We saw what they did...

”It’s because of all the outrages that are going on across the World” he said, ”I’ve seen what happened in Chechnya, Bosnia, Iraq and the occupied territories and this is just a reaction to that” he suggested. ”We live in this World context and people need to take responsibility for what is going on. That is why they did it. No one cares about these outrages and Bush, Blair and you are in many ways responsible.” Paraphrased from the radio programme this morning on Radio 5 Live as far as my memory can recall.

And utterly wrong.

People do care. We see what’s going on and we weep. We get angry. We care about the lives of people we have never met. Their children, husbands and wives. We try to understand difficult political and territorial situations. We take in what we can and sometimes our support swings from one camp to the other. It’s terrible what those Palestinian terrorists did on that bus, it’s terrible what that Israeli soldier did in that street. Yes, it’s terrible. Yes, we agree.

Yes, we recognise the wickedness that exists in the world context and no, we don’t get the urge to perpetrate exactly the kind of evil that we so abhor.Exactly the kind of evil the terrorists try to blame us for. They, like the other perpetrators of evil, will be judged in the same way we judge everything we see. Not by some particular ideal or perceived historical or current injustice. Not by some words written in some book somewhere. Not by what one or other of our leaders say but by the actions of the people we are judging.

We know why those four pawns of darkness did what they did. We know they felt aggrieved by world events. We know they really do believe that their religion is the one and only true religion. We know they offered nothing constructive to the world context. We know they did nothing to help themselves and those they believe they care about. We know that they had no tolerance for the faith or way of life of other people. We know that they benefited from living in a free Britain. That they took the education, freedom and opportunity that was offered to them and we know that they walked onto crowded trains and onto a crowded bus and detonated bombs.

There is no point in telling us that these men were aggrieved. Marginalized. Made by our own hand. At exactly the same time they blew up their fellow train and bus passengers they blew any chance they had to make any kind of a point. To improve anything. We saw what they did and we judged them.