Posted on 01/08/2006 1:10:09 PM PST by naturalman1975
The newly declassified records of war cabinet meetings offer insights into how Churchill would fight the war on terror
THERE'S no doubt about Winston Churchill. More than 60 years after the event, his words can still give us a short, sharp jolt into the world of reality. For there he was in the form of notes taken at a cabinet meeting on July 6, 1942, released last week by the National Archives in London.
The cabinet scribe recorded in his notebook that Churchill had announced to the meeting: "If Hitler falls into our hands we shall certainly put him to death like a gangster. This man is the mainspring of evil. Instrument -- electric chair." In a macabre addition, he noted that they could hire the electric chair from the US under lend-lease!
Once again, in that staccato style for which he was famous, Churchill got his view across very smartly and left no room for doubt about what he meant: if you are facing evil, you kill the tyrant.
At another cabinet meeting on July 7, 1943, he widened the net. This time he proposed that leading Nazis found on the battlefield should be identified and shot without trial. Crystal clear, once again. Perhaps that is why Churchill was so successful as a politician and leader; in contrast to today's lot, you can actually understand what he means.
By 1945, Churchill had added two delightful Machiavellian ingredients to his recipe for winning. The first: negotiate a peace settlement with Himmler (who by then had claimed the Nazi leadership) and "bump him off later".
The second: tell Britain's allies that show trials for war criminals would be a "farce", ask for their consent to execute a list of Nazi leaders without trial and then just do it before the allies have time to reply.
Today, of course, we think all of this is a bit heavy-handed, a bit too devious and what is generally described as extreme. Even in Churchill's day none of his recommendations were taken up. His cabinet colleagues, especially the Labour members, all urged "compromise" and playing the game by the rules.
As Clement Atlee said, they did not want a "competition in frightfulness" with Hitler. Unlike such colleagues, Churchill was not interested in compromise or consensus; he wanted to win.
It should not therefore be surprising that news of the cabinet deliberations and of Churchill's uncompromising views has been greeted in these more delicate times with shock and horror.
As you would imagine, The Guardian in Britain was first off the mark to say the cabinet notes showed that Churchill was "ruthless". And other media outlets have added that he was actually "prepared to override moral and legal considerations to defeat Germany".
Heaven forbid that Churchill wanted to win the war at any price. Heaven forbid that an innocent victim, defending himself, should abandon the moral and legal principles that the aggressor has no intention of imposing on himself.
In today's way of looking at things, Churchill would be expected to comply with "moral and legal considerations", be hamstrung as a result and eventually be beaten by Germany.
Churchill had a very valid point in rejecting such nonsense. To win against a ruthless enemy, you have to be ruthless yourself.
Moreover, you cannot impose on yourself the burden of moral and legal constraints if you seriously want to win against an enemy who has no principles at all; you will earn endless accolades and honours for doing so, but you will not win.
And if your enemy thrives on vitriol and hatred, the last thing you are obliged to do is give him a platform at a show trial to go on spreading more of his poison.
So, just as interesting as Churchill's own direct and robust proposals on what to do with the ultimate evil that came to within an ace of destroying British and European civilisation in the 1940s is the lesson this should give us about handling some very analogous events that face us today.
Fundamentalist Islam and its lunatic followers are waging another war and pose as great a danger to the civilised world as the war that Churchill was fighting in the '40s. In fact it is probably a greater danger, for the present enemy has no command structure and no identifiable centres of operation or headquarters that can be targeted and liquidated.
But the need for unequivocal and, dare I say it, more ruthless action is just as great.
Indeed, we will get nowhere if we are anything short of ruthless and if we continue to handicap ourselves, as we are now, by self-imposed moral and legal principles that are outdated, counter-productive, highly theoretical and guaranteed to do nothing but give the enemy an advantage that could ultimately lead to our defeat.
Unfortunately, we do not seem to have learned anything about dealing with tyrants.
Take a few examples. We know from the recent furore over capital punishment that Australia's policy is to oppose the death penalty for all offences, even terrorism.
No matter what horrors the terrorists commit, they know that if they are caught in Australia, they will get legal aid, trial by jury and, at worst, "life imprisonment", in reality 10 years or so in jail. We are virtually telling them it is worthwhile taking the risk.
Second, our recent debate on counter-terrorism laws made it very clear that there are still many in the community who are more concerned about the rights of terrorists than preventing them from committing acts of terror.
Moreover, we seem convulsed with fear that our treatment of terrorist prisoners might be less than ideal and found by some perfect measure to be torture, or unfair or just "inappropriate". So the terrorist enemy knows he can murder and terrorise at will, that he is bound by no restraints and no morals or laws and that if he gets caught he will be treated with kid gloves. No wonder he regards us as weak and feeble.
When President George W. Bush uses wiretaps to protect Americans and, conceivably us, from terrorist attacks, he is accused of breaking the law. It seems that his critics would rather have some new terrorist outrage than the risk of a theoretical breach of the law.
Again, pre-emptive strikes were advocated as a matter of national policy to stop terrorist attacks before they occured, but this too was opposed because of the artificial refinements of international law.
As for trials, take Osama bin Laden. He must surely be, as Churchill described Hitler, "the mainspring of evil" for our times. And yet the prevailing view is that he should be put on trial, just like Saddam Hussein, so they will both have platforms to rant and rave against the West and democracy. As Churchill would have said: "What a farce."
The pendulum has swung too far on all of these issues and now imposes too severe restrictions on the war against terror. Churchill's cabinet proposals should remind us that there is at least another way of defeating monsters.
The message to Western leaders and communities should be: a bit less preoccupation with idealised and theorised human rights, a bit more of a desire to win, a bit more concern for victims and, dare I say it, try to be a bit more ruthless.
Neil Brown, a Melbourne QC, is a former federal minister and deputy leader of the Liberal Party.
Not all of us.
Churchill was right, and he would have known what to do with Osama and his gang too.
The English government, like the American government, has far too many communism adherents on the payroll.
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