Dutch Finally Getting Serious

The latest news coming from our friends in the Netherlands about sending a commando force to Afghanistan to work alongside U.S. and British soldiers is a positive step. I understand the Netherlands is not going to stomp out terrorism on its own, but it shows that the Dutch people are looking to do more in the worldwide fight against terrorism.

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) has an excellent piece on the Dutch Intelligence’s examination of the radical Islamic threat within its country. The result has been to question Netherlands’ culture of "gedoogcultuur," or “culture of permissiveness,” which has helped foster the rise of radical Islam in its country. The report also proposes certain measures to combat radical Islam, including medium and long-term strategies (including military measures). The JCPA ponders:

One may wonder whether the ministry would have found it politically convenient to publish the report had not Muslim radical Mohammed Boyeri cruelly murdered provocative Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in an Amsterdam street on November 2, 2004. In the following weeks there were tens of arson attempts against Muslim institutions and Christian churches. Prior to the murder, it was almost unthinkable for a government agency report to single out the Muslim community. The AIVD [Dutch Intelligence] justified its publication by noting that it was responding to complaints by local authorities that they did not have enough information about radical Islam.

It doesn’t really matter whether it took a tragic event to face the realities of extremism; in the U.S. it took the murder of 3,000 people to come to the same conclusion.

Welcome to the fight.