"Barbarity and Civility"

The Union Leader- Barbarity and civility: Eyeing the terror war with clarity"IMMEDIATELY after Thursday's bombings in London, some on the far left blamed Prime Minister Tony Blair, saying it was his fault for sending troops to Iraq. This is the same poisoned thinking that blamed America for the 9/11 attacks and equated the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay with the acts of terrorists and totalitarian regimes...

As we debate whether glovelessly handling a Koran is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, terrorists plot the destruction of all Western civilization, or at least as many "infidel" non-believers as they can possibly wipe out.

The CIA reportedly kidnaps Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, a radical cleric, in Milan, and ships him to Saudi Arabia, and there is widespread outrage. Meanwhile, al-Qaida kidnaps and executes Egyptian envoy Ihab al-Sherif, and there is only a murmur of mild indignation.

That the fundamental differences between the actions of Western governments and the actions of the Islamist terrorists have to be continually pointed out is one of life's absurd realities. That many of the people who need to have it pointed out are Westerners themselves is doubly absurd."