It's Not About Islam, Again

Foreign Policy:

According to the Washington Post, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev "told interrogators that the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan motivated him and his brother to carry out the attack." Policymakers and pundits will dismiss this rationalization with little acknowledgment, analysis, or certainly sympathy. Moreover, even if we could agree that we had perfect information for why the attacks happened -- based upon the perpetrators' words, and corroborated with official investigations -- we won't engage in honest self-reflection or change public policy in response. First, no state wants to acknowledge that their policies, institutions, or culture might contain any flaws that could serve as primary motivations for terrorism. Politicians cannot accept any correlation between domestic or foreign policies and terror attacks.

So, let's get this straight. The author, Micah Zenko, believes we should reflect on how our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may have instigated a terrorist attack. Those wars were a result of attacks and provocations by Muslim countries, but we probably brought that on ourselves as well, I suppose. However, even if the perpetrator admits, and the evidence shows that Islam was the motivator, we should reflect on how our 'policies, institutions and culture' contributed to the crime. The values of Islam and those of Islamic societies are never questioned. When we're attacked, it's cause for self-criticism.

The 'we' in the article is the United States, of course, and even though Muslims carry out several terror attacks worldwide every day, that overwhelmingly common denominator doesn't really matter. There just has to be some commonality between the policies, institutions and cultures of The United States, UK, Spain, Indonesia, Russia, India, Tunisia and everywhere else Muslims have slaughtered unsuspecting victims. Oddly enough, the policies, institutions, and cultures of Iran and Saudi Arabia don't inspire much in the way of terrorism on their soil. Weird, huh? 

Actually no, this hackneyed meme'  only applies to the west in general, and America in particular.  As intellectually and morally bankrupt as that sounds, it's what passes for sophisticated thought by self-loathing westerners. The fact that it's espoused by a PhD from The Council on Foreign Relations and Harvard is just more proof that higher education in the U.S. is no longer about the pursuit of truth and knowledge.It's about the pursuit of rationales in support of Left Wing conclusions, no matter how glaringly stupid and morally obtuse those rationales may be.

These terrorists were also products of an American, Blue State education. Perhaps they were just very good students and fully digested the anti-American indoctrination they were fed. 

Update: OK, it's now self-parody:

  "Could the amateur boxing career of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the deceased suspect in last week’s Boston Marathon bombings, have had a role in the massacre? That’s a question leading brain researchers at Boston University’s School of Medicine hope medical examiners look into when they perform an autopsy of the 26-year-old who was killed during a firefight with law enforcement officials early Friday morning."

 Update: And the hits keep coming!

 "[H]e was angry that the world pictures Islam as a violent religion.”

From an e-mail to a New York Times reporter by the former brother-in-law of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, explaining the Boston bomber's motives.