Who Really Hates Freedom?

So what really motivated these young men that apparently were planning to blow up 20 airplanes enroute to the United States from Britain last week? If you listen to the rotten British Labour Party, you'll be told quickly that the West's foreign policy had nothing to do with it. They are merely crazy and "hate freedom"; the usual retort. Have you ever known anyone that hated freedom? I haven't. I'm really getting sick and tired of these facile statements that seem to convince normally intelligent people.

The truth is that even if it wasn't the entire reason, Britain's decision to invade and occupy Iraq alongside the Americans, to support Israel against Hizbullah and the Palestinians and their country's ongoing war in Afghanistan does have an impact on these young men's extreme choices to detonate themselves at 30,000 feet. Add to that British support for dictatorial regimes in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt and you've got the beginnings of an interesting recipe. Who really hates freedom?

When you see disturbing images on television you easily put yourself in the shoes of the oppressed; this is empathy. My father has told me that when the Israelis first invaded Lebanon, when I was just a baby, he saw them bombing Beirut apartment buildings on television. Like a normal human being, he empathized with the Lebanese because those apartments looked like ones he had known living and working in Bombay only a few years earlier. He didn't take up arms but he was outraged. Human beings can feel what others feel and suicide bombers are no different.

When justice is absent what do you do?

When these young men turn on their televisions at home and see sights like bombed out apartments and refugees they feel empathy and anger all at once; these people could easily be you. It is relatively easy for them to be manipulated by extremists into believing that they are avenging the weak by self-immolation. So ultimately our collective foreign policy is helping to drive some people to terrorism.

Perhaps what's needed is a nonviolent "terrorist" recruiter at every mosque, who can channel this rage into constructive actions. But the British government doesn't want that. They don't want to actually change their behaviour in other lands or at home. Violence justifies violence. That's the real truth that both terrorists and "freedom lovers" believe.