Miliband’s argument is bananas

One of the great mysteries of British politics is why David Miliband has a reputation for being a deep-thinker. Far from being a bold new agenda for British foreign policy, his piece in today’s Guardian, which Pete reviewed earlier, is, as Melanie argues, embarrassingly shallow.

First, it is hardly ground-breaking to observe that ‘war on terror’ is an inadequate and misleading phrase. Back in August 2004, President Bush conceded this point: 

“We actually misnamed the war on terror; it ought to be the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies, who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world.”

Second, Miliband is setting up a straw man when he says that supporters of the military action in Gaza think that Israel can ‘kill its way out of the problems’ it faces. If the Israeli government or the Bush administration thought this, they wouldn’t be committed to a two-state solution and be desperately trying to bolster the Palestinian Authority.

Now, we come to the meat, or more accurately the Quorn, of Miliband’s piece:

“The idea of a “war on terror” gave the impression of a unified, transnational enemy, embodied in the figure of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. The reality is that the motivations and identities of terrorist groups are disparate. Lashkar-e-Taiba has roots in Pakistan and says its cause is Kashmir. Hezbollah says it stands for resistance to occupation of the Golan Heights. The Shia and Sunni insurgent groups in Iraq have myriad demands. They are as diverse as the 1970s European movements of the IRA, Baader-Meinhof, and Eta.”

It is quite scary if no one in the Foreign Office can grasp that unlike the IRA and the Baader-Meinhof gang, all these groups do share a political philosophy. They are all Islamist groups. Yes, they might have particular causes that they use as recruiting tools but their agenda is far broader than that. If Hezbollah’s sole motivation really is the Golan as Miliband claims, then why did Hezbollah members go to Iraq to kill coalition troops?