Tony Blair is the man

At press conferences these days, he's saying it like it is, which is what I like to hear. David Horovitz at The Jerusalem Post has a really good column out about what he calls Tony Blair's "finest hour". The ovearching theme here, that I think is really worth considering, is that terrorism has absolutely no justification. Regardless of what some people (mainly liberal journalists) say about a few possible "causes" behind what is driving the terrorists, these things simply don't add up.

He demolished the diabolical historical revisionism that cites Afghanistan and Iraq as the catalysts for 9/11, noting acidly that 2001's Black September attacks predated both those instances of Western intervention.

He ridiculed the terrorists' purported concern, and that of the terrorists' sympathizers, for the well-being of the Iraqi people: "If it is concern for Iraq, why are they driving a car bomb into the middle of a group of children and killing them? he asked simply. "Why are they every day in Iraq trying to kill people whose only desire is for their country to become a democracy?

To the reporter who asked Blair whether he recognized that the presence of "occupying armies" could "justifiably increase the grievance of people living in the Middle East," he gave an unyielding "No," and continued: "What is happening in Iraq is that ordinary, decent Iraqis are being butchered by these people with the same terrorist ideology that is killing people in different parts of the world."

I've always respected this man, and I think that after reading this, I have come to respect him even more.

A few more thoughts: I was having a discussion the other day with someone that brought to my attention something that I hadn't yet considered. There are plenty of other regions in the world where people are being oppressed, whether it be in the form of poverty, or occupying armies, or otherwise. So why is it that we don't hear about suicide bombers in places like Tibet or Bolivia? What is so fundamentally different about the Middle East? Could it be the the way in which Islam was spread through the sword? Just something to think about.