After the pitifully inappropriate ‘Shock and Awe’ we had the campaign to win ‘Hearts and Minds’ followed by the grim realisation that we needed to prepare for the ‘Long War’. Every war produces neologisms and turns of phrase and the War on Terror has certainly been no different, (incidentally we have US GIs and WWII to thank for enabling us to turn the f-word into a handy, all-encompassing adjective).

Retired colonels and armchair generals can make a decent living by commenting on the War on Terror and as America thrashed around in an attempt to work out its response to 9/11, the prevailing consensus was that we should clench our teeth and prepare for the ‘Long War’ against Al Qaeda. The Long War strategy was conceived by the British as part of their struggle against the IRA in the early 1980s. The idea was to contain the IRA, infiltrate it and outflank it politically; the Long War in Ulster lasted thirty years the consensus is that the war against Al Qaeda will take a generation or two more.

Predicting the outcome of a counter-insurgency is a mug’s game, but some rather interesting developments have occurred rather quickly. In my debut blog I commented that the United States was free to declare a strategic victory in Iraq if it so chose and this week CIA Director Michael Hayden came close to doing just that. Reporting on the progress of the fight against Al Qaeda Hayden declared the “Near strategic defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat of Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for Al Qaeda globally.” Just two years ago the CIA had reported that the Iraq War was a cause celebre for global jihadists but Hayden now states that Al Qaeda’s brutal actions in that country have lost it the hearts and minds of the Muslim world. The CIA has also maintained the offensive pressure on the organisation and two top Al Qaeda commanders have been killed this year alone. According to Hayden “The ability to kill and capture key members of al-Qaeda continues, and keeps them off balance - even in their best safe haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border”.

The CIA is the first to stress that any achievements in the struggle against Al Qaeda are fragile and reversible and the United States must remain on the ball for many decades to come. I have no doubt that further Al Qaeda atrocities will occur on European and, perhaps, American soil; attacks creating casualties on the scale of 9/11 are entirely possible. Yet even if Al Qaeda retained its ability to strike at the West what would it achieve? After 9/11 Bin Laden was hugely popular in the Arab world but mass casualty attacks in Iraq have caused his support to haemorrhage. Massacres of civilians in Europe or America would isolate Al Qaeda even further from mainstream Islam. Al Qaeda, it seems, is doomed by its own ideology.

I strongly disagree with the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and I would be pleased to see George W. charged with criminal negligence regarding his profligacy with the lives of his citizen soldiers. Yet I find myself strangely glad that he remained in power once the decision to invade was taken. Bush’s unassailable resolve has allowed him to stand fast in Iraq, even as thousands of Americans returned home crippled or insane or in body bags, for no visible gains. Many with softer hearts and weaker stomachs would have pulled out long ago, no doubt precipitating a disaster far worse than that which we have already seen. For Iraq, if nothing else, drew Al Qaeda into a battle it has emphatically lost, although this has come at a cost in lives that I find hard to justify. Ordinary Iraqis have emphatically rejected Salafist ideology and kicked Al Qaeda fanatics out of their country. For a naïve, uneducated and unworldly man such as Bin Laden this will have been a mystifying and crippling psychological blow. Jihadists made the same mistake in Algeria and Egypt in the 1990s and more recently the people of countries such as Turkey, Jordan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have become revolted by the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent Muslims by fanatical jihadis.

Indeed Bin Laden is no longer the celebrity he once was; he may still be free but few leaders have been able to exert a decisive influence on world events by sitting in a cave for years on end. Recently Bin Laden tried to soften the disappointment of his followers over the reversal of fortunes in Iraq by calling for a new Jihad against Jews in Israel and abroad, not the most original Jihad broadcast of all time. Ayman al-Zawahiri, (the gobby one with the even more punchable face) recently held a webcast with Al Qaeda supporters in which he was forced to defend the group’s record on civilian deaths. Ever the charmer Zawahiri blamed “unintentional errors” or enemies for using civilians as “shields”. Essentially Al Qaeda has boxed itself into a corner and it has little room for manoeuvre. The killing or capture of Bin Laden and Zawahiri may even fatally unhinge the group; certainly it would be a devastating blow to an organisation already on the backfoot.

I’m sure Al Qaeda will survive for many years to come but its operational abilities may have been compromised to an extent that we could not have believed possible barely a year ago. What I think may happen as a result is that the struggle that originally began in 1998 against Al Qaeda will be subsumed by a struggle against Al Qaeda inspired groups and then against radical Islam more generally. There is plenty of evidence that groups inspired, but not controlled by Al Qaeda pose a huge threat to our security. The arrest of two white Muslim converts on terrorism charges in recent weeks underscores the fact that Wahabbist inspired terror remains a long term threat. Even if that threat diminishes a nuclear armed Iran and its protégé groups in the Middle East will perhaps pose the most challenging questions in the coming century. And then there is Islam itself, can an unreformed and often supremacist religion be fully integrated into the modern world? I have yet to see anyone in power address this question in a calm and reasonable manner. The war against terrorism, religious dogma and fascism will surely continue far into the future.

