Just before leaving for a much needed holiday, a politically influential friend of mine in England sent me Michael Gove's latest book Celsius 7/7.
To be honest I was not that enthusiastic about the gift. I was 2/3 of the way through rereading George Orwell's 1984; Melanie Phillip's Londonistan had been gathering dust on my bed side table and I was actually looking forward to some political time off. Nevertheless, I made time to finish Gove’s book. It was a wise choice. Celsius 7/7 is one of the best books I have read all year. It was some much needed chicken soup for an ailing neo-con soul. At a time when even Republicans seem to be cutting and running from the Bush doctrine, Michael Gove offers a brave and reasoned endorsement to stay the course.
Michael Gove is an up and coming British Conservative MP. When David Cameron was elected as the leader of the Conservative party in December 2005, Gove was appointed as the party's housing spokesman in the team shadowing the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. In addition to being a politician, he is also one of Britian’s leading writers and thinkers on terrorism. He was founding chairman of Policy Exchange, Britian’s foremost right-of-centre think tank and a founding member of the Hendry Jackson Society, an academic body which advocates liberal values in foreign policy. He writes regularly for The Times.
The title of his latest book is an obvious play on Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. And it proves to be an extremely adapt counter metaphor. Celsius as opposed to Fahrenheit, is a logical and concise temperature scale. And so with the book. Michael Gove sets out with reasoned yet succinct arguments (as you would expect from a leading Oxford debater) the threat that Islamists and their fellow travellers on the Far Left pose to the future of Western civilisation.
There were many aspects of the book I found fascinating (its distinction between Islamists and Islamic fundamentalists for one) but by far the most exciting from my perspective was its remarkable understanding of the importance of Israel in the war on terror. Gove argues that Israel is all too often vilified as the black sheep of the family of democratic nations. Its existence is mistakenly seen as the root cause of the global Jihad and as such is pressured into making dangerous concessions or forced to show foolish restraint even by its closest allies. This is a tragedy for both Israel and the West. For as Gove explains ‘Israel is an integral part of the West, a vessel for its values, an example of its virtues and it is hated not for what it does but for what it is’.
Celsius 7/7 argues that winning the war against on terror requires the West not only to strengthen Israel but in fact to emulate it. In its yearning to live as a democratic nation state within secure borders; in its daring use of military force to ensure the safety of its citizens and in its moral clarity as to the nature of the threats it faces, Israel holds the key to Western survival. Unfortunately these values are not the vogue in much of the free world these days. We live in an age that prides itself on the dismantling of the nation state and its replacement with transnational structures; where the use of military force is viewed as innately wrong and moral relativism abounds. Thus Israel is denounced by many particularly on the political Left as an anachronism.
The Jewish state’s dogged adherence to these values has allowed it to flourish in some of the harshest terrain in the world. And this unprecedented success is why Israel is so hated and its existence continually threatened. As Gove explains ‘for all those whose narrative of the last 60 years places the West in the dock, finds capitalism and imperialism guilty of the greatest global crimes of our time, and lays the woes of the developing world at the door of the developed, the condition of Israel is a living refutation of all they stand for.’
Gove’s understanding of Israel’s strategic value (and also threat) is exceptional. It is far superior to many Israeli parliamentarians, foreign ministry professionals and Zionist lobbyists. Moreover, he displays a grasp of the current threats facing Western civilisation that could only be called Churchillian. If Gove’s clarity and resolve is remotely representative of the new Tory leadership in Britain, then all of us that wish to win the war on terror should do all we can to get them to power.
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Posted by: | June 25, 2009 at 22:57