Conrad Black: Civilization is winning the war on terror

Almost imperceptibly from Canada, the countries of the comparatively advanced world whose politics are more or less democratic, are edging back from their infatuation with the woke and racially atomized and extreme green, left. The shocking wave of antisemitism that freakishly arose after the barbarous assault of Hamas on Israel last October, has largely subsided. The campuses are quiet, the public is tired of having streets disrupted by ridiculous demonstrations proclaiming that the Jews have no right to be in the land of Israel, where they have been for more than 5,000 years, and the burdens of political correctness are becoming insufferable to the sensible majority of most western countries.

Most even slightly informed people do not equate the democratic state of Israel with the genocidal terrorist puppets of the medieval theocracy of Iran. There has been almost no public attention to the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he addressed the United States Congress two months ago, and former president Donald Trump in his debate with Kamala Harris two weeks ago both stated that they would not tolerate Iran becoming a nuclear military power. Obviously, one or other of those countries, or both together, and probably with the explicit solidarity of several of the Arab powers, are preparing to intervene militarily to prevent the world’s principal terrorism-supporting state and most stentorian advocates of the resumption of genocide against the Jewish people, (Iran) from acquiring a nuclear arsenal.

Also little publicized is the fact that Israel has effectively won its war with Hamas. About 80 per cent of the 25,000 Hamas terrorists have been killed. This savage and retrograde force that is implacably determined never to coexist with a Jewish state in Israel has opted for collective suicide on orders from its Iranian paymasters. The attempt to blackmail Israel with the hundred or so hostages has failed. The attempt to pretend that Israel is deliberately killing Gazan civilians both by war and a policy of starvation has also failed and been exposed as a lie. The overseas demonstrations have failed. After a year scrambling around like rats underground in the tunnels they built with what was supposed to be development aid, the few thousand remaining Hamas terrorists will either surrender or be gradually annihilated. Israel is already shifting its sights to Hezbollah in Lebanon and has warned the civil population of southern Lebanon to move northwards to avoid the coming comprehensive assault on Hezbollah military camps and rocket-launching sites.

Iran is effectively a paper tiger; its army is required entirely to repress the domestic population and has no capability of invading its neighbours. Its naval and air forces are negligible. It’s entire capacity to irritate and threaten the world is in its terrorist proxies and its nuclear military program. Israel is steadily destroying the terrorist apparatus, and the world is only awaiting the American election to learn who will take down their nuclear program. Civilization is winning the war on terror.

Almost all the advanced western electorates are now in whole or partial revolt against green authoritarianism. The inanity of the war on the internal combustion engine and on both the petroleum and nuclear power industries is now clear to majorities of most advanced countries. We still have no idea of the extent of climate change. Everyone wishes a minimum of pollution and everyone recognizes that vigilance is necessary, but continuing to scramble around like asphyxiated cockroaches trying to reduce our carbon footprint when the principal carbon users (China, India, and Russia), are raising theirs, is increasingly seen for the absurdity that it is.

At least 85 per cent of people are heterosexual males or females and most of those who are not are content with their perfect liberty to define their own sexuality as they wish; the need to inflict aggressive gender exhibitionism on society is increasingly seen as injudicious, ineffectual, and generally irritating.

Most African-Americans continue to support the ambition of Martin Luther King for racial equality, and most Americans are resistant to exaggerated demands for reparations for what Mr. Lincoln called ”the bondsman’s 250 years of unrequited toil.” In Canada, there is a consensus to assist native people in participating wholly and equally in the life of the country, and an increasing skepticism about the native victimhood industry and about the ambition of Indigenous people to re-create and inhabit any version of the Stone Age civilization that they had when the Europeans arrived on this continent 500 years ago.

There is also rising alarm at the waves of illegal migration that much more resembles the mass movement of tribes of the Eurasian Steppes into Western Europe in the early centuries of the Christian era in pursuit of greater luxury and a gentler climate than to the purposeful immigration of families and individuals seeking a new citizenship and full integration into, which built North America, rather than the inundation and even subjugation of, the society that is their destination.

And in the advanced Western democracies, there is a general movement to lower taxes, less regulation, better public security, and a collective foreign policy that is determined and armed to defend the legitimate and unambiguous geopolitical interests of the West. Despite the absence of a well-thought-out strategy for bringing the Ukraine war to a satisfactory end, that is clear in the West’s, including Canada’s, extensive assistance to Ukraine. We have seen in the last four years the hazards of an incoherent U.S. strategic policy. But Israel is defeating the terrorists, Ukraine is gaining its definitive independence, albeit probably in somewhat reduced borders, and Taiwan will not be reunited by force with the People’s Republic of China.

The pantomime horse of domestic social and economic policies well to the left of the ambitions of the majority of Americans is likely to be replaced by the moderate populist right. The only national polls that are not directed by left-wing universities or media outlets, and some of those that are, show Donald Trump even or ahead in the popular vote. Because California and New York have approximately as many electoral votes as Texas, Florida, and Tennessee, but the Democrats win in the first two states by approximately 5 million more votes than Republicans do in the last three, in order to win the Nov. 5 election, the Democrats must win by at least six million votes and there is no sign of that. In the last eight years, the perversion of the U.S. intelligence agencies and the justice system, the use of harvested ballots, and the spurious indictments of the leader of the opposition (Trump) have tested the guardrails of American constitutional democracy. With a little over five weeks before the beginning of vote counting on election day, the United States remains likely to de-escalate political tensions and move moderately to the right. Canada, Germany, and France, appear likely to do the same in the next several years. This turbulent time will settle down.

Note: Last week the name of my friend Bob Lamond was misspelled; this was inadequate proof-reading by me and I apologize for it.

National Post