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Why can we blame refugee policy for terrorism in Europe but not foreign policy?

December 28, 2016 at 4:38 pm

When WikiLeaks published an article in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks suggesting that aggressive British, US and French foreign policy might be held partly responsible for the killings in Paris, Julian Assange bore the predictable brunt of an outraged phalanx of armchair warriors. The neoconservatives, muscular liberals and weekend international affairs experts piled into him. It was a familiar pattern. They pulled the “apologist” card, a nonsense term that means anyone not wailing ostentatiously about deaths at the hands of terrorists is actually a heartless traitor.

It was as if foreign policy by Western governments towards Muslims countries is always executed so perfectly, and is always so morally unimpeachable, that to do anything after it backfires apart from grovel pathetically in the face of its brilliance has become political blasphemy of the most serious kind. Witnessing the vitriolic verbal and written assault on Assange, you would have been mistaken for thinking that it was he who had been wielding the AK47s or strapping on the suicide belt.

When the French launched their retaliatory air strikes, licensed by this baying commentariat intent on puffing out their own chests, Francois Hollande did so with such haste that he hit the wrong target altogether; he even managed to bomb the wrong country. His presumption was that it had been Daesh that had hit Paris, but it turned out it was Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, which is based in Yemen; nevertheless, the French air force bombed Raqqa, in Syria.

By way of contrast, the under-rated German Chancellor Angela Merkel, perhaps the only ethical conservative leader on the continent, has responded to the Christmas market attack in Berlin with textbook brilliance. Her compassion towards Syrian refugees is beyond doubt; she is not being swayed by xenophobic critics of her policies. In time, historians will smile much more kindly on her political and very human compassion than anything that the anti-refugee sociopaths can ever come up with.

Instead of knee-jerk air strikes characterised by civilian casualties and negative headlines that play into the hands of anti-Western propagandists, the German intelligence services have led the charge. Their spies have been behind several highly damaging leaks about Daesh since the group emerged, including the release of the names of twenty-two thousand fighters. The sharpest end of the anti-Daesh operation has seen various Kurdish groups being given small arms to take the fight to the extremists more directly. Merkel has yet to order any more bombing, which is what lesser politicians with inferiority complexes, usually from civilian backgrounds, so often do. Perhaps the only mistake she has made was not to warn her electorate that a revenge attack was probably on the way.

Of course, those who resent the success of the European Union have found it perfectly acceptable not to blame the terrorist who actually drove that lorry in Berlin, but instead blame the most successful peace project in global history (with the possible exception of China), the EU. Whether it is the Schengen Agreement or just being a member of the EU at all, it seems that there are some policies of Western governments which can be blamed for terrorism, and some which cannot. None of Merkel’s critics have been called “terrorist apologists”, even though they are in effect blaming German foreign policy, much like Assange did towards the US, Britain and France.

It is right that they are “allowed” to do this; to attempt to explain what happened in Berlin not just by saying that the terrorist himself is foremost to blame, but that the German government might also have acted a little differently. It just seems odd that this licence to criticise expires the moment one mentions Western foreign policy towards Muslim countries, both contemporary and historic.

In 1979, there were 1,019 terrorist attacks in Europe; the highest on record. The Schengen deal on open borders was introduced in 1985. Today, we actually live in an era when terrorist attacks are relatively rare, albeit more bloody when they do occur; during the 70s, 80s and 90s, for example, ten terrorist attacks per week took place in Europe. Likewise for those critics who erroneously pin the blame on Merkel’s slightly madcap but wonderful refugee scheme; today’s terrorist attacks are sometimes committed by people who have masqueraded as refugees, that’s true; but more often than not they are done by those who have lived for years in the countries they attacked, or were even born there.

While it is demonstrably incorrect to blame German government policy towards either refugees or Brussels, I stress that I do not intend to call out those who make such claims unfairly – beyond their obvious indifference to fact or reason. Nor do I intend to smear them as stooges of Al-Qaeda or Daesh, as they tend to do to their opponents; nor, indeed, claim that they are traitors or “terrorist apologists”. They are expressing an opinion which should be heard and respected, even if not accepted.

I just wish that these same people would offer the same degree of latitude and grace to those on the anti-imperialist left. If you can blame a Western government’s policy towards Brussels for a terrorist attack, and not be excoriated and then excommunicated from public life, can someone explain why you can’t criticise that same government’s policy towards, for example, Baghdad, without facing such a sanction?

Is Western foreign policy such a sacred cow that we cannot ever blame it for terrorist attacks, when we can blame immigration or EU policies all the time? If you can “blame” a country’s refugee policy for terrorism in Europe, why can’t you “blame” foreign policy? I am yet to hear a reasonable answer, but any and all are welcome to at least try and provide one.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.