Tim Blair makes a good point about Chris Patten's characteristic Euro-rhetoric about terrorism, "root causes," and "symptoms." European states have often been sensibly unsentimental and pragmatic about cracking down on their own domestic terrorists, such as the Baader-Meinhof Gang and the Red Brigade:
Both groups were eventually defeated by force. The terrorists were hunted down, shot dead, or jailed. Neither Italy nor Germany sought to bring Red Brigade idiots or Baader-Meinhof maniacs "into the fold"; they sought to capture them, and (happily) killed many of them as they did so. They did not "engage" them, except in gun battles. And, once these so-called "symptoms" of terror were dead or in prison, the "causes" of terror magically vanished. By the mid-'80s, the Red Brigade and Baader-Meinhof had essentially ceased to exist.Italy and Germany didn't seek multilateral agreements with other nations over the international pursuit of their terrorists. They didn't need to; all understood that these groups were wrong - maybe even evil - and must be stopped...
And stopped they were. The Europe of twenty years ago provides a lesson for the Europe of today: you stop terrorism by stopping terrorists.
The situations are a bit different, of course, but there's definitely a lesson there. And you can bet that if there is ever, God forbid, a successful attack on a European city, there would be a sharp decline in such grandstanding about fighting terrorism with conciliation and aid packages alone.
Posted by Dr. Frank at February 18, 2002 08:45 PM | TrackBack