While I would not be surprised if it carries out further mass casualty attacks in the near future, Al Qaeda’s star may fall far quicker than we imagined was possible in 2001. Provided that the West keeps up the pressure and doesn’t loose its resolve Al Qaeda will continue to disappear from the public consciousness. Bin Laden may never be brought to justice but he may become the next best thing, an irrelevance. Yet ten years into the Long War it is worth remembering that other cliché to come out of Ulster’s troubles; we have to be lucky all the time, they only have to be lucky once.

The square is surrounded by unfeasibly wide avenues and intimidating monolithic buildings; the savage sun beats down and scours the vast desert of concrete paving slabs; PLA soldiers strut and stroll and stand guard, watched over by the avuncular image of Chairman Mao. Tiananmen Square is a hostile, unforgiving, faintly depressing place. It was designed by Mao to proclaim the greatness of the Communist Party and its immense scale seems intended to crush the individual human soul. To stand at the heart of Communist China, amongst the ghosts of the butchered democracy movement, it is hard to envisage the flower of democracy taking root in such harsh and brutal surroundings. But Tiananmen Square is not China; it is protected by a small army of soldiers, police and secret service agents that sometimes seem to outnumber the tourists. Yet they stand powerless and bemused as a rival army of foreign tourists pass under Mao’s image and stream into the Forbidden City. There is something sweetly satisfying in watching the legions of garishly dressed, camera toting tourists pass under Mao’s gaze. They represent the failure of his ideology and the end of his grip on Chinese society. It’s as if his spirit is forced to watch as hordes of foreign tourists and nouveau riche Chinese parade past and flaunt the victory of capitalism over Maoism. And perhaps that image sums up China as a whole, the Communist Party continues to maintain its iron grip on power as slowly but surely the country is forced to open up, develop and modernise.

My trip to China was framed by the tragic events in Sichuan Province. The earthquake caused a hundred thousand individual tragedies but for a westerner it was particularly galling to see the regime so obviously and egregiously use the disaster for its own ends. Despite being a developing country many buses and trains in China have LCD televisions installed; the regime is guaranteed a captive audience for its pre-approved news items. The Chinese coverage made no mention of foreign aid or the corruption that caused many state schools to collapse and entomb their pupils while neighbouring buildings survived. No, the regime’s reportage consisted of images of Hu Jintao studiously looking at maps of the disaster zone and waving his arms in an authoritative manner as well as heroic PLA soldiers saving the lives of their fellow countrymen, building tent cities and parachuting out of aeroplanes. It was all packaged into a montage of moving images, sound tracked by stirring and patriotic music. The Sichuan earthquake shows how the Communist Party now sees itself; it is no longer Communist, nor even particularly ideological; instead it now derives its legitimacy as the guardian of the economy and protector of the people. Effectively it’s only hope is to pass itself off as its ideological arch-nemesis, a Confucian oligarchy.

On the way to the Terracotta Army I chatted to a group of idealistic American student teachers. They recalled how had tried to convince their young Chinese guide of the benefits of democracy, without any success. I myself spoke to a young Chinese gentleman who seemed baffled and hurt by the protests over the Olympic torch. For the Chinese people democracy is not their first priority. They are a fast developing country and they trust the Communist Party to steer them through their Industrial Revolution. The regime’s main goal is to keep itself in power but it cannot be denied that it does also have some benevolent tendencies. I strongly believe in the spread of liberal democracy and universal values, but China is not ready, yet, the implementation of democracy tomorrow would be a recipe for chaos and disorder, yet when I look at China I believe that it will be democratic within the next one hundred years. The Chinese may be the world’s most natural capitalists and once they have been given some elemental freedoms they will only start to demand more over time. Our own history teaches us that the richer citizens become, the more freedoms they demand.

The inequality of Chinese society is embarrassingly obvious; one can see old men foraging through litter bins outside marble fronted Gucci shops. At one restaurant an elderly Chinese lady scavenged the remains of my pizza, almost before I had left the table. To reconcile the huge inequalities in wealth and to maintain the breakneck economic growth is an enormous challenge, and one that may ultimately prove too much for the Communist Party. Furthermore the Chinese people are emphatically pro-Western and city dwellers have already adopted Western fashions and lifestyles. So too will they adopt Western values and beliefs whilst maintaining their own culture and traditions. The only question is how long it will take.

