The web is, predictably, consuming millions of megabytes covering the terrorist attack on London yesterday – much of it from our friends across the water in the USA. Much of it is well-informed and rational but the volume of bigoted venom is quite surprising. Many comments left on rational web logs display a complete lack of understanding or awareness of the history and reasoning behind the Islamic Fundamentalist movement and go on to promote the very policies that have allowed the movement to grow and recruit.

I read Utter Crap at What Makes you Happy this morning and will not repeat the arguments here as it sums up the US leaderships role in promoting Islamic terrorism.

Instead, I’d like to answer one or two of the comments that I have seen flying around.

1. Many people who know a little about London pointed out that at least two of the bombs were planted very close to pockets of Muslim residential areas. Some thought this suggested that Islamic Fundamentalists were not responsible. Wrong. Any Muslim who adopts a non-Islamic state as home and is willing to be governed by a secular parliament is a valid target. In some ways these people are seen as the worse kind of traitor to the ’cause’. Do these people worry about who they massacre daily in Iraq?
2. Yesterday in London was NOT the start of ‘The Rapture’. This delusion seems to be remarkably widespread and is, of course, a figment of a rabid imagination. The trouble with the oncoming’ Rapture’ is that is has allowed a large number of Americans to completely abdicate themselves from their responsibilities. This doesn’t matter so much when it’s Bubba from South Carolina but it matters very much when it’s George in Washington. (And let’s not forget that God talks to the Shrub. It was God, apparently, that told him to wage war in Iraq. I thought it was his Dad and those slimeballs Cheyney and Rumsfeld.)
3. In a lighter vein – no – it wasn’t the French either. They didn’t take the loss of the Olympics well but this was just an outrageous suggestion.
4. Nuking Saudi Arabia is not the answer. Anyone with a brain bigger than a maggot can tell you that
5. This outrage was almost certainly not an Osama Bin Laden project. These groups are small, everywhere and largely disconnected. This is not a world wide organisation and never was.

The growth in Islamic Fundamentalism is on virtually the same curve as the growth in the US foreign policy of (1) unquestioned and unconditional support for Israel and (2) sticking their noses and the CIA into getting regimes into place that they wanted. Like Saddam in Iraq for example. Past USA foreign policy is almost 100% responsible for the current situation and only future USA foreign policy can start to undo the immense damage. Sadly, the lunatics currently in power are on a ‘mission from God’.