TERRORISM CORRECT

One of the most incisive critics of today's politically correct cant is Theodore Dalrymple, the pseudonym for an English physician/psychiatrist who prefers the comfort of relatively anonymity. His most recent contribution to the cause of international clarity is a brief essay on the City Journal Web site, entitled “The Morality of Terror”.

Basically, Dalrymple sums up his thesis in two cogent opening paragraphs:

“At the recent meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference in Malaysia, the Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr. Mohammed Mahathir, said 'the causes of bitterness and anger . . . of terrorists should be identified and removed.' He added that people would not be willing to blow themselves up and kill others if they did not have a reason.

Indeed not: human beings always have a reason for behaving as they do. The question is not whether they have a reason, but whether the reason they have is a good one...”

Theodore Dalrymple doesn't believe the terrorists' have a good reason. And he most definitely doesn't belong to the "We must understand the root causes" school of morality or foreign policy.

Yet, in contrast, the Malaysian Prime Minister's original remarks were sympathetically reported by a surprising number of news sources in Europe and North America.

However, should that really be a surprise? Opposing reactions to a variety of Islamofascist terror attacks around the world in the last three years have underscored the great divide that separates the politically-correct proponents of an enlightened leftism of "tolerant" multiculturalism (and peace at any price) and those few of us still living in the real world.

Repeatedly, no matter what the murderous provocation, the liberal-left tolerance crowd have still managed to find "root causes" for the actions of ethnic terrorists in the form of such "blame the victim" golden-oldies as injurious Western globalism, imperialism, economic exploitation, insensitivity and arrogance. And of course, once the left finds "roots causes," then it goes without saying that no guilt or responsibility can be assigned to the left's designated "victims" of such root causes -- even terrorists who may have just bombed, maimed or murdered innocent American, Israeli, Australian or Indonesian civilians.

More here.