Ok, Ok, I know I said that I wouldn’t be posting anything for a few weeks; however I’ve a few hours to kill before my flight and I just read a footnote of a story on page 38 of The Times. The newspaper reports that Abdulah Salih al-Ajmi, a Kuwaiti freed from Guantanamo Bay last year, blew himself up, along with seven civilians, in Iraq last month. He is the thirty sixth former Guantanamo inmate to have been killed or re-captured whilst committing acts of Jihadi terrorism. Now I am as opposed to the use of Guantanamo Bay as anyone, but let’s not kid ourselves, few of the inmates are potential winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. The majority of inmates are Arabs and Europeans who were captured in Afghanistan in 2001-2002; call me Mr Cynical but I doubt they were in that blighted country to visit the Buddhas of Bamyan or the Minaret of Jam. Other inmates include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Hambali, as well as other alleged top-level Al Qaeda commanders. I deplore the use of detention without trial and the use of torture; even the most evil human beings have the right to a fair trial. Worse, several apparently innocent men have been incarcerated for years on end. However few of those left in Guantanamo are the type of people you’d invite home for a (halal) Sunday lunch.

Furthermore those who criticise the United States' legal approach to terrorism forget how it tackled Al Qaeda before Bush’s election. The U.S. spurned several chances to kill Bin Laden because assasination was deemed to be illegal. Several plans were devised to kidnap Bin Laden and Government lawyers ensured that his handcuffs wouldn’t be too uncomfortable, that any duct tape used wouldn’t chafe his skin and that a special padded chair was constructed to keep the Al Qaeda leader comfortable during his flight to the US. The plans were all cancelled because the Government was worried that Bin Laden might accidentally be injured or killed during the operation. Indeed the U.S. used impeccably legal methods to prosecute those responsible for 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, the 1999 Millennium Plots and the 2000 USS Cole bombing, as well as the Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui cases. Interestingly Ramzi Yousef, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for planning the 1993 attack on the World Trade Centre, has reportedly converted to Christianity and rejected the ideology of Jihadi terrorism. Perhaps he realised who the true criminals are.

This will be my last post for the next few weeks as I’m jetting off for a holiday in China on Friday. In the unlikely event that you find yourself missing these sporadic postings check out these links for similar blogs from like-minded individuals on the secular, pro-democracy, anti-totalitarian left.

Oliver Kamm: http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/

Norman Geras: http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/

Harry’s Place: http://www.hurryupharry.org/

Alternatively if you are a relativist, Islamist sympathising, Globalisation-hating, self-righteous, dictator-appeasing, masochist stopper, then you can always buy The Guardian.

I joke, of course.

“Britain controls today the destinies of some 350,000,000 alien people, unable as yet to govern themselves, and easy victims to rapine and injustice, unless a strong arm guards them. She is giving them a rule that has its faults, no doubt, but such, I would make bold to affirm, as no conquering state ever gave to a dependent state.”

Professor George M. Wrong, 1909

“ . . . Colonialism has led to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and . . . Africans and people of African descent and indigenous peoples were victims of colonialism and continue to be victims of its consequences.”

World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, 2001

To be young, middle class and interested in politics in Britain today invariably means to be opposed to ‘the war’, to be suspicious of the military-industrial-zionist-neocon complex, to hate globalisation and to love the work of, sigh, Banksy, (he’s like, just so political, you know?). Okay you still get the odd Tory Boy and the occasional baby faced neo-socialist (Ed Miliband?) but most of the time to be interested in politics means to hate ‘the system’. You don’t see very many gatherings celebrating how wonderful it is to live in a liberal democracy with a thriving mixed economy do you? Although on second thoughts maybe you do, it’s called shopping; but no-one really holds rallies calling for the creation of a shopper’s paradise. Perhaps this knee-jerk countercultuarlism has its origins in the social revolutions of the late 1960s. Sure the counterculture movement helped end segregation in the Deep South and had a hand in ending the Vietnam War and, granted, it also produced some awesome bands, although personally I prefer The Supremes to Jefferson Airplane. Yet when it ran out of legitimate targets, the counterculture movement start to turn its ire towards any aspect of the dominant Western culture, good or bad. Even worse it started to praise Third World despots such as Mao, Castro and Pol Pot. When one sees anti-globalisation riots or pro-Hezbollah marches today, one understands that the reflex position of many young political radicals is the subconscious mantra ‘Third World Good; First World Bad’.

Now this brings me, by way of a rather convoluted introduction, to the British Empire. For me, white guilt over the Empire is one of the main reasons for the actions of brain dead liberals today; we were the bad guys the Third World were the good guys. Yet to dismiss the Empire as universally bad is simplistic and naïve, and to blame the Empire for the Third World’s problems is to ignore the issues and challenges that we face today.

