related orgs also have strong support in many other Arab countries such as Bahrain and Tunisia. And doesn’t the fact that they don’t have more power in many countries due not to their lack of electoral appeal but because of the harsh political repression in those countries (a lot of the time supported by the West — but that’s unimportant!).

FANTASTIC POST

That is not to say that they are not dangerous, outfits because they have not been able to remove the advocay of violence and apocalyptic tendencies from within their ideologies.

Which is not to say Iraq has not added fuel to the flames, but it is false to say it – or Palestine for that matter – is the root cause. The root cause is Islamist ambition: to shift the West out of Islamic states and create a Caliph. Its not like OBL has even tried to pretend otherwise.

Let us hope that people take note.

I think these people are staying true to their ideological roots. Fitna is their religion and there isnt anything that they will not use as an excuse to commit the sins that they commit. It isnt foreign policy, it is deviance. Now I know I will get in trouble by you for saying that but its true. There is never an excuse for sin and misguidance.

Or when Blair’s FP advocates tell us Iraq and Guantanamo are “anomalies” in an otherwise just war against terror, and blame muslims of having “loyalty-issues” when they don’t buy it.

Superbly well put.

When we’re talking about foreign policy people really have to look further back than the last ten years and stop getting hung up on which ever party is in power. People like Bin Laden didn’t come along because evil exists in the world, he was essentially created (like Saddam) by other powers and their funding.

Basically take a look at things like the Power of Nightmares for a historical context that seems to get lost in the distractive “Iraw created terrorism” “No it didn’t, what about 911, huh? HUH?” ‘debate’…

Here is an extract.