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Posted on 7/10/2005, 2:12:56 PM by bvw
British Prime Minister Tony Blair sees the Arab-Israeli dispute as one of the main reasons behind the London bombings. The group claiming responsibility puts it third on a list of grievances.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has attributed last week’s bombings in London to the Arab-Israeli dispute and lack of democracy in the Middle East. At least 70 people were estimated to have been killed in bombing attacks that gripped London last Thursday, with hundreds more wounded.
Blair told the BBC that precluding terrorist attacks was not necessarily a question of taking preventative security measures. “The underlying problems have to be dealt with,” he said.
"We need to create the circumstances in which some of the critical issues in the Middle East are dealt with and sorted out, and where people can see out there in the Middle East that there is a perfectly good path to democracy if people want to take it," said Blair.
Blair’s analysis differs from that of the Bush administration which views an all out war on terror combined with preventative security measures in the United States and abroad as the most effective means of combating terrorism.
Blair’s comments are significant because they represent a shift in emphasis away from using the military as the primary means of fighting terrorism, as in the war in Iraq and Afganistan, toward a policy that would address the preceived political and economic roots of terrorism.
Some commentators have suggested that Blair’s approach may have been a factor in the decision of the G8 industrialized nations meeting in London to allocate $3 billion in aid to the Palestinian Authority. Uzi Arad, who served as an advisor to Binyamin Netanyahu when Netanyahu was prime minister, said on Israeli radio this morning that the allocation was tantamount to paying “protection money” to terrorists as a means to forestall future attacks.
Those G-8 billions you take from our pockets to give the the haters will do the opposite of slacking that hate, Blair.
ummmmm ... i don't think so.
a part, but not the whole reason.
like, dude, islam hates jews and christians and secularists.
Even if there had been no creation of srael, the muslims woudl still hate jews and christians and have conflict with the modern world. It is a fundamental part of their so-called religion.
You know, I used to think Blair was intelligent.
bvw, we're at the very beginning of this war....and as a poor amateur student of history, my thought is that it takes decades for the truth & most powerful justifications to crystalize. Tony Blair may be partly right & he has been so supportive that I can't just dismiss him.
The US Civil War began over states rights and only well into it did Lincoln make freeing the slaves a condition...and yet, now students are taught that this was the main reason...
WWI was thought to be founded on an assasination at the time...
WWII started over a crushing depression in Germany & a supposed attempt at repatriation of lands (Alsace & Poland) supposedly to fix this...only as we got into it did we see that the nazis were much more sinister than mere landgrabbers.
Who can see into the future and say what the main premise for this war will finally be? not me.
grandma mac
WARNING: This is a high volume ping list
""We need to create the circumstances in which some of the critical issues in the Middle East are dealt with and sorted out...""
Yeah...and just what might that be? Support for more Democratic leaders who are hated and despised...and called "Western" puppets by the jihadists. Should we give them more money for schools, so they can later be turned into Madrassas that teach hate?
What the Left doesn't understand is that Islam despises, almost more than anything, the very liberal reforms and progressive attitudes they wish to foster. In fact, when making excuses for Islam's anger at the West, the Left conveniently ignores that it is our progressive culture that poses the greatest danger to both the Jihadists and the ruling classes in the Mid-East.
"...and where people can see out there in the Middle East that there is a perfectly good path to democracy if people want to take it," said Blair."
And what if they don't want to take that path, Tony?
I hope so. He is a man of mixed messages who has his own political realities to deal with, and can go only so far out on any limb off the main trunk of public's sense of things.
Tony ol' boy you might not be intrested in Jihad, but Jihad is interested in you. All that supposedly provokes the Mooslims only advances their timetable to jihad.
So was Israel to blame when Muslims invaded Spain in 711 and killed or enslaved everyone they found? This pathetic pussy Blair cannot even summon up the courage to NAME the enemy, let alone fight them. I'll give you a hiny, Tony, it is spelled I-S-L-A-M. I'll give you another hint of where the enemies are, Tony...try looking into the people who stand on British street corners calling for your assasination.Mike Savage has been playing those recordings all week. If they tried that in this country, those scumbags would be sent to Gitmo before sundown. Britain has no hope while Blair is PM.
My favorite for the Comment of the Day.
It is all very simple. Let's convert all churches and Jewish temples to mosques. Let our women dress themselves in coal sacks, abolish scientific discourse, democracy and free speech and finally let the mullahs take over and the terrorists just may be satisfied.
I think he is right but the solution isn't giving $3B to the PA.
Untill one day a mooolah will declair hisself the only true believer, and issue a fatwa against all other living humans.
It truly is satan's work! The hatred and destructin of mankind.
ABC CBS NBC CNN its all the SAME, Propaganda.
Might as well call them all AmeriJazerra.
Show them how much Gravitas Hugh Bris has. Vote with your remote! Shut down the Alphabet channels.
He's Got A Plan
Zippo Hero
Kill A Commie For Mommie
Seven Dead Monkeys Page O Tunes
What exactly does Israel have to do with what's happening in Thailand, North Africa, The Philipines, Chechnya, Kashmir, etc. ?
That is always the problem for a politician...if they spoke the plain truth they would scare the life right out of most of us!
IMHO the plain truth is that we fight an enemy who want us all dead. We can fight back or we can surrender.
All the other reasons for us to fight--their miserable brutality; Israel's right to exist;Koran directives; Militant Islamics; Oil; terror camps in the ME neighborhood; Saddams nose thumbing of us & the UN; women's rights; heck, human rights; etc. etc. all take a backseat to the fact that we have to kill them or they will kill us.
They were on the line with a Christian cleric from London -- name not gotten -- who touted some services they had just had there in London which included a Priest, a Rabbi and a Muslim cleric. The London caller went on to say as how the problem wasn't Muslim, it was fundamentalism -- Christian fundametalism, Jewish fundamentalism, or Muslim Fundamentalism. When challenged that "No, it's only Muslim fundamentalism!" -- briefly and not followed up on -- by Rabbi Patasnik, the London caller blamed that kind of rheotoric on driving a wedge between Muslims and society.
Well that cleric calling from London was wrong, and even touched by evil, I'd say. For he slandered two whole groups of people -- Christian and Jewish, with absolutely no fault in this matter.
A phone-in caller sometime after -- ten minutes or so -- mentioned that Blair had, himself, blamed the Isrealis for contributing to the climate that resulted in the attacks. So when I got home, I looked up the news, confirmed the Blair story and here it is.
Blair is wrong. And he's giving more than comfort and billions (of other people's money, yours and mine that is) to the enemy) -- by his words he goes beyond comfort -- he encourages greater violence against Israel.
Bloody words, his, bloodied and bloody.
In a way he's right.
The method used to create Israel was the usual British attempt to sow trouble in its wake...undefensible borders and no accounting for the rest of the local population...
Pakistan and India was done in a similar, though not identical, way.
Agree. The root cause of Islamofascism is institutionalized Muslim hatred of Western Civilization, which pre-dates the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Israel is just a convenient excuse. Surprising that a world leader of Blair's stature would buy that excuse.
I first visited Europe as an exchange student and Europeans were very critical of American race relations. Over the years we confronted the topic in ways that they never have. Their problem is that the created the idea of multiculturalism and set it up against the American melting pot as better. Now they are wondering. Was multiculturalism racism, too?
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