Ranters' Network - Revealing the wrongs of the world and insulting those responsible for them.

Thomas Friedman's column in the New York Times about the London attacks illustrates exactly where we in the Western world get the fight wrong.

He differentiates the tactics in the London Underground today from the suicide bombings in Iraq by stating that the latter is "Muslim on Muslim" crime while the former is somehow different. When I read this, the first thing that came to mind was the term used when describing early 90s inner city violence as "Black on Black" crime, as if it were in a league of its own. As if to say that doing it to 'themselves', like they were all one single mass of people, doesn't matter as much as when they do it to others. Mr Friedman misses the point.

He also misses the point when he says that Bin Laden's major driving goal is to "to create a great gulf between the Muslim world and the globalizing West." No, that's what we're doing. Bin Laden's goal was to punish the US for its role in Lebanon and Israel, and to give the American populace cause to force the government to stop meddling in the Middle East. That's why the clerics and imams don't condemn him.

The news organizations are now all clamoring with the question, "how are we going to defend ourselves?" as defending subways is not the same task as defending airports. The Russians know this: The subway is a public institution and the greatest feat of public institutions are that they're open to the public. It's the same problem that came up with the designs of the Freedom Tower, the underlying basis of which is in creating a plane-proof building. The point is lost: You can't build a plane-proof building, which is why the Freedom Tower looks like a giant fortress from the ground, and even attempting so concedes the point, both physically and symbolically.

Likewise, Friedman once again poses that question in a grand scale, and the problem is the same: You can't have a free society that is locked up like a fortress. The best defense against such attacks is to stop pissing off the attackers, and deluding ourselves into believing that the attacks are religiously-charged - that this is a Christian/Muslim or Atheist/Fundamentalist divide - or are otherwise irrational, instead of politically-charged as they are, will only force us into more bloodshed on both sides. This is why we lost the crusades: Because we insisted on fighting them.