Longing for the day ...

They just don't get it ...

I don't often agree with The Australian's Foreign Editor, Greg Sheridan, but on July 9, just after the London bombings, he said this:

There is a persistent desire to pretend that the war on terror is an American exaggeration, or something, at worst, equivalent to an occasional passing storm.



But London shows us, once more, that the war on terror is going to last for a long, long time, and that the enemy is determined and resourceful and resilient.

I have to agree, but what proponents of the latest Iraq war, and of the "democratisation" of the Middle East in general don't understand is that this policy and the process of interference is just making things worse. The proof of this comes with the identification of the London bombers as suicide bombers who were UK-resident, England-raised, well educated Muslims who were "off the radar" in terrorist terms.

What this tells us is that the cause of liberation of the Middle East is driven, as I have said all along, by a deeply-held sense of grievance that people of like minds all over the world can identify with strongly. As long as the West's intereference in Middle East matters continues this sense of grievance, the terrorists will continue to strike back in the only way they know how.

Imposing Western democratic values via military conquest is just another slap in the face to people who lack a sense of self-determination. The perpetuation of conflict in Northern Ireland, Palestine and the Balkans is ample evidence of the way the cycle of violence works: the current generation take a particular, by nature one-sided, view of the origins of the conflict; they strike against the enemy; the enemy have an equally strongly held view - they feel wronged and strike back; this retaliation is seen as further aggression and is responded to in kind.

And so it goes on, like two kids fighting in the playground - but far more complex and deadly for all concerned. In the Middle East, the history of Western interference is hundreds of year old.

I just hope the war-mongers get removed from positions of power (and soon) and that the "war on terror" becomes a "struggle for equality and peace".