Is it really all our fault?

'After September 11, America was said to be the cause of the terrorism that struck it. After the bloody July 7 attacks on British mass transport, a top British intelligence official said the terrorism happened due to Britain's involvement in the Iraq war. President Barack Obama has made this a constant theme, most recently putting the Turkish trend toward Islamism (without admitting it exists) on the shoulders of European states that didn't admit Turkey into the EU.

So nowadays, the most common way of dealing with radicalism, repression, terrorism, and such things in the Third World is to blame it on democratic states so often victimized by such issues.

The latest contribution to this genre comes from British ambassador to Israel Tom Phillips who said Israel's sanctions' regime on the Gaza Strip ‘was breeding radicalism.’

He claimed it had driven ‘Gaza into a Hamas-controlled tunnel economy, and the Palestinian Gaza private sector has been almost completely destroyed....Young boys on the streets [have had] no role models apart from the Hamas guy in the black shiny uniform on the street corner...creating, in psychological terms, another generation of people that are not going to feel that friendly about Israel.’

The message is that the problem is completely due to ‘us.’ The other side doesn't actually exist. It has no history, no worldview, no ideology, and no goals. The ‘other side’ is merely a blank screen or mirror, reflecting back what we do.

This is, of course, a racist and imperialist vision. It denies the others any culture or history or mentality of their own. If one is only a victim always, one has no volition, higher intelligence, or ability to affect history. Can somebody just be a sincere revolutionary Islamist or radical nationalist who wants to seize state power, wipe you out, and implement his own program for achieving utopia?'

Thanks to Barry Rubin via Melanie Phillips.