Bush’s democratization argument shattered by London bombings

My Indian correspondent living in a Western country admirably fleshes out a point I made in passing in the previous blog entry:

There is a good chance that the terrorists who carried out these attacks on London were British Muslims. And it is possible that these aren’t naturalised British citizens but people who were born and grew up in that country.

So, here we have a situation where people who have grown up in a democracy, actually the world’s oldest democracy, in a liberal society which grants full rights of equality under law and economic opportunity (all the things that Bush wants to introduce in the Middle East), have carried out the most brutal act of cold blooded mass murder on civilians in recent British history.

So what remains of the “democratize the Mideast to eliminate terrorism” argument? If a lack of democracy was the problem, surely Muslims who have grown up in a Western, fully liberal, democracy would never ever think of engaging in terrorism?

Bush’s argument that terrorism will end with “democratization” is beginning to sound like Karl Marx’s promise of the stateless utopia.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 10, 2005 03:44 PM | Send