We do indeed.
Must read of the day.
This is an outstanding and gutsy essay from Brenden O'Neill.
"Time and again, one reads about Islamist attacks that seem to defy not
only the most basic of humanity’s moral strictures but also political
and even guerrilla logic. "
"What motivates this perversity? What are its origins? Unwilling, or
perhaps unable, to face up to the newness of this unrestrained,
aim-free, civilian-targeting violence, Western observers do all sorts of
moral contortions in an effort to present such violence as
run-of-the-mill or even possibly a justifiable response to Western
militarism."
"It is ridiculous, and more than a little immoral, to try to dress up
nihilistic assaults designed merely to kill as many ordinary people as
possible as some kind of principled political violence."
He notes:
"What we have today, uniquely in human history, is a terrorism that seems
myopically focused on killing as many people as possible and which has
no clear political goals and no stated territorial aims. The question
is, why? It is not moral masturbation to ask this question or to point
out the peculiarity and perversity of modern Islamist violence. My
penny’s worth is that this terrorism speaks to a profound crisis of
politics and of morality."
"If you cannot see the difference between a drone strike that goes wrong and kills an entire family and a man who crashes his car into the middle of a group of children accepting sweets from a US soldier and them blows himself and them up – as happened in Iraq in 2005 – then there is something wrong with you.
