Opinion

Labour’s Corbyn Paralyzed in Face of Terror

Confronted with the evil of Islamic terrorism, Britain’s Labour Party leader doesn’t know what to do.

Even last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris, where more than 130 people were killed by radicalized young Muslims, do not appear to have convinced Britain’s Labour Party leader that sometimes more is needed in the face of evil than protests and talk.

Jeremy Corbyn, an unrepentant Marxist and peacenik who was elected Labour leader in September, rightly cautions against stigmatizing all Muslims for violence that is carried out in their name. But when it comes to actually doing something to stop the terrorists, he has no policy.

Should police be allowed to shoot to kill terrorists when they strike? Corbyn isn’t sure.

Was it right to kill British citizen Mohammed Emwazi, nicknamed “Jihadi John,” in Syria with a drone? Corbyn seems to care more about the legality of it than the lives that have likely been saved.

When the pacifist Stop the War Coalition he used to chair blames Western foreign policy in the Middle East for the attacks in Paris, Corbyn can only bring himself to say he won’t use the same “language”.

And when Prime Minister David Cameron will seek parliamentary approval for British airstrikes against the Islamic State — the jihadist group that claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks — Corbyn does not intend to give his members a free vote, even though he voted against his party literally hundreds of times before he became leader.

But those were “principled” rebellions, he told The Independent newspaper earlier this year.

Other leftwingers who believe Britain might have a responsibility to help its European and NATO ally destroy the terrorists where they plan their attacks rather than hide behind the Channel and hope for the best clearly don’t share Corbyn’s high-minded principles.