The terrorists that the invasions ofIraq and Afghanistan are supposed to bekeeping away from western shores nailedLondon last week, an event that came asno great surprise to many who followinternational affairs beyond the publicrelations pablum produced by the U.S. andits subordinate allies.

It is amusingto read the statements of many prominentpoliticians in response to this brutaland barbaric criminal act. One termused frequently to characterize theattack is “senseless.” Do these peoplereally believe that, or are they puttingus on?

The terrorist attacks that have beenperpetrated by the renegade, right-wingMuslim fundamentalists over the pastdecade are a lot of things, despicableand criminal being but two of them, butsenseless they are not. To call themsenseless supposes that they have nopurpose when in fact they are done verypurposefully.

Every successfulterrorist strike is a victory for thecause of the terrorists who increasetheir credibility and ability to recruitby proving that they have the ability todamage their enemies. Like a move on achess board a carefully plannedterrorist attack is also aimed atdrawing a response from the opponent,which the terrorist hopeswill place the opponent in an even morevulnerable position.

By any stretch,none of this can be fairly characterizedas senseless.

Much ado is also often made about thefact that a terrorists attacks are madeagainst civilian targets. So what elseis new? We could likewise condemn thebombings of Dresden and Tokyo by theAllies in World War II as terrorist attacks.The fact is that chivalry is long deadand for decades civilian targets havebeen seen as legitimate objectives inconflicts, defacto if not de jure.

Today, one side in this conflict blows upLondon, the other kills untold numbersof bystanders in Afghanistan and Iraq.In the end, what is the difference?Killing the innocent is wrong, period.Those on one side who condemn the otherfor what they themselves are doing arehypocrites and not to be trusted.

Other favourite items of disinformationthat are frequently put forward toexplain the cause of the currentterrorist crisis is that “they hate ourvalues” and that they threaten our wayof life. Granted that a number of themdo, much in the same way thatfundamentalist Christians and other homegrown radicals of various stripes alsohate many of our modern values and wantto impose extremism upon us.

The factis, if a threat to our values fromextremist fantasies is the issue, thenwe should be concentrating on our owndomestic fundamentalists who pose a fargraver threat than any ideology on theother side of the globe. Althoughextremist, oppressive values may providethe means to organize and pursue aterrorist agenda, they are not the rootcause of the problem.

Opinion polls have shown that mostMuslims do not hate our values. Tounderstand anything about what ishappening in the Middle East, and whypeople there are causing so much trouble,we have to go back at least to the 19thCentury and start with Europeancolonization and the subjugation ofMuslim societies. Come forward to themodern world where colonies have turnedinto client states in many instances,with unequal distribution of wealth.Add oil and foreign interference, dropin Israel, a state created and forcedonto an unwilling population which wasdisplaced to make room for it, and for afinal insult add foreign troops onIslamic soil.

No wonder there is a lotof discontent, and no wonder theradicals have a fertile field to recruitfrom in their campaign against the west.

Policy, not values, is the key elementto the problem in the Middle East. Andlike skilful chess players theterrorists (many of whom were trainedby the U.S. and praised by Ronald Reaganas freedom fighters) have managed toprod the west into policies thatreinforce the terrorists’ hand. Peopleare joining their ranks to drive outforeign occupiers and influence. It isunfortunate that in doing so they alsostrengthen the control of extremistideologies in their society.

The current policy by the U.S. and its followers of seeking a militarysolution,whether they intend it or not, leads toeither eventual defeat or to enoughbutchery to reduce Muslim populations toa size that cannot offer significantresistance. Neither is a pleasantthought and it is time for Washingtonand London to rethink that policy andfind a less bloody way out of the swamp,even if it does mean giving up controlof Middle Eastern oil.

The ideas of theradical Islamists are repugnant, butthey will probably not be defeated byoutside force. That defeat has to comefrom inside, from amongst the verypeople they are now recruiting. It maynever happen as long as foreign troopsoccupy Islamic ground.