Once again the terrorists have struck, and as someone with family in London--my nephew was just one underground train away from one of the bombs when it went off--this one hits very close to home. Nothing, of course, can justify these barbaric acts. And yet that does not mean that all of the rhetoric from Bush and Blair about "defending our values" should be accepted without criticism and examination. In fact, there is little evidence that Al Qaeda and the other Islamic fundamentalist groups currently at war with the West are interested in establishing Sharia Law in Western countries nor making all women there wear burqas--despite their obvious fanatical contempt for our decadent ways.

Rather, if one looks at the demands they make on their Web sites, they focus on the kinds of issues that make recruiting young bombers easy: Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, the invasion of Iraq, and other real or perceived injustices carried out or uncritically supported by the United States and the United Kingdom. Should it not be obvious by now, with London as the latest example, that terrorism cannot be "defeated" precisely because it is not conventional warfare? And since there is a limited amount that can be done to stop it, the focus of the average person should be on the injustices that breed terrorism and allow people to justify such acts to themselves.

In other words, we should ask ourselves whom all the moral condemnation of terrorism is aimed at. Surely not the terrorists, who not only don't care that "innocent" people are killed but are doing it deliberately; instead, it is aimed at us, to pull a smokescreen over the misguided and dishonest acts of our politicans, like dragging us into a war in Iraq that has made terrorism a much worse threat.