I get to be as self-indulgent as I want without wasting anyone's time. Guilt-free solipsism -- excellent!

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Subscribing as I do to all kinds of lefty publications (not to mention the Robyn Hitchcock mailing list -- oy!), I've read a lot of comments in the last week along the lines of the following: US foreign policy has been cruel and counterproductive over the last 40 years, and you can only bully people for so long before they hit back, in desperation, with whatever meager means are at their disposal, i.e terrorism.

I don't buy this. I'm fully aware (and critical of) much of America's foreign policy misdeeds, but radical Islam's problem is fundamentally with Western secularism. There is no common ground to be forged with a viewpoint that uncompromising. I wrote a rambling disquisition on this very topic the other day which I never posted because it was too incoherent and I was trying to say too much. Those of you who've spoken to me personally in the past week have probably gotten an earful of it anyway.

Christopher Hitchens -- always provocative (and coincidentally Martin Amis's best friend) -- has written his own piece for the Guardian entitled Let's not get too liberal, in which he makes the following point:

"What [the terrorists] abominate about "the west", to put it in a phrase, is not what western liberals don't like and can't defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state."

This is a superb insight. The rest of the piece is almost as good. A little hyperbolic, as Hitchens tends to be, but well worth a looksee.
| posted by Alex at 3:48 PM