In the wake of a massacre such as Madrid, there is an understandable urge to recriminate on the basis of what may have provoked the perpetrators, writes John Waters.
Fear of such recriminations may explain the Spanish government's insistence, in the face of mounting facts, that Eta was responsible. To countenance the involvement of al-Qaeda would have opened up a discussion of Spain's support for the war in Iraq. But to propose that we should not act on principle because of what others may do in retaliation is to say: lie down and the monster will not hurt you.
The West is plagued with such thinking, exacerbating the growing danger. At a time when, as Tony Blair said last week, resolve is what is needed to safeguard our people from the evil without, our leaders must instead defend themselves against naivete from within.
The greatest threat to democracy may not arise from the evil of Islamic extremism, but from the virus of pacifism that attacks our best hopes of self-defence. The perpetrators of recent horrors, demonstrating an acute understanding of Western culture, are clearly intent upon exploiting the West's weakened resolve.
The beginnings of the virus can be traced to the 1960s, to the notion, based on the security of a generation raised without conflict, that slogans had a power that was equivalent to their pithiness. "Make Love not War", "All You Need is Love", "All We Are Saying Is Give Peace a Chance", are enormously evocative mantras, especially for those who are, or feel, young.
Notwithstanding that their pithiness fails to inspire the pitiless, such ideas are engrained now in the culture of the West, placing us in mortal danger. We stand, following the paralysing discussion about Iraq, at a point where the leaders, Bush, Blair, Aznar, who were forced to take a stand are at risk of being replaced by others who would pander to the general woolly belief that everything becomes possible with a little peace, love and understanding.
There was a remarkable interview in the Sunday Telegraph a week ago with the pop singer George Michael, where he described being invited, along with several other celebrities, to dinner at Blair's Islington home, just before the 1997 election. He went along to lend his support to Blair, considering him "a great guy". When he left, he said, three things worried him: one, that "a few religious words had crept into the conversation at moments I didn't expect them to". Two, that, as he was leaving, Blair, at his wife's insistence, showed him his guitar. And three, that Blair "did not seem to be the smartest man at the table".
Michael's belated Iscariotry is interesting because it is emblematic of something broader. It may be pertinent that, last year, Michael produced a cartoon video for his song, Shoot the Dog, satirising the Bush-Blair approach to Iraq, depicting Bush as a fool and Blair as his poodle. The video gave voice to the prevailing mood of mainstream culture: opposition to action on the basis of a luxurious avoidance of responsibility for consequences.
Interestingly, Michael objected to Blair's religiosity, a common motif among his latter-day detractors. But he seemed even more worried by his guitar. "And I was thinking," he recalled, "Oh, don't show me your guitar, I was just about to vote for you! So he opens the downstairs toilet and there's this little guitar and a really old, tiny little amp. That worried me because I know that means that our egos have something in common. And I know what a good slap my ego needs on a regular basis."
Michael's U-turn on Blair conveys what afflicts politics in the West. We want our leaders to be affable, likeable, hip, to do our bidding in everything but if they are too much like that, we despise them. And if they seek to lead us we turn even more violently against them.
Blair is now under attack from the culture he manipulated to get elected, a culture, infecting virtually every instrument of the media, based essentially on repugnance of authority and refusal of responsibility.
Because it is the dominant culture, Blair needed to woo it to suggest himself as a plausible alternative to traditional leaderships. But because he is genuinely principled, and because he discovered, three months into his second term, that responsibility is a black-and-white issue, he abandoned his Trojan horse and so was born one of the great leaders of our time.
George Michael asks: "You want the prime minister to be the smartest man at the f*****g table, don't you?" Yes, you do. But you might also want him to be the strongest, an idea that both maddens contemporary culture and reassures it. Blair's certitude, his faith, his resolve, his courage, are elements of his character that appal contemporary culture. But even as we hate him for these, we know that we are luckier than we could have hoped to have leaders like him at this hour.