London Mayor Livingstone Blames the West

After such a great statement following the July 7 terrorist attacks in London, London's mayor Ken Livingstone has reverted to his normal socialist condition. In an interview with the BBC (link here), Livingstone placed the blame for the terrorists squarely on the shoulders of the West.

He replied: "I think you've just had 80 years of western intervention into predominantly Arab lands because of the western need for oil.

"We've propped up unsavoury governments, we've overthrown ones we didn't consider sympathetic.

"And I think the particular problem we have at the moment is that in the 1980s... the Americans recruited and trained Osama Bin Laden, taught him how to kill, to make bombs, and set him off to kill the Russians and drive them out of Afghanistan.

"They didn't give any thought to the fact that once he'd done that he might turn on his creators."

I'm speechless. Almost. What lunacy!

When my grandfather joined the army, they taught him to kill and sent him off to kill Germans during World War I. The US didn't give any thought to the fact that once he'd done that he might turn on his creators.

Lucky for my grandmother and all their neighbors, he didn't turn on them or his country. Neither did the rest of the WWI generation of soldiers. Or the WWII generation, or the Korean War generation, or the Vietnam or the Gulf War or any of the other War/Conflict generations we've had.

It's not training that makes a terrorist. It's the evil desires of the heart, combined with resources and opportunity. With Osama, the assessment of opportunity included a perception of exploitable weakness in the West. Osama bin Laden and his supporters are to blame for the al-Qaeda terrorism. His victims are not.

Using Livingstone's logic, Britain and the US are to be blamed for Stalin's mass-murder of millions in the Soviet Union. After all, we allied ourselves with him to fight the bigger menace of Nazism. And, having once allied with Stalin, then aren't we also culpable of all the evil that Stalin did after our alliance?

Obviously, Livingstone's 07/07 statement was one of those freaks of nature that can't be explained by any rational means. He should rest on his laurels from that one speech and just keep his mouth shut from now on.