Tony Blair was interviewed at length on Radio 4 today (listen here - it was in the post 8am section). Among the many pearls of wisdom was his explanation as to why the motivations of Jihadists have nothing whatsoever to do with 'western' actions in the middle east and elsewhere. Rather:
"They believe in what they believe in because they believe that their religion compels then to believe in it"
That's right, they believe in something because they, y'know, believe in it.
Mind you, similar 'reasoning' is used in political discourse all the time. David Cameron recently appeared to blame the crimes committed during the August riots on 'criminality'; although to be fair, unlike Blair he went on to suggest some causes that at least nodded to a move beyond tautology (whether you agree with them or not). Lack of ability to tell right from wrong, lack of self control and so on.
Of course in both cases the magical reasoning is entirely self-serving. Blair is ideologically committed to the idea that Islamist terrorism is sui generis and definitively unrelated to actions taken by western governments; Cameron is a right wing Tory for whom the idea that crime has social as well as personal causes is extremely challenging. It's just a shame that politicians making these types of comments don't get pulled up more often by those interviewing them. If they were, we might at least start to get at their motivations for such laughable arguments.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment