Prague, Nov 18 (CTK) – The EU, in a war with Jihadists, urgently needs political leaders similar to the late Winston Churchill, with his tough and uncompromising approach to the internal enemy, Zdenek John writes in Czech daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) on Wednesday.
The massacre in Paris on Friday opened a battle front in the centre of cities, together with the 2001 attack on the USA, when the war of terror started, and those on Madrid (2004) and London (2005). The war has broken out in the very heart of what the Western civilisation has built, what it respects, trusts, enjoys and prides in, and what the Czechs have shared since the collapse of communism in 1989, John writes.
The EU is in a war, which also applies to the Czech Republic, he states.
It is the question of time when a terrorist attack will hit the Czech Republic, as Petr Pavel, head of the NATO Military Committee, put it recently, John continues.
Based on their school history lessons, many Czechs believe that wars take place along a remote battle front from where reports arrive on who has been killed and which unit has retreated.
This is no longer true. The world has changed as has war, which the circumstances of the Friday massacre in the Bataclan hall in Paris proved, John writes.
The present form of war could be seen in the news servers´ on-line reports from Paris on Friday and Saturday. Jihadists send well-organised and determined commandos to European cities to kill “the miscreants,” who are helpless civilians in the West´s eyes, John writes.
Nevertheless, some old war rules are still valid. Their application would amount to undemocratic hazard in a period of peace, John continues.
French President Francois Hollande understood this a few hours after being evacuated from a sports stadium attacked by Jihadists on Friday. He started to behave as the head of a state in a war, John writes.
In the early 20th century, Churchill, the then British Home Secretary, a tough democrat and even a tougher soldier, forbade to call firefighters to a burning building during the siege of London´s Sidney Street. He made the anarchists, whom he wanted to defeat, face the choice of either to surrender or die, John writes.
It is unnecessary to listen to xenophobic populists or yelling extremists, because they offer no solution, he says.
Churchill, as a politician, proved competent in face of a war. The EU is short of such leaders, which may be a serious problem in the years to come, John concludes.
