Justifying the Unjustifiable

DUBAI (Reuters) - Arab newspapers urged Britain on Friday not to turn against Arabs and Muslims after bloody bomb attacks in London blamed on al Qaeda Islamist militants.

While all editorials condemned the onslaught, some linked it to Britain's part in the Iraq invasion or its backing for a U.S.-declared "war on terror," which, they said, ignores the injustice of occupation fueling militancy in the Middle East.

This sounds just like the reaction in the Arab community after 9/11. While condemning the attacks, they obsessed about retaliation.

There were some inexcusable yet isolated instances of violence and property crime perpetrated by idiots in the name of retribution. Those responsible were held accountable for their crimes. But without question, the overwhelming majority of Americans did not take out their anger on Arab-Americans or Muslims.

There was no backlash. If anything, there has been a loss of common sense to avoid the appearance of assigning blame or being suspicious of Arab-Americans.

For example, sometimes elderly white women and little children are randomly selected to be searched at airports while young adult males appearing to be of Arab descent pass through security.

I am in no way suggesting that Arab-Americans or Muslims should be singled out as suspicious or assumed to be al Qaeda operatives. I am merely pointing out that all the hand-wringing about a backlash was wasted worry. It didn't happen.
The Arab press gave blanket coverage to the London bombings, except in Cairo, where the media focus was on the killing by Iraqi kidnappers of Egypt's top diplomat in Baghdad.

An editorial in Egypt's state-run al-Gomhuria daily took the West to task for its "war on terrorism," saying this had failed to provide security for Americans or Europeans.

"The American administration must try fair solutions for the issues of occupied people as this will dry up the sources of terrorism and return stability to the world," it said.

Most Lebanese newspapers linked the strikes on London to British military involvement in Iraq:

"Al Qaeda spreads death from Iraq to the heart of London," was the headline in al-Balad, while the leading an-Nahar daily said: "Olympic London turned into a battlefield for Iraq."

As-Safir newspaper condemned the "terrorists" who struck at the heart of London. "But this doesn't cancel the fact that occupation is terrorism against people, whether American as in Iraq or Israeli as in Palestine," it added.

...In Tehran, Ayatollah Mohammad Emami-Kashani used his Friday sermon to condemn the blasts, but reminded British Prime Minister Tony Blair of what he said was al Qaeda's parentage.

"You (Blair) should not forget that al Qaeda was created by big powers. America is the father and Israel is the mother of al Qaeda," he declared. "The aim of Qaeda's creation was to cause problems for Iran. Now it causes problems for its founders."

In Islamist Internet chatrooms, several users welcomed the bloodshed in London. "To those surprised by the killing of Americans and Britons in their countries, weren't you shocked by the killing of women and children in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan? As they kill us, we should kill them," one said.

Sadly, the joy some are taking in the death and destruction of yesterday's London attacks is also reminiscent of how some in the Arab world responded to the carnage of 9/11.

At that time, rather than blaming Osama bin Laden and his henchmen for the massive bloodshed, they placed blame on U.S. policy.

In short, we brought the attacks on ourselves. We were responsible and should make efforts to understand what we did to make them hate us so much. Of course, the U.S. was not fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan then; yet the U.S. was still cited as being at fault for angering some Arabs to the point where they were prompted to hijack civilian airliners and crash them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

This argument, that the terrorists were not to blame for the attacks as much as U.S. policy, that we somehow deserved to be hit, was seized quickly by many in this country and anti-Bush forces around the world.

Karl Rove alluded to this recently when he said that "liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to offer...understanding for our attackers."

The "blame the U.S. first" mindset embraced by many liberals continues to drive them. They have put the U.S. and its allies on the same moral plane as al Qaeda and the insurgents in Iraq. They do this in order to justify the completely unjustifiable.

So, if the British react the way Americans did after 9/11, Arabs should have no concerns about a backlash against Arab communities and Muslims.

Not to worry. In the end, America will be blamed.