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From: Category: Life Date: 14 August 2006 Time: 12:33 PM Review: I went to the MCB's website looking for the statement or any response to attacks on it from Kim Howell's et al. It doesn't appear to be there, though there is, at time of writing, a headline reading: 'It's undeniable - UK foreign policy is endangering all of us' linking to an article that doesn't really seem to be about this. http://www.mcb.org.uk/ The response in yesterday's observer was similar to yours, E - we cannot allow foreign policy to be dictated by terrorists. This seems surprising given that the left wing press has been happy to blame Blair's policies for putting us in the terrorist firing line up to now and a little unfair, though I can't be sure since I can't find the original statement. To respond like this suggests that the MCB is actually threatening terrorist attacks, which is a pretty outrageous assertion in itself and a pretty hard slap in the face to the MPs and Lords who signed it. From what I can gather, the rather finer point they were trying to make was that the UK's less conscionable acts abroad, committed without democratic accountability, have made young Muslims in the UK feel that they're own government is at war against them and that mainstream political activism does not work. Still, it is a very fine point indeed and not without its problems. It sounds like a threat and it sounds like justification, but I don't think it is. At best, you could say it's a kind of realpolitik approach that says, one of the ways to prevent terrorism has got to be to clean up our act. At the very worst, you could say they've tried to use the fact of terrorism as a way of criticising policies they don't like, which I agree would be a pretty doubtful form of opportunism. If so, I'd say the respondents have been guilty of at least equally immoral opportunism, attempting to convert a criticism of policy into a justification for terrorism and thereby nullify the criticism.