The 'ism of Appeasement

It is logically unsurprising that terrorist incidents targeting the military have occurred in Canada, but in this most peaceable of countries, it is always a shock. The plot to behead the prime minister was shocking up to a point but it was nipped in the bud and assumed a semblance almost of unreality. The terrible disaster of the bombing of the Air India 747 that killed 268 people in 1985 actually occurred in Irish airspace and was an intra-Indian sectarian act. It seemed less intimate than a gunman running through the halls of the federal Parliament, or even someone running down two soldiers in St. Jean, Quebec. Mortal, random assaults on uniformed members of our armed forces within this country and especially at the War Memorial in Ottawa, which honours all those scores of thousands, almost all volunteers, who have died in just wars for Canada and the cause of freedom throughout the world, followed by an eruption into the House of Parliament, is even more unambiguously shocking.

Though nothing mitigates the sadness of the fate of the victims, there are factors that should mitigate alarm: while apparently in sympathy with Islamic extremism, the perpetrators of the crimes at St. Jean and Ottawa were, as terrorists go, flee-on-foot amateurs, not really suicidal, not especially well-armed, and not evidently connected to any organization that imposed any discipline or tactical cunning on their activities. The fact that a violent extremist was able to prorupt into the Centre Block of Parliament and race down the corridor to the Library, causing the Conservative caucus to hide under desks and in broom closets and pour out the fire exit, is not so much a demonstration of the vulnerability of our public officials and institutions to violent extremists as a confirmation of how overwhelmingly peaceable the country is. Anyone who saw the depressing spectacle of the U.S. Secret Service chasing a woman (Miriam Carey) and her child around the approaches to the United States Capitol and finally killing her in 2013, although she apparently was only confused, can be grateful that our own comparable security arrangements have been so relaxed. And though everyone entering the Parliament building should be screened, at least cursorily, the facts remain that the intruder in Ottawa struck lethally in a public square, injured no one within the main Parliament building, and was despatched by security without a blazing fire-fight and with no collateral damage. The role of the Sergeant-at-Arms, Kevin Vickers, seems to have especially calm, efficient, and distinguished.

Of course, I have no standing to prejudge facts that will have to await investigation, but from all appearances, the strong and absolutely correct position the prime minister and the government have taken in joining the anti-Islamic State (ISIS) coalition has apparently generated the deranged resentment of some inhabitants of this country; there is no evidence that any foreign power or organization had anything to do with either the St. Jean or Ottawa incident. (If they had, the outrages would have been more professional and destructive.) Again, all countries have homicidal lunatics in their populations, and usually when they go over the top they plan a crime that enables them to kill a sequence or a bunch of victims. Norway is one of the few countries in the world as tranquil as Canada and even there, in 2011, an extreme white-supremacist killed eight people with a bomb in front of the prime minister's office and 69 people two hours later at a summer camp. While it is no consolation for the victims and those close to them, and the whole country is rightly outraged, In the range of possibilities for the violent and criminally diseased mind, the offenders in the last week in St. Jean and Ottawa get low marks in all areas-throw-weight, delivery system, infiltration, and even and though one is too many, body count.

Obviously, security will have to be tightened, uniformed representatives of Canada's armed forces should be more vigilant than has been their need and habit while in-country, and everyone, without succumbing to paranoia or a culture of denunciation, should be more watchful. But the greatest potential threat is from international terrorist organizations that train their members thoroughly, arm them heavily, and where adherents are often happy to go down for the cause, if that will maximize the massacre of innocents. Our security agencies and specialists don't need to be told this, but Canada certainly must be more careful than it has ever needed to be before to monitor and defeat attempts to infiltrate the country by violent international organizations, motivated by suicidal fanaticism and made unprecedentedly sinister by the lights of perverted science.

These terrible incidents demonstrate how correct Stephen Harper and the government has been to align Canada absolutely against agents of terror and their sponsors and alongside all civilized governments. I prayerfully hope not to hear any snivelling and waffling to the effect that all would be well if we just practised neutrality between terrorists and their opponents closer to the epicentre of these events, especially the sectarian and national protagonists in the Middle East. One of the minor benefits of this nastiest of all terrorist eras is that it is now clear that the hostility of these mutants is not entirely focused on Israel and in fact makes little distinction between Jews, Christians, and inadequately zealous Muslims. What is afoot and was involved in Ottawa yesterday was a conflict between absolute evil and civilization. There must be no ambiguity about where Canada stands. And the authorities were correct to pull the passport of the apparent author of the attack in St. Jean; we have a duty not to unleash such people on the world (where they could still murder Canadians), though in retrospect, the suspect should have been watched or detained. Less edifying than the prime minister's strong leadership on the issue was his planted question in Parliament from a Conservative MP asking him to comment on the St. Jean attack. We can safely assume that the leaders of the opposition are just as appalled at these incidents as Stephen Harper is and any attempt to turn domestic terrorist acts into an election issue would not succeed.

It is time that the political leaders of all governments except the few that assist terrorism, made a statement somewhat like Ronald Reagan's reference to the Soviet Union as an "evil empire," in 1983. There are significant aspects to Islam that are gratuitously violent, even by the most blood-curdling standards of the Bible. We live in a predominantly Judeo-Christian country and civilization that equably tolerates other faiths, tendencies, and cultures, but we should stop scampering around the edges of the problem that Islam has a considerable propensity to violence, vastly exceeding anything in our tradition. No sane person reproaches anyone the practice of Islam in a way that does not threaten the rights and dignity of others. But a substantial minority of Muslims adhere or at least sympathize with violent Islam. For them, we must maintain high standards of international law and domestic justice, but brand them as evil and reply to them with overwhelming force. We should hear no more of these effete complaints about "disproportionate responses" by Israel to the murderers of Israeli women and children. Those extreme Islamists who wish to die must be pre-emptively accommodated. Silence and inaction are complicity. We must never forget Franklin D. Roosevelt's statement to his country (in January, 1941), that "We must always be wary of those who 'with sounding brass and tinkling cymbal' would preach the 'ism of appeasement."