Iraq & London - no connection?

[mirrorshard]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1530817,00.html?gusrc=rss

Our esteemed government dismiss all allegations that the terrorists behind the London tube & bus bombings were motivated by events in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Really, this is ridiculous. You are aware, I trust, Prime Minister, that these bombings were carried out by people - adults, legally able to think for themselves, hold opinions, make their own decisions, or indeed put their faith in someone else to tell them what to do. If they're old enough to join the army, they're old enough to join a jihad.

They don't decide out of nowhere to do these things.

They don't do things for simple mechanistic reasons.

They don't do things because they're eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil. Why, I'll bet none of them owned a white cat between them.

They see an injustice, and they want to take action. Other people may lead them into evil, but these people are not motivated solely by "evil ideology" - they are not doomsday cultists or End Times lunatics. They see something they dislike and they respond to it.

Other people really can and do believe different things to you, Prime Minister. They really do want us to withdraw our troops from Arab lands, and to stop blowing up what they see as their people, and to stop letting our troops imprison and torture people who have neither been convicted nor formally charged of anything.

Evil is a description, not a definition or an excuse. You can't deny peoples' reasons and responsibility for what they do just because you don't like it.

Comments

[shuripentu.livejournal.com]

*waves an ear* Hear hear.
Just because someone chooses to make a point via immoral means doesn't mean they don't have a point.

It's understandable that people affected by terrorist acts will want to see the perpetrators as inhuman, barbaric and evil. What should also be understandable, given the circumstances, is that there are at least a handful of people willing to blow themselves and others up to make this sort of point.
While ultimately the responsibility, guilt and punishement lie with those who plan and execute terrorist acts, it would be dishonest of us not to accept that we are among the root causes behind these bombings.

Accepting that we are part of the cause does not equate to accepting guilt or responsibility. (I really wish people would stop jumping to that conclusion.) It does, however, mean that we should acknowledge that if we do things differently from hereon, we can remove one of the root causes fuelling terrorism.

*stops blithering*

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

And that just because someone opposes what we do in a bad, wrong, and murderous way, that doesn't make it retroactively justified.