Islamic Extremism

Tony Blair has published a defence of his actions in Iraq and is now arguing for more intervention due to the ISIS extremists taking over the north of the country. In rebuttal, General Sir Michael Rose accuses him of self delusion whilst Boris Johnson writes in the Telegraph 
" I have come to the conclusion that Tony Blair has finally gone mad".
He continues
"He wrote an essay on his website on Sunday that struck me as unhinged in its refusal to face facts. In discussing the disaster of modern Iraq he made assertions that are so jaw-droppingly and breathtakingly at variance with reality that he surely needs professional psychiatric help."
I do hope both Boris' and the Telegraph's lawyers passed what what was written!

To me, it seems quite clear that the war in Iraq served to cause those Islamic organisations and countries which never had any animosity towards Britain to become "anti-Western", and for many to adopt extremist attitudes. Not only do we have ISIS operating in Iraq and Syria but also Boko Harem in Nigeria as well as al-Shabaab in Kenya, all of which are Islamic extremists prepared to kill and maim anyone who doesn't agree with their creed.

The worrying part, to me, is what is happening in this country. There are some 3 million Muslims living here and in the past year about another 300,000 people have been given British citizenship, the majority, one must assume coming from our erstwhile colonies in the Indian sub-continent, as EU citizens coming here have no reason to take out British citizenship.

Now if just a tenth of 1% of those Muslims in this country are extremists, that would represent a considerable force of some 3,000 or so who, if ISIS is anything to go by, could cause considerable havoc.

In order to visualise what damage such a small force could do, you only have to look at the damage that the IRA caused here. More to the point, one has to remember that the IRA had very little support here, whereas Muslim extremists could readily hid amongst amongst their own sort, who, whilst they would not necessarily approve of the extremists' action, are unlikely to do anything to prevent them if only because their religion effectively prohibits them from "telling tales".

Remember also that the IRA did their best to avoid getting killed or captured and this would to some extent limited their possible targets. In contrast, Islamic extremists, have no concern about being killed fighting for their cause, believing that they will end up in Paradise.

As the Israelis have discovered, it is extremely difficult to deal with suicide bombers as any attempt to arrest or search them merely leads to them detonating their bomb.

I just hope our authorities have given some real though to what could happen here and have some viable plans for dealing with such a situation when potentially some 5% of the population could be giving tacit support to the such extremists.

Obama Knows Best!

A few days ago, Obama, through the medium of one of his ambassadors, lectured Britain on the dangers of us leaving the EU.  (here)
Today, White House officials have told a US journalist that the Israeli Prime Minister doesn't know what is good for Israel.  (here).
I wonder which is the next country to be told how to run their affairs by this self-proclaimed expert who can't seem to get his own country's finances under control.  But then, like Tony Blair, he probably has no idea what to do about the situation at home, and its so much more interesting dabbling in other people's affairs.

Cameron: "Britain is to blame for the world's problems"

I was incensed to read in this morning's Daily Telegraph   
"Cameron: UK caused many of the world's problems"
He may have been to University, but he clearly learned his history from some politically correct source and it clearly bears little resemblance to the history that I was taught at school, or indeed reasonably accessible facts.
He demonstrated his total lack of historical knowledge on his last visit to the US when  he was apparently totally unaware of the fact that Britain entered World War 2 against Germany in 1939, long before America. In view of his ignorance in not being aware of what happened as recently as 1940, one would have thought that he would have shown enough sense to keep his mouth firmly closed about earlier times.

This "taking the blame" culture seems to have stemmed from Blair who though it necessary to take the blame for the Irish potato famine, and in this sense Cameron has shown that he is truly the "Heir to Blair". Now apparently we caused the world's problems.
I would argue that this is totally contrary to the facts.

In general, the Colonial powers kept the peace for many years in countries which are now racked by civil war. This applied not only in the British Colonies, but also in the French, Dutch and Belgian colonies.
Yes, we went there to exploit the natural resources, but what is wrong with that? We weren't stealing them, because no-one had any interest in them. But at the same time, it was in our interest to keep the peace, we stopped the warring tribes and were totally impartial in our actions, never favouring one tribe over another. We maintained peace in large areas of the Indian sub-continent, through Burma, Malaysia, Singapore (an unoccupied swamp) as far as Borneo. And all this with probably less personel than the average County Council today! Peace reigned, the standards of living of the indigenous inhabitants improved (demonstrated by the rapidly rising birthrate) and we built many of the new facilities such as  railways and harbours.
Then came independence for these countries and so-called democratic governments, followed by dictatorships and chaos. I cannot think of any of our ex-colonies except Australia, Canada and New Zealand that any reasonable person would now consider to have a democratic government..
Does anybody think that Pakistan, where Cameron made his ridiculous remarks, has a democratic government? How can we possibly be responsible for what is happening there where political leaders are routinely assassinated, and those who survive go to live elsewhere with huge fortunes?
Look at Africa; currently there is civil war in the Ivory Coast, we have had genocide in Rwanda and in the Congo whilst Rhodesia has been reduced from one of the richest countries in Africa with probably the highest standard of living, to one where people are daily dying of starvation and their life expectancy is one of the lowest on the continent, being less than half ours in the UK.
How on earth can the actions of Britain (or any of the other ex-colonial powers) when they were in control be responsible for what has happened since?
As far as I am concerned the man's a total idiot.