This morning, after hearing about the appalling dual terroist attack in Istanbul today (the second such attack in a week, this one levelled against people guilty of being British as opposed to guilty of being Jewish), I was listening to the joint press conference being held by Bush and Blair, and this question stood out:
“What do you say to people who today conclude that British people have died and been maimed as a result of you appearing here today, shoulder-to-shoulder with a controversial American President?”
I’ll let Blair himself answer:
“What has caused the terrorist attack today in Turkey is not the President of the United States, is not the alliance between America and Britain. What is responsible for that terrorist attack is terrorism, are the terrorists. And our response has got to be to unify in that situation, to put the responsibility squarely on those who are killing and murdering innocent people, and to say, we are going to defeat you, and we’re not going to back down or flinch at all from this struggle.”
The fact that it is necessary for a major world leader to have to take the time to say something like that is disturbing to me. Unfortunately, the notion that we may now blame Bush/the U.S./the West/Jews for every terroist-attack death everywhere is becoming increasingly popular.
Fortunately, it’s an easy argument to defeat. Before 9/11, this cowboy president of ours had made it absolutely clear that he was planning on keeping his hands off of not just Iraq, but really every other country on the planet. Remember the whole “no nation building” thing? Back then, he was criticized as being too isolationist by the same people now convinced he’s out to conquer the world. What, then, prompted Islamist terrorists from atomizing 3,000 people that day? Bush’s interventist approach toward Texas?
Similarly, take a look at that MSBNC article about today’s attacks. It points out that up until today, the most deadly terrorist atrocity in Turkey’s history was a 1977 assault against leftists. Surely they weren’t advocating an imperialist oil war at the time.
And as Christopher Hitchens points out, one of the synagogues devastated last Saturday had already been the site of a terrorist attack, back when Reagan and Thatcher were in charge of the US and UK and Saddam was our friend. Unless those terrorists were time travellers, it’s difficult to understand how their actions were caused by the regime change policy.
It’s also difficult to understand the mentality that leads one to ask a question like that one from this morning’s press conference, but I’m trying. You can’t defeat what you don’t understand, after all.