The 'hen or egg' perennial question
Today, in The Guardian's ' Comment is Free ' columns, Seumas Milne argues 'denying a link between western wars in the Muslim world and the backlash on our streets only fuels Islamophobia and bloodshed'. In what will be seen by many as a controversial argument, Milne re-establishes the obvious (or what should have been obvious) link between the war on terror , its 'dehumanization' and transmutation into a war where borders are irrelevant on the one hand and terrorist attacks such as the one that took place in Woolwich last May. To say these attacks are about "foreign policy" prettifies the reality. They are the predicted consequence of an avalanche of violence unleashed by the US, Britain and others in eight direct military interventions in Arab and Muslim countries that have left hundreds of thousands of dead. Only the willfully blind or ignorant can be shocked when there is blowback from that onslaught at home. The surprise should be ...