Are Canadian stupid ?

[Dexter Sinister]

By Tom Nichols

It’s not about foreign policy, it’s about who we are. As long as we are a secular, tolerant, open, and free society — and by “we” I mean all of us in the West, including Canada — the terrorists will continue to strike, because everything we are, our very way of life, is repellent to them, and they are going to do everything they can to destroy it completely.

I don't think that's accurate either, that's just a more articulate version of Bush's simple-minded "They hate our freedoms" line. There's some truth in it of course, they do find secular liberalism repellent, so it is *part* of the explanation, but by no means all of it. It's not just about who we are, it's also about what we've done (i.e. foreign policy, in its broadest sense), and I think things would be very different if assorted imperial and colonial powers hadn't been messing around in the terrorists' part of the world for centuries.

 

[Tonington]

I can see how past foreign policy has made the Americans a larger target, but for the life of me I can't understand the glee some people get from seeing America "get what they deserve."

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Yeah, I don't get that one either. Nobody deserves to be terrorized, it's just a particularly deadly version of the "two wrongs make a right" argument.

 

[lone wolf]

Terrorism? No. What does that settle? A good solid left hook then a beer afterward.... Yeah.

Wolf