Fox News thinks terrorism is good for the Western world

While the inevitable political point-scoring has started after the London bombings – including a delightfully malicious and pathetic bastard telling me that he hopes “the next target of these murdering bastards is Lowensteins (sic) Mums’ house – surely it’s time to take a good, long, hard look at why these attacks may have happened. Robert Fisk has a few ideas:

“”If you bomb our cities,” Osama bin Laden said in one of his recent video tapes, “we will bomb yours.” There you go, as they say. It was crystal clear Britain would be a target ever since Tony Blair decided to join George Bush’s “war on terror” and his invasion of Iraq. We had, as they say, been warned. The G8 summit was obviously chosen, well in advance, as Attack Day.

“And it’s no use Mr Blair telling us yesterday that “they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear”. “They” are not trying to destroy “what we hold dear”. They are trying to get public opinion to force Blair to withdraw from Iraq, from his alliance with the United States, and from his adherence to Bush’s policies in the Middle East. The Spanish paid the price for their support for Bush – and Spain’s subsequent retreat from Iraq proved that the Madrid bombings achieved their objectives – while the Australians were made to suffer in Bali.”

As Fisk rightly asks, “If we are fighting insurgency in Iraq, what makes us think insurgency won’t come to us?”

The concept of Western culpability is beyond many people. Much easier to simply label the murderers as “terrorists”, issue a call to arms and continue the “War on Terror.” The current tactics have been a complete failure. Time for a shift. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, including our infantile Prime Minister. “I want to make it very plain that this kind of attack will not alter the attitude of the government of Australia towards terrorism and towards the commitments we have with our American, British and other friends to Iraq to Afghanistan”, he said. What needs to happen for our leaders to take a reality check? That time is now.

Meanwhile Fox News, on the media’s frontline in the “War on Terror”, featured a remarkable interview last night. Fox News host Brian Kilmeade:

“…And that was the first time since 9-11 when they should know, and they do know now, that terrorism should be Number 1. But it’s important for them all to be together. I think that works to our advantage, in the Western world’s advantage, for people to experience something like this together, just 500 miles from where the attacks have happened.”

Another political victory in the Trans-Atlantic battle. Watch the ratings fly.

Back on planet Earth, we are experiencing a massive, contagious case of historical amnesia. Western culture is not simply superior because we say so. Bombing civilians into smithereens does not bring calls of “liberation” from those obliterated. And most importantly, why do we think we’re immune from attack when we launch a war on a defenceless country seen by millions around the world as an attack on Muslims?

We need more than a better PR campaign to understand London, July 7, 2005.

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