Friday, July 8, 2005

A Simplistic View

If anyone would like insight into the thinking of true-blue lefties and why the Democratic Party is doomed to utter irrelevance short of a miraculous turn-about, they ought to read today's discussion thread at Democratic Underground.

General Theme: The London atrocities were all the fault of Bush/Blair.

The belief seems to be that if we hadn't invaded Afghanistan and Iraq London wouldn't have happened. Never mind that 9/11 predated the invasion of Afghanistan and that Islamic terrorism has been striking western targets at least since the 1970s. What the DU contributers don't seem to accept is that Islamo-terrorists are only proximally concerned with Iraq. The real reason for their hatred of the west is that our values are antithetical to Islam.

Moreover, we, the infidels, have produced a steadily advancing civilization while they, the faithful, have failed in every measure to move beyond the middle ages. This is a maddeningly difficult fact to accept and it fuels their rage against us. Their only accomplishment in the last five hundred years has been to devise more ingenious ways of killing people. Finally, as long as the west, or at least the U.S., stands behind Israel's right to exist the Islamists will hate us.

To blame the London horror on Bush and Blair is to hold a very simplistic view of the struggle we're in.