If you blamed last week's terrorist bombing of London, in which at least 52 civilians were killed and more than 700 were injured, on the war in Iraq, you're not alone. Before the smoke had even begun to clear, the Guardian published a series of Bush- and Blair-bashing editorials. The bluntest was by dissident intellectual writer/activist Tariq Ali, who deemed it "safe to assume that the cause of these bombs is the unstinting support given by New Labour and its prime minister to the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq" and argued that "the real solution lies in immediately ending the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine."
Even less equivocal was George Galloway, a socialist MP whose constituency includes the Marble Arch tube station (17 casualties), who urged "the government to remove people in this country from harm's way, as the Spanish government acted to remove its people from harm, by ending the occupation of Iraq and by turning its full attention to the development of a real solution to the wider conflicts in the Middle East. Only then will the innocents here and abroad be able to enjoy a life free of the threat of needless violence."
And then there were the pundits on this side of the Atlantic, like Bob Herbert who editorialized in the New York Times that "last week's terror bombings in London should be seen as a reminder that Mr. Bush's war... has actually increased the danger of terrorist attacks against the U.S. and its allies."
So you see, you're not alone. You're not even far from the mainstream. What you are is wrong. You may also be simple-minded, fascist-sympathetic, self-hating, or a religious fanatic. But your stunning incorrectness—after all you've been given a chance to learn about al Qaeda and its apologists—towers above all your other dubious attributes. Despite claims by "The Secret Organization of al Qaeda in Europe" that the bombing was in retaliation for British involvement in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and despite the red herring coincidence of the G8 summit in Glasgow, this was an attempt to frighten the world into believing in God—and not just any God, either.
Good people all over the world are seething with legitimate rage about every facet of the war in Iraq, from the lies President Bush enlisted to justify it, to the insufficient body armor American troops have been provided with to wage it. Even those who were most gung ho on the eve of invasion have begun to find artful ways of retroactively withdrawing their support. They're not wrong—you don't need to be a genius to smell a quagmire brewing. But to connect the invasion of Iraq with the bombing of London represents the worst kind of moral blindness, because it invests the act with a political and spiritual legitimacy to which it is simply not entitled. The perpetrators of this mass murder have no legitimacy—political, spiritual, or otherwise. They're just murderers. If you believe the bombers had a legitimate grievance because you feel the war in Iraq is wrong, please consider the other talking points on the agenda you tacitly support (as enumerated in London's Daily Mirror by Christopher Hitchens): "The grievance of seeing unveiled women. The grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people. The grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law... The grievance of the existence of black African Muslim farmers, who won't abandon lands in Darfur. The grievance of the existence of homosexuals. The grievance of music and of most representational art. The grievance of the existence of Hinduism. The grievance of East Timor's liberation from Indonesian rule. All of these have been proclaimed as a license to kill infidels or apostates, or anyone who just gets in the way."
Amen, I say. This was not a political act (though politics were its Trojan horse). It was a religious one. And religion must be held accountable. No matter how much you hate Bush or Blair or their policies, they're no more responsible for the bombing of London than WMDs were responsible for the invasion of Iraq. It's clear that they're not helping matters by continuing the pretense that the war is going well, or that Iraq is anywhere near sustainable sovereignty. But that's another discussion. Yes, it's related; but it's only central if you accept the terms of discourse laid out by the bombers.
The irrational faith of a splinter sect of Islam is responsible for the bombing of London, and of Madrid, and of Bali, and of New York, and of Washington D.C. The argument for withdrawing troops from Iraq is part of another discussion, and an important one. There need be no discussion, however, that even if the coalition were to withdraw all troops today, even if no troops had ever been sent to Baghdad, or to Kabul, or to Kuwait, even if George W. Bush had never been elected, London, Madrid, New York, and D.C. would still be mourning, and another attack—Italy, Denmark, anywhere—would be in the works. I agree that Iraq was a mistake that keeps getting worse. But when that conflict ends, we'll still be at war (just like we were before the invasion). If we fail to parse the distinctions between these two related-but-also-unrelated battles, we're doomed.
One last quote, this time from a dead American writer: In the 1936 collection The Crack-Up, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that "the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." Though the line is 70 years old, it provides a working definition for liberal thinking that liberals, particularly those who railed against Bush's incapacity for complex reasoning, should embrace—especially when they consider its far lesser-known follow-up line: "One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise." â–
