The video of Shehzad Tanweer released on the anniversary of the July 7 bombings contains an interesting detail:
In the video Tanweer, 22, speaking in his west Yorkshire accent, can be heard justifying his attack on the Aldgate tube in which seven people died and more than a hundred were injured. He says non-Muslims of Britain "deserve to be attacked" because they voted for a government which "continues to oppress our mothers, children, brothers and sisters in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and Chechnya."Note Afghanistan in that list. I say the detail is interesting, because in the chorus of 'understanding' voices today - I mean those urging us to pay attention to the foreign policy grievances behind Islamist terrorism - there's a lot of emphasis on the folly of invading Iraq, because of how it has encouraged terrorist responses (as their root cause), but rather less about the intervention in Afghanistan. Could this be because many of those who make up that chorus, and who opposed the Iraq war, also supported the earlier action in Afghanistan? Now, of course, I haven't done a count. I don't know exactly how many people are in this category. But I do know that it's plenty, and that there is therefore a flaw in their thinking. Shehzad Tanweer returns to tell them they should not have backed a military response to the attacks of 9/11, or backed the overthrow of the Taliban and sharia law in Afghanistan, if they want to be free of the charge constantly levelled over Iraq that it is we who are in part to blame for terrorist bombings.
Update at 10.50 PM: This is the first of three related posts. The other two are here and here.