the bulk of Britain's political class and media has distinguished itself by a wilful and dangerous refusal to face up to reality. Just as it was branded unpatriotic in the US after the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington to talk about the link with American policy in the Middle East, so those who have raised the evident connection between the London atrocities and Britain's role in Iraq and Afghanistan have been denounced as traitors.I know I'm like a broken record, but at least those who attacked America came from the Middle East so that linking what they did to American policy there made some sense. The men who attacked London last week come from Leeds & Luton, not Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere near those places. They were British citizens.
The United Kingdom has an elected government. This government made decisions regarding war in Afghanistan and Iraq that it felt were in the best interests of the British people. Many people, including many British Muslims, disagreed with those decisions. They marched and protested, but the government was not swayed and continued with its policies. The government was even reelected only a few months ago.
Even if we accept that those who bombed London last week were motivated by the Iraq war, that does not mean we should treat this motivation as politically important. If it is politically important that can only be because a large section of British Muslims reject the democratic process that elected the government that makes decisions on behalf of the British people.
These bombers, again, have more in common with the Oklahoma City bombers or those who bomb abortion clinics or the red brigade – any organization willing to kill because they're unhappy with the mechanism of the democratic process. This is a completely different scenario to being attacked by people from countries with whom you are at war (or at least engaged in some form of conflict).
It is an insult to those British Muslims who are democrats and accept the decisions of the elected government. They may continue to oppose the government democratically, which is their right, but they accept the current government is right to do what it feels in the best interests of the British people. Mr. Milne says that those who link the attacks with Iraq are being "denounced as traitors". That is wrong. They should be denounced as bigots because the essence of this argument is that Muslims cannot accept the democratic will of the British people.
