No More Excuses

This is a well-established pattern. It started right after 9/11 and it has been maintained ever since.

It seems that whenever the murderous actions or ideas of Islamic fundamentalists are highlighted, the Muslim advocacy groups line up to complain about Bush and Blair in effort to explain away the actions of the radicals.

I am sick of these groups blaming everyone for their uneasiness but the perpetrators of the terrorism and the unrest.

Where is their outrage at the barbarism of the terrorists?

LONDON (Reuters) -- British Muslim groups said on Saturday Britain's policies on Iraq and Lebanon were fuelling militancy, as Pakistan said it had arrested a British al Qaeda member over an alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners.

Are policies fueling militancy? Perhaps. I suppose any policy other than appeasement would. But some Muslims were militant long, long before the fighting in Iraq or Lebanon.

Explain that.

Iraq and Lebanon cannot be used as an explanation for this latest terror plot.

Iraq and Lebanon didn't fuel the militants who carried out the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

Or the 1995 bombing in Saudi Arabia--

Or the 1996 Khobar towers bombing--

Or the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Africa--

Or the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole--

Or the 2001 hijacking and crashing of four U.S. commercial airliners--

Or the 2001 complete destruction of the World Trade Center--

Or the 2001 attack on the Pentagon--

These people who say that the problem is Iraq aren't thinking.

Islamic militancy didn't start in March of 2003 when the war in Iraq began.

The terror plot to blow up transatlantic airliners was in the making long before Hezbollah began the current conflict between Israel and Lebanon.

The British Muslim groups are looking for an excuse, and they fall incredibly short.

...The police crackdown, 13 months after four British Islamist suicide bombers killed 52 people on London's transport system, raised fears among British Muslims they were being demonized because of the militancy of a few.

In an open letter to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, leading British Muslim groups and politicians said his foreign policies on issues such as Iraq and the Israel-Hizbollah war were putting civilians at increased risk of attack in Britain and elsewhere.

If a Muslim isn't an Islamofascist, then he or she has no reason to be concerned about being demonized.

In addition to the claims of demonization, this letter is a call for appeasement, more like a whine. They are willing to surrender to terrorists.

Did Jews in World War II write open letters to prime ministers complaining that foreign policies were making Hitler mad and putting them at increased risk?

Jews were at risk. They were being systematically slaughtered. British Muslims are not being subjected to anything akin to what the Jews experienced under the extremist ideologies of Nazism and Fascism.

"The debacle of Iraq and now the failure to do more to secure an immediate end to attacks on civilians in the Middle East not only increases the risk to ordinary people in that region, it is also ammunition to extremists who threaten us all," they said in the letter, published in the Times newspaper.

These Muslim groups are pointing fingers at Blair and Bush. How terribly unfair!

Blair and Bush didn't create Islamic fanaticism. To their credit, they are confronting it.

..."We urge the prime minister to redouble his efforts to tackle terror and extremism and change our foreign policy," said the letter, whose signatories included six politicians from Blair's Labour Party.

And what would that change be?

Cut and run and let the terrorists claim victory?

Do the British Muslims think that would bring a lasting peace?

If they do, they're wrong.

Responding to the letter, Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander told Britain's Channel 4 television: "Nothing justifies the kind of actions which terrorists perpetrate."

Absolutely correct!

...Britain named 19 of those arrested, who were aged from 17 to 35, and ordered their assets to be frozen.

British media said the suspects were mostly British-born men of Pakistani origin, three were converts to Islam and one was believed to be a security guard at London's Heathrow airport.

Friends of those arrested said the men had led ordinary lives and had jobs such as being a taxi driver or pizza delivery man.

The Independent newspaper said Britain's security service and police believed a Britain-based cell, assisted by al Qaeda members, had planned to start a series of suicide bombings on U.S.-bound planes as early as Friday or Saturday.

These groups really need to stop blaming policy and start admitting to the deeply entrenched militancy that is a part of radical Islam.

After nearly five years of the whining, I'm tired of it.

They should write an open letter to Osama bin Laden instead of Blair. Let's see how well that would go over.