The kind of unthinking, unserious, unreflective argument that Ottawa (or New York, or Washington, or New Delhi, or Bali, or London, or Lahore, etc) is attacked because *we* happened to be in Afghanistan or striking ISIL is the kind of nonsense youd hear from a conspiracy theorist. But its adumbrated in the press these days by nice liberals like Glenn Greenwald, who rightly oppose the NSA leviathan, but wont say much about the terrorizing non-state-actors from al Qaeda central to ISIS to Jemaah Ismaliyah. In this blinkered world, only the west can kill innocents (which it has done, too frequently); and the Iraqis, Syrians, Pakistanis, Indians, Americans, Canadians killed by terrorism? Well, its all blowback that our policies caused. This kind of uncritical theorizing, in addition to being wrong, has the added effect of dehumanizing Muslims--well, of course, this faceless, nameless perpetrators crime was *caused by* our destruction of Iraq, and not the confluence of ideology, social structures, alienation, and all the usual factors that make people commit crimes! Those innocent deaths in Bali? *Caused by* Australias support for East Timors independence! The assassination of the heroic UN Diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello in Iraq? *Caused by* American policy! And in this weeks ludicrous example -- a Canadian soldier killed in Montreal, and the Parliament buildings attack? *Caused* by* Canadian support for Afghan reconstruction! We call them birthers and truthers when people make these kinds of arguments in other contexts.These, too, should be dismissed as reflexive blame-the-west Firsters. Rinse, and repeat.
Posted on: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 18:00:11 +0000