JUSTIFYING THE LONDON ATTACKS

Mundher al-Adhami, writing in the Guardian, cries for the victims but does not condemn the London bombings. Al-Adhami sees the bombings as understandable, if not justifiable, blowback:

The pictures of Iraq, Afghanistan or Palestine, with their dust and grime, might be different to the pictures of the London bombs, but they represent a continuity. The war of revenge and collective punishment has arrived in London. And it has its own rationality. Don't give me the nonsense about why do they hate us. They don't.

The response to the neo-colonial adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq should surprise no one. Islamist extremism and terrorism, unknown in Iraq before occupation, now fights side by side with the more measured Iraqi resistance. It responds with callous bombs there, and now in the west.

The spirit of revenge becomes more planned, merging with nationalist or faith ideology such as al-Qaida's, and the targets become more diffuse. Perhaps even in the west, identification with innocent people hit by bombs and napalm - their voices unheard and names unknown - in remote lands of the prophets makes for a holy madness among susceptible youngsters.

As other suicide bombers have said, they may regret the loss of innocent lives in their political, murderous acts - but they atone with their own lives and hope God forgives them. The logic is clear: your security is only assured if ours is. If our women and children are killed, then your women and children are killed.

How then to account for the 32 Iraqi children – mentioned in passing in the article's introductory paragraph – killed earlier in the week by a Baghdad suicide bomber? These children and their families were already the victims of foreign aggression themselves – in al-Adhami's terms – and had probably not ever done anything to warrant a revenge attack. This attack, as with the London attacks, was nothing more than an attack by a smaller, less powerful group on the majority. It's politics at its most violent.

Even though they'd never admit it, the lefties at the Guardian quietly admire those committed enough to their politics to give their lives for the cause.