Let’s start with the bad stuff. Yes, I know, imperialism is morally wrong. I do not in any way advocate imperialism; I’ll leave that to the Communists and the Islamists. Yes the Tasmanian aborigines died from war and disease and yes Britain was a major player in the slave trade. It is also worth remembering that it was African nations that caught and sold the slaves, Britain was the first power to permanently ban slavery, the Royal Navy forced other countries to end the slave trade and Britain set up free states for emancipated slaves. Furthermore slavery has been endemic across the world from prehistoric times to the present day; Saudi Arabia officially abolished slavery in 1962 and slavery is a long way from being eradicated forever.

The Roman Empire also enslaved hundreds of millions but it is not a cause of shame for Italians, partly because it also brought civilisation, science and wealth to millions. One does not look at the Roman Empire as a moral issue but rather as a part of the human historical narrative. I do not wish to glorify the British Empire, I merely want to look at it from a wider historical perspective. For me Britain became Great, not when it gained its empire, but rather when it gave it away.

The moral reasoning against imperialism is that it denies freedom and liberty, yet conversely the British Empire may have been one of the great catalysts for the spread of democracy and liberty across the world. The United States of America, the greatest force for freedom and democracy in world history, is a clone of the British state. They were the first, but not the last colonies to form a state based on the principles of the magna carta, common law, parliamentary democracy and the ideas of the enlightenment. From empire the world’s greatest democracy was born. Many of the world’s other great liberal democracies such as Canada, Austrailia and New Zealand, are also clones of Great Brtain. Their societies were based on British values and were built by British settlers. Of the other territories that made up the empire few, if any, had originally been democratic nation states. India, for example had been divided by the Moghal Empire and warring Hindu Kingdoms; ironically it was the British who were the first to create a united India. Indian peasants lived as serfs before the British came, yet after three hundred years of British rule India emerged as the world’s biggest democracy. In contrast uncolonised China remains a ruthless dictatorship. Many of the other commonwealth states have also emerged as liberal democracies with legal systems based on English common law.

It is a myth that the Empire made its subjects poorer; Hong Kong is richer than Britain, Zimbabwe has a lower standard of living than it did under British rule and the gap between western and African economies is now some four or five times larger than it was during the days of empire. Britain invented and enforced free trade which, if enforced today, could make the whole world rich. The economic historian Gregory Clark has demonstrated that the colonies were free to gain as much from the empire as Britain did. The British founded great trading cities such as Calcutta, Bombay, Hong Kong, Alexandria, Shanghai and Singapore. Any entrepreneur from anywhere in the world could have set up in these cities and taken advantage of the cheap labour, British technology, property rights, capital and access to the biggest market in the world. In short the colonies were free to undercut British workers if they had chosen the path of industrialisation they are only now embarking upon.

There are many other lasting benefits bequeathed to the world by the British Empire. The British remain the biggest investors in infrastructure in India and British built railways remain the country’s most efficient means of transport. Across Africa and even South America British built railways, locomotives and boats continue to provide an efficient means of transport. The Royal Navy nullified the dangers of piracy and opened the oceans up to trade and commerce; modern banking and capitalism soon followed in its wake. The British tried to reform indigenous societies; untouchables in India are still treated as sub-human, how has their life been improved by independence? British education and values were adopted by many colonies; Ghandi was a British educated lawyer, modern India itself was built by British trained civil servants.

Not only did the Britain spread the idea of democracy and liberty across the globe but it stood with its empire to defeat fascism and militarism in Europe and Asia during World War Two. Millions of West Indians, Africans, Irish and Indians volunteered to join the fight against the fascists. Many professed an explicit desire to fight for the motherland, which is strange considering they supposed to have been toiling under the yoke of British oppression. To paraphrase the irrascible imperialist Winston Churchill World War Two was the finest hour for the empire and its subjects. They stood together to defeat fascism in the name of liberty and in doing so they won the freedom to become citizens of their own nation states.

In 1956 Dean Acheson remarked “Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role”, yet to me Britain’s post-imperial years have been amongst the proudest in its long history. The empire launched scores of mainly democratic nation states and Britain has continued to champion freedom and democracy since 1945. In the last 60 years Britain has used its military power to liberate the people of Greece, Malaysia, Brunei, Oman, South Korea, Cyprus, the Falkland Islands, Kuwait, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Kosovo, Afghanistan and, yes, Iraq. Britain was also instrumental in bringing about the downfall of the Communist Empire and Apartheid South Africa. Since 1945 Britain has produced some of the world’s best music, films, literature and television. It invented the jet engine, the computer, the internet and the ipod, it pioneered cloning, stem cell research and discovered DNA. In short it is a world leader in culture, science and technoloy.

I don’t want to glorify empire but merely to recognise it as a historical fact. The world was divided into empires between 10,000 BC and 1989 AD. The injustices of empire should never be forgotten but we should also recognise that we see its benefits all around us in the present day. The age of empires has not disappeared for ever and Britain and the U.S. lead the fight against the neo-imperialists in the deserts of Helmand and Iraq. Dean Acheson was wrong, Britain has found a role; it is a leader of the free world.