"Red Ken" Livingstone hits the nail on head, in a way
few Western politicians have been able:
Western foreign policy has fueled the Islamist radicalism behind the bomb attacks which killed more than 50 people in London, the British capital's mayor Ken Livingstone said on Wednesday.
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Asked on Wednesday what he thought had motivated the four suspected suicide bombers, Livingstone cited Western policy in the Middle East and early American backing for Osama bin Laden.
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"You've just had 80 years of Western intervention into predominantly Arab lands because of a Western need for oil. We've propped up unsavory governments, we've overthrown ones that we didn't consider sympathetic," Livingstone said.
Damn straight.
Of course, Livingstone has been cast as a member of the Blame-Britian-First crowd:
But an opinion poll this week showed two-thirds of Britons see a connection between the Iraq war and the bombings. A top think tank and a leaked intelligence memo have also suggested the war has made Britain more of a target for terrorists.
That did not stop the right-wing Daily Telegraph castigating Livingstone, a maverick member of Blair's Labour party who was celebrating London's selection as host of the 2012 Olympics just hours before the bombers struck.
Wednesday's edition of the paper featured a picture of the mayor between photographs of two radical Muslim clerics under the headline: "The men who blame Britain."
This is the same thing that happened in the United States following September 11. Condemnations of terrorism that were followed with an introspective look at the US's historical foreign policy were loudly condemned as a lack of patriotism or love of country. Right now, it look's like the Britons are not falling for that line of attack on critics (as evidenced by the results of the poll cited in the quote immediately above). It seems that Britons are capable of a reasoned self assessment, not knee jerk jingoism. And I'm glad to see that a political leader like Livingstone is a strong voice for that self assessment.