Here's the Condi/Bush line on the London bombings: 1) this is part of an evil plot that has gone on since the 1980's and the Iraq invasion has nothing to do with it, 2) there is something abnormal with people in the Middle East (Condi made this argument this morning on the BBC). They are right in this sense, if they are making a historical argument it should go like this: the US and less so Britain (at least lately) has sent troops to the region for decades and their support for Israel and the sultans and kleptocrats has created an anti-imperialist impulse that has expressed itself in Jihadis because the local regimes have eliminated the left nationalists. If that's what they mean I agree but they don't. They want to be selective in their historical analysis only looking at reaction not causality. On the Arabs/Persians/Kurds are abnormal because they use suicide bombers, as the Algerians said, if you give us the tanks and airplanes....
The debate on the BBC is sophisticated and not to simplify splits over despicable but predictable and part of the war on terror (not the same as the US argument however). On NPR the debate was between the war on terror/evil and we need to spend more on train and boat security, pathetic.
Galloway v. Clarke on Iraq and the bombings.
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