The Uniter

He's not a divider. Chris Floyd:

Top UK cabinet official Hilary Benn (son of the inestimable old Labour lion, Tony Benn), has finally admitted in public what every sentient being realized more than five years ago: that the "War on Terror" is a propaganda ploy that has only enhanced the stature and support of Islamic extremists, by imputing world-historical significance to criminal acts by small groups.

As noted, this is extremely old news; but the self-evident bullshit of the "War on Terror" trope has not prevented it from permeating public discourse and distorting public policy across the globe. Practically every government in the world has used the "War on Terror" as a justification for augmenting its power, repressing dissent and stifling the liberty of its people. And, as Benn notes, it has given every little knot of religious cranks a heady dose of inflated self-importance, being told that they have the power to bring down Western civiliation if they aren't stopped – much as the yellow elephants of America's trembly Cheeto Brigade bloggers have been puffed up by the notion that they are engaging in World War III (or IV, depending on the flavor of crankery) against the Islamofascists, just like Grandpappy facing down Hitler. (Except, you know, without all the bullets and blood and marching and stuff.)

I suppose Benn's remarks, and the change in the UK's official policyspeak, should be welcomed in the "better late than never" department. But this change in rhetoric will certainly not stop the British government – under Blair or his long-time co-conspirator, Gordon Brown – from continuing its construction of a modern-day "police state lite" whose draconian strictures already make the Bush Administration look like, well, Tony Benn or Tom Paine. Nor does Hilary Benn acknowledge the also obvious and oft-confirmed role of the policies of the Anglo-American coalition in fomenting and exacerbating terrorism as the angry and revengeful asymmetrical response to state terror on a massive scale, as in the monstrous war crime in Iraq, which has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people and sparked a Biblical-scale exodous of refugees fleeing the conquered land...