John Kerry said today that he could understand the rationale for the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine a few months back in Paris, but Friday's attacks in the same city were random and without explanation. For a liberal like Kerry, the terror attack on Charlie Hebdo was a matter of determining what the victims had done wrong. What had those writers and editors who were slaughtered done that justified the terror attack that befell them? In the liberal world view, the fault always lies with the West. For someone like Kerry, the Islamic terrorists are responding to a grievance generated by Western conduct. It is never a case that the terrorists are just evil.
This idea that we in the West have somehow caused Islamic terrorism is a form of mental illness that afflicts millions on the left. These are people who have been taught for many decades that all fault lies with Western values, Western conduct and Western history. The rest of the world consists only of the poor victims of the West, so we ought not hold them responsible for their conduct when they react to the Western provocation. Simply put, there is no evil in the third world, and there is no good in the West (unless it is reformulated in accordance with leftist views.)
If one understands that this is the essential view of the left, one can then understand why a die-hard leftist like president Obama thinks that the way to deal with the mayhem in the Middle East is to remove the American presence in that region. After all, the USA is (in Obama's view) the source of all that is evil in the region.
The problem with this world view is that it is not only wrong, but also totally delusional. Long before there were any Westerners in the Middle East, the region was filled with sectarian violence. Sunnis have been fighting Shiites for over 1000 years. Native Christians have struggled with Moslems for at least as long. The only times of relative peace in the region have come when a power from outside the area like the Ottoman Turks have conquered the region and ruled by force. The history of the Middle East did not start after World War I. It has been a hot bed of struggles for centuries. The left, however, wants to ignore the actual history of the area and to paint a picture of bucolic and peaceful existence that was despoiled by Western imperialism and colonialism. Even when the colonialists departed, the left still wants to blame everything bad on them. The truth is that the Middle East is a cauldron of swirling ethnic and religious conflicts. It has been so for a thousand years. From inside that cauldron, a particularly evil ideology has arisen which is based upon one view of Islam. Today, that view is personified by ISIS. 130 years ago, the same view arose in the form of the Mahdi army which attacked the British in Khartoum. The evil done by these people has no rationale that concerns the West other than a desire to destroy our civilization.
Maybe a simpler way to put this is to say that Kerry is both an ideologue and an ignoramus. He refuses to see what is before his eyes. None are so blind as those who will not see.
This idea that we in the West have somehow caused Islamic terrorism is a form of mental illness that afflicts millions on the left. These are people who have been taught for many decades that all fault lies with Western values, Western conduct and Western history. The rest of the world consists only of the poor victims of the West, so we ought not hold them responsible for their conduct when they react to the Western provocation. Simply put, there is no evil in the third world, and there is no good in the West (unless it is reformulated in accordance with leftist views.)
If one understands that this is the essential view of the left, one can then understand why a die-hard leftist like president Obama thinks that the way to deal with the mayhem in the Middle East is to remove the American presence in that region. After all, the USA is (in Obama's view) the source of all that is evil in the region.
The problem with this world view is that it is not only wrong, but also totally delusional. Long before there were any Westerners in the Middle East, the region was filled with sectarian violence. Sunnis have been fighting Shiites for over 1000 years. Native Christians have struggled with Moslems for at least as long. The only times of relative peace in the region have come when a power from outside the area like the Ottoman Turks have conquered the region and ruled by force. The history of the Middle East did not start after World War I. It has been a hot bed of struggles for centuries. The left, however, wants to ignore the actual history of the area and to paint a picture of bucolic and peaceful existence that was despoiled by Western imperialism and colonialism. Even when the colonialists departed, the left still wants to blame everything bad on them. The truth is that the Middle East is a cauldron of swirling ethnic and religious conflicts. It has been so for a thousand years. From inside that cauldron, a particularly evil ideology has arisen which is based upon one view of Islam. Today, that view is personified by ISIS. 130 years ago, the same view arose in the form of the Mahdi army which attacked the British in Khartoum. The evil done by these people has no rationale that concerns the West other than a desire to destroy our civilization.
Maybe a simpler way to put this is to say that Kerry is both an ideologue and an ignoramus. He refuses to see what is before his eyes. None are so blind as those who will not see.
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