So much for help from the British Muslim community. Their supposed leadership has essentially told us to surrender if we want the bombs to stop:

“7/7, 21/7, and God knows what will happen afterwards, our lives are in real danger and it would seem, so long as we are in Iraq and so long as we are contributing to injustices around the world, we will continue to be in real danger.”

It was “contributing to injustices around the world” to remove a brutal dictator who murdered Muslims by the villageload?

“Tony Blair has to come out of his state of denial and listen to what the experts have been saying, that our involvement in Iraq is stupid.” His comments were echoed by the marketing manager for The Muslim Weekly newspaper.

Shahid Butt said he believed the threat to Britain would reduce if it pulled its troops out of Iraq. He said: “At the end of the day, these things [violent incidents] are going to happen if current British foreign policy continues. There’s a lot of rage, there’s a lot of anger in the Muslim community.

“Yes,” said Mr. Hitler, “those German bombers are going to continue to happen. There’s a lot of rage, a lot of anger in Germany. You need to change your foreign policy, and stop supporting efforts to overthrow the legitimate Petain regime in Paris.”

“We have got to get out of Iraq, it is the crux of the matter. I believe if Tony Blair and George Bush left Iraq and stopped propping up dictatorial regimes in the Muslim world, the threat rate to Britain would come down to nearly zero.”

You mean dictatorial regimes like the one in Afghanistan, one of the few democracies in the Muslim world, that became that way only because of British and American arms? Or the new democratic government in Iraq (again a result of British and American “foreign policy”), one that is being undermined by people who apparently love killing Muslims, for whom this man is making apologies and excuses?

Which specific “dictatorial regimes does he have in mind”? Egypt? Saudi Arabia? I’m all ears as to any suggestions he has to reform those places.

But sorry. John Howard had it exactly right. I’d suggest you listen to what he has to say, Dr. Tamimi.

[Update at 1 PM PDT]

It strikes me that this is classic good cop/bad cop, with Dr. Tanimi and his confederates playing good cop, and the thugs being the bad one. “You know, maybe you should listen to us and do what we say, wouldn’t want that other guy to get a hold of you–no telling what he might do.”

[Update at 1:55 PM PDT]

Here’s another one:

Speaking 15 days after bombers killed over 50 people in London and a day after a series of failed attacks on the city’s transport network, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed said the British capital should expect more violence.

“What happened yesterday confirmed that as long as the cause and the root problem is still there … we will see the same effect we saw on July 7,” Bakri said.

“If the cause is still there the effect will happen again and again,” he said, adding he had no information about future attacks or contacts with people planning to carry out attacks.

Yeah, I’ll bet he has no information…

[One more update]

It occurred to me when discussing this on the phone with someone just now that of the three Anglosphere leaders, Bush is a straight (albeit occasionally stumbling over words) talker, Blair is eloquent and articulate (albeit slippery, which really stands out when he appears next to someone like John Howard), but what’s great about John Howard is that he combines these traits–eloquent, articulate, and straightforward. I occasionally wish that we could trade leaders with folks Down Under.

Fox News is now reporting that the police have cleared the streets in a London neighborhood and telling everyone to stay inside. There’s reportedly a remote-controlled vehicle looking for a bomb.

It sounds like they may be getting some good G2 from the guy they arrested, and the evidence that didn’t explode yesterday. I’d like to think that some of the British Muslim community may be coming forward, too, but I haven’t heard any specific evidence of it yet.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Via Instapundit, here’s more.

Ted Lapkin says that the anti-war left is acting like a battered wife. It looks like a pretty good analogy to me.

Today, it’s been sixty-five years since Winston Churchill made the insensitive and bellicose speech to the House of Commons to which I referred in this parody:

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

A “Christian civilization”? We can’t have hate talk like that–string him up.

Today, it’s been sixty-five years since Winston Churchill made the insensitive and bellicose speech to the House of Commons to which I referred in this parody:

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

A “Christian civilization”? We can’t have hate talk like that–string him up.

Today, it’s been sixty-five years since Winston Churchill made the insensitive and bellicose speech to the House of Commons to which I referred in this parody:

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

A “Christian civilization”? We can’t have hate talk like that–string him up.

The people who set off the bombs in London may have expected to get away:

one police hypothesis is that the bombers were tricked by a “master” who told them they would have time to escape – when in fact the devices were set to go off immediately.

“The bombers’ masters might have thought that they couldn’t risk the four men being caught and spilling everything to British interrogators,” an unnamed security official told the Telegraph.

Lending weight to the theory is the fact that all four men had paid up their parking tickets before boarding a train at Luton for King’s Cross, and that they all bought return tickets to the capital.

Moreover, the paper said, the men were carrying their explosives inside rucksacks, as opposed to strapped to their bodies as is common practice among suicide bombers.

None were reported to have cried “Allah Akbar” (God is Greatest) before setting off their charge – something which most Middle Eastern suicide bombers do.

If they were duped into it, as it looks like might be the case, it will make it harder for future recruitment, because bombers unwilling to sacrifice themselves may not trust their masters. Of course, this isn’t unprecedented. Bin Laden joked on the videotape about many of the September 11 hijackers having no idea why they were hijacking the planes.

The people who set off the bombs in London may have expected to get away:

one police hypothesis is that the bombers were tricked by a “master” who told them they would have time to escape – when in fact the devices were set to go off immediately.

“The bombers’ masters might have thought that they couldn’t risk the four men being caught and spilling everything to British interrogators,” an unnamed security official told the Telegraph.

Lending weight to the theory is the fact that all four men had paid up their parking tickets before boarding a train at Luton for King’s Cross, and that they all bought return tickets to the capital.

Moreover, the paper said, the men were carrying their explosives inside rucksacks, as opposed to strapped to their bodies as is common practice among suicide bombers.

None were reported to have cried “Allah Akbar” (God is Greatest) before setting off their charge – something which most Middle Eastern suicide bombers do.

If they were duped into it, as it looks like might be the case, it will make it harder for future recruitment, because bombers unwilling to sacrifice themselves may not trust their masters. Of course, this isn’t unprecedented. Bin Laden joked on the videotape about many of the September 11 hijackers having no idea why they were hijacking the planes.

The people who set off the bombs in London may have expected to get away:

one police hypothesis is that the bombers were tricked by a “master” who told them they would have time to escape – when in fact the devices were set to go off immediately.

“The bombers’ masters might have thought that they couldn’t risk the four men being caught and spilling everything to British interrogators,” an unnamed security official told the Telegraph.

Lending weight to the theory is the fact that all four men had paid up their parking tickets before boarding a train at Luton for King’s Cross, and that they all bought return tickets to the capital.

Moreover, the paper said, the men were carrying their explosives inside rucksacks, as opposed to strapped to their bodies as is common practice among suicide bombers.

None were reported to have cried “Allah Akbar” (God is Greatest) before setting off their charge – something which most Middle Eastern suicide bombers do.

If they were duped into it, as it looks like might be the case, it will make it harder for future recruitment, because bombers unwilling to sacrifice themselves may not trust their masters. Of course, this isn’t unprecedented. Bin Laden joked on the videotape about many of the September 11 hijackers having no idea why they were hijacking the planes.

Melanie Phillips has a disturbing letter from a British Muslim. As she says:

Truth and lies are at the very heart of this terrible problem facing us all. The sense of grievance and injustice to which this reader refers is indeed very real. But it is the grievance of a people who turn their own misdeeds into their own victimology, thus making rational discourse all but impossible. The tragedy is that this reader and I undoubtedly have much in common