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1828 and All That

Wednesday, 2nd January 2008

The attempts to implicate President Musharraf in the assassination — inevitable as election fever mingles with blood feud in Pakistan — are nonetheless a red herring. It may well be that the terrorist cell responsible for Ms Bhutto’s death had links with the Pakistani intelligence service or ISI, which has long given succour to the Taleban and its al-Qa’eda affiliates. Musharraf has not always prevailed against such forces — the Waziristan Accord of September 2006 was effectively an admission that large parts of Pakistan were beyond his control. But he deserves credit for what he has achieved, especially in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. In the roll call of Pakistan’s leaders since partition in 1947, Musharraf is one of the more successful and enlightened.

Mr Brown has emphasised the ‘criminality’ of global terror, but the use of such language misrepresents the scale of the Islamists’ ambitions, their twisted fervour and the ferocity of their will. The PM is on more solid ground when he seeks symmetries with the ideological struggle of the Cold War.

The two conflicts are, of course, hugely different, not least because the confrontation with the Soviet bloc was fought according to well-established rules. The first rule of the Islamist strategy is that there are no rules. But Mr Brown is right that this is as much a battle for ‘hearts and minds’ as it is a war of attrition in Baghdad, the Afghan mountains and the heartlands of Hezbollah.

Blair has gone, and Bush’s successor will be elected in November. But al-Qa’eda and its network of franchises will still be here when the next President is sworn into office in January 2009. The bitter truth that we must confront in 2008 is that, whether we like it or not, this will indeed be a long war, fought on many fronts. As Gerry Adams once said of the IRA: they haven’t gone away, you know.

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David Watkins

January 5th, 2008 12:47am

>...those who argue, ludicrously, that atrocities such as the 7/7 bombings would not have happened without the removal of Saddam Hussein in 2003. This argument may, just possibly, be mistaken. But ludicrous? It is backed by the posthumous, tape-recorded testimony testimony of the 7/7 bombers. Presumably they knew their reasons better than anyone, and since they knew that they were going to their deaths they had no obvious motive for lying. I have purchased the Spectator for over forty years. Very often I have sharply disagreed with its editorial opinions. This is, I think, the first time a Spectator editorial has grossly insulted my intelligence.

A child of our time

From the economic and psychological bedlam of the global downturn has emerged a particularly dangerous false dichotomy: namely, that there is somehow a choice for ministers over the next few years between economic reconstruction and the repair of Britain’s broken society, and that the government (whether Labour or Conservative) must prioritise the former at the expense of the latter.

Diary

Anne Robinson

The daughter and I spent the last few days before the American election in Arizona.

Politics

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

‘A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous “helicopter drop” of money.’ So said Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Fed, in a speech about how to ward off the ‘extremely small’ chance of deflation, which he delivered in 2002.