Contrast in London

I often read many foreign papers after a major news event, just to see what their take on things is. NYT, Guardian, Le Monde are had their one moderate day after a tragedy, and are already starting to get back to their normal patterns. But Der Speigel ran an interesting article that just sort of got me thinking.

They contrasted how sorry Americans were about Bush winning with the website: http://www.sorryeverybody.com with the new British site http://www.werenotafraid.com, which focuses on how the Brits are not scared and are going to stand up against terrorism.

I found their choice of sites, insightful not only about their bias, but also insightful about some of our own.

The apologetic whines of a few anti-Bush or anti-U.S. left wing fanatics,about the evil’s of U.S. policy, W, or the election is almost amusing in its tastelessness. I didn’t see France sending us postcards apologizing for Chirac’s, or Germans apologizing for Schroeder, despite far more economic incompetence, corruption, and duplicity on their part. So despite the offense I take at the arrogance of the site creators, it points out the amusing double standards and hypocrisy of the world today.

That British website would be seen as right-wing neo-con imperialistic fanaticism either in the U.S. or by the world looking at the U.S. But for some reason, in the case of the UK, it is seen as natural. I have no problems with the latter, and agree that is reasonable for the British to be defiant, stoic and more than a little bit pissed off — but get a little tired of the double-standard and hypocrisy of the former. We’d be called names for anyone here doing the same. Of course, I think the names are going to be coming for the Brits soon, already there’s excuses being made for why the terrorists did what they did.

The argument already starting is, “this was bad, but…” and then they go on to say that it was inevitable because of the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan or Palestine. I wonder how pragmatic those same people would be, if fanatical Jews started strapping suicide bombs to themselves (or using F-16’s) in order to bomb Mosques all around the world in retaliation for all the muslim fanatics bombing their innocents. Would they make the same excuse, if we nuked the middle east, and said it was in retaliation for 9/11? Oh, wait, I forgot, rationalizations are only valid for those who are working against us.

Many papers are calling London a tragedy. A tragedy? Really? A tragedy means a disastrous event, which implies misfortune, bad luck, or unhappy situation. Sort of an inevitable accident. Oops, at least a few separate people coordinated building and distributing bombs to blow up innocents in the name of their own ignorance, and the Newspapers will excuse that by soft-pedaling it as a “tragedy? They are editors at major papers, they’re supposed to understand the English language and what words mean. Last I checked this was murder, terror, or proof of a war were many want to kill people and change our way of life. This is well beyond a tragedy.

I understand that some people are upset over things they might not fully understand. They get mad about Palestine/Israel — of course many ignore the 75 years of terrorists bombings by the Palestinians and only blame the Israeli’s (who’ve tried to make peace a few dozen times, but keep getting bombed into war). I understand people are pissed that Americans and Brits stopped the brutal oppression of millions of people in Iraq and Afghanistan. I understand that many people are trying to create anarchy and chaos in those countries because they want those seeds of hate to thrive in order to empower themselves to kill more innocents and cram their fanatic agenda down the rest of the worlds throat, and stop these horrible things like freedom, tolerance, choice, and so on. I understand the racist bigot that think that only people of middle eastern decent should be allowed on their part of their Continent, and that if they don’t practice their religion, their way, that they should be publicly put to death by stoning, sword or bullet. But what does tolerance of their intolerance say about us?

What I don’t understand is what happened to liberalism. It was once the party that stood for freedom, tolerance, understanding, progressive change, for victims. But that meant they used to support freedom and fight bigotry, hate and violence — now they advocate it. It has become the party/group that makes excuses for murderers, that soft pedals violence against us, but sensationalizes what we do in response. The views, writings and speeches are full of vitriol, hate and self loathing — while rationalizing and even advocating the enemy position. And through it all we’ve lost all perspective, with ridiculous stories about Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Patriot Act, Iraq, Afghanistan, London, and so on. On our worst day, we haven’t come close to doing anything near as bad as the enemy in this war on terror, on their best days. We are far from flawless, but rent a clue. Compare what we did in Iraq — free a country from enslavement to a murderous, terror-sponsoring tyrant, while expending resources (and our own lives) to try to protect and avoid harming innocents, to the intentional murder of innocents who had the audacity to use public transportation in their own city.

Anyone that can’t just say, “acts like London-bombing is wrong and must be stopped”, with out equivocating or making excuses/rationalizations, or adding “but”, is beyond hope and redemption as a rational human being for me. Of course it wasn’t Iraqi’s or Afgans bombing Londoners; while the Iraqi’s and Afghani’s aren’t completely happy, by and large prefer the situation today to where it was a half decade ago. So this wasn’t retaliation and anyone who implies it was is a fool; this was murder in their name, just looking for an excuse after the fact (or before). We should call anyone that defends the sponsors of hate/terror to the carpet, as soon as they start making excuses, or start softening the words of what really happened.