The bloody price paid for liberal weakness
THE timing and location were chosen on purpose to murder and maim as many as possible. The weapon – packed with nails, nuts and bolts – was selected to inflict the worst injuries on survivors.
Most cruelly of all, the killer deliberately targeted a concert by a singer popular with children and young teenage girls, apparently to cause maximum grief and outrage to decent human feelings.
If yet more proof had been needed that we in the liberal West shelter hate-filled enemies set on destroying our way of life, it was to be found on Monday night amid the blood and tears at Manchester Arena.
After the worst mass murder in Britain since 7/7, the first thoughts of this paper are with the victims and their families – the maimed and those viciously robbed of parents, beloved children and siblings. But we owe them more than defiant declarations that terrorism cannot win, or pieties about standing united in our grief.
Indeed, though the full details of the suicide bomber’s background have yet to emerge, we know enough to draw vital lessons from this latest in a long series of atrocities committed by fanatics in the name of Islam.
It was 15 years ago when a leading politician said of another mass killing: ‘These events are a terrible reminder that freedom demands eternal vigilance. And for too long we have not been vigilant.
‘We have harboured those who hated us, tolerated those who threatened us and indulged those who weakened us.’
The speaker was Margaret Thatcher and the events she referred to were the attacks of 9/11. Her words are even truer today, after Western politicians’ reckless interventions in Iraq, Libya and elsewhere have inflamed Islamist fanaticism. But how much longer must we agonise before acting on them?
In every society, a balance must be struck between citizens’ security and their civil liberties. As the Manchester atrocity brings home so painfully, the truth must surely be faced that the balance in Britain urgently needs readjustment to keep us safe.
The fact is that more than 3,000 jihadis are based in the UK, with hundreds more returning from Syria or sending their wives and families home. Yet thanks to the wretched Nick Clegg’s hand-wringing over civil liberties, a mere seven are subject to terrorism prevention orders.
Meanwhile, with lethal irresponsibility, tax-avoiding social media giants spread terrorist recruitment and bomb-making videos, untouched by the law.
As for suicide bomber Salman Abedi, he follows an all-too familiar pattern, having apparently been radicalised in Britain after his parents were given refuge here – in their case from Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya.
Worryingly, he is also believed to have attracted the security services’ attention, but there is no suggestion that he had been put under surveillance.
How many more atrocities must we suffer before we routinely tag suspects and stop putting their human rights above our safety? How many more returning jihadis and their brainwashed wives must we welcome home to walk our streets freely?
Every decent British Muslim will join the Mail in demanding tougher powers for the security services to root out and monitor those who drag their religion’s good name into the mire.
As for our would-be prime minister, Jeremy Corbyn – who has joined demonstrations to support IRA murderers and shared platforms with Middle Eastern fanatics – he likes to speak in abstractions about terrorism. He should ask the families of those maimed and killed in Manchester what it actually means. They know. And as long as we go on harbouring those who hate us, tolerating those who threaten us and indulging those who weaken us, they won’t be the last to suffer its hideous reality.