US journalist James Foley was beheaded by ISIS militants. Source: Supplied
SO if we pretend the nasty, beheading Islamist extremists aren’t really there, they’ll just go away. Right?
Like toddlers learning to play hide and seek, we can just cover our eyes and proclaim that if we can’t see them, they must not be able to see us. The denial is that silly.
The liberal Left in the Western world are the “useful idiots” of the Islamist extremists, encouraging us to see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil. Just weeks ago they were marching in the streets and boycotting coffee shops because Israel’s deadly self-defence killed not only Hamas extremists but hundreds of the Palestinian civilians with whom they had surrounded themselves.
Yet the protesters fall mute when thousands of Muslims are slaughtered by the Islamic State in deliberate displays of bloodlust.
When Australians join the Islamic State and we see a seven-year-old Sydney boy holding a severed head, the useful voices condemn not the beheadings but the publication of the images (even though they are suitably censored for public display).
When US journalist James Foley was decapitated in a subhuman act of depravity, the usefuls railed against pictures showing the last moments of his life because they conveyed a sense of the horror to come. “So today The Daily Telegraph becomes an ISIS propagandist, nice work,” tweeted ABC opinion leader Jonathan Green, after the paper published a photo on its front page.
Never mind that Foley himself had declared in interviews that he was driven by the need, for the good of humanity, to capture and share images of these brutal realities.
On Radio National the issue du jourwas how to deal with the “images” rather than how to prevent more of these acts, let alone how we tackle the global and home-grown Islamist extremism driving these atrocities.
On ABC TV’s Insiders David Marr downplayed the threat embodied by “depraved clown” Khaled Sharrouf and surmised Australians were “not at risk because of this”.
Never mind his 150 fellow citizens fighting with the Islamic State, or the hundreds from Indonesia, Britain and Europe. According to Marr, “there is a tide of fear and hatred pulsing out” not from Syria or Iraq but from our media.
It is difficult to fathom why the Left adopts this attitude. We can all understand it is easier to dodge difficult threats and preach harmony, but they can’t all be that timid.
There could be no excuse for failing to understand the jihadist extremism itself.
It is hard to imagine commentators would take seriously the constant demonising of Israel and the US and actually believe the extremist propaganda that says their actions stem from a political grievance that can be assuaged by a more accommodating foreign policy stance from the West.
They would have learned from the events of the past six years, when Barack Obama’s apologetic speeches and isolationist posture have seen the US abandon Iraq, plan for the same in Afghanistan, give Iran more time and passively watch red lines being crossed in Syria.
For this meekness, America is given the Islamic State and the beheading of its journalists. Islamic extremist terrorism can’t be negotiated away or bargained with, and if nations in the Middle East, Africa, Europe or Southeast Asia ignore it, it will strengthen rather than wither.
This much we know: deadly terrorist successes and the establishment of a shambolic desert state won’t satisfy the goal of a global caliphate, an aim for which the extremists are prepared to kill, die and wait.
As former army chief Peter Leahy calmly warned us, we must be prepared to combat this threat for decades to come. In January last year Julia Gillard declared that the 9/11 decade was over.
“Osama bin Laden is dead,” she said.
“Al-Qa’ida’s senior leadership is fractured. Jemaah Islamiah has been decimated in our region.” It wasn’t quite a “mission accomplished” moment but she did say “our work in Iraq had been completed” before going on to recognise some terrorist threat would endure.
Clearly, the then prime minister and her advisers thought the new national security focus would be on nations rather than on terror groups, and on regional instability rather than global threats.
To some of us, there was always a bit of Pollyanna about this. “Australia is in serious danger of deluding itself on the serious issue of Islamic extremist terrorism,” I wrote last May.
And while no one could have predicted precisely what has unfolded in Iraq and Syria, it was always clear that continued US engagement and strength against extremism was required. The hydra-headed beast of Islamist terrorism won’t be defeated in a generation, let alone a decade.
And aside from the range of catastrophic scenarios that could yet play out in the Middle East, the return of jihadists from those killing fields to Australia and Southeast Asia poses a risk too frightening to downplay. Islamist extremism won’t be defeated by selfie campaigns on Twitter, denial on the ABC or, as we have seen, by Israel vacating Gaza.
It won’t be defeated by denouncing the politically moderate members of Muslim communities who are those most likely to suffer the repercussions of extremism from all directions.
Nor will it be defeated by other Muslim leaders snubbing our Prime Minister when he seeks co-operation.
It will take clear-eyed, mature and strong action carried out with diligence and patience for a long while to come. Averting our eyes won’t help.
