It seems I am not the only one who has this statement on their mind. Driving around this afternoon I caught the Charles Adler interview with Margaret Wente wherein they discussed her column in today's Globe and Mail. Mr. Alder grabbed on to this opinion from Ms. Wente.
...In a Guardian poll last year, 13 per cent of British Muslims said they thought another attack on the United States would be justified -- probably about the same result you'd get if you asked all Britons, or French, or, for that matter, Canadians.
She goes onto say that this is a long way away from actually committing a terrorist attack but I think she is on to something her. Whether the 1/7 estimate is accurate or not is irrelevant to me. I have had enough conversations with average Canadians (of the left variety) to know that there are plenty of people in the "they had it coming" camp. Here's the rub - what is the difference in "they had it coming" and "another attack on the United States would be justified". This is immanently debatable. I would say they are shades of the same colour and not far off if that.
In some cases I conjecture that this is a distinction without difference. A mental construct to protect the thinker from the ramifications of their own thoughts. A construct that works in connection with "root causes". Again, back to Ms. Wente and her discussion of the consensus laundry list.
...Muslims are poorer and more poorly integrated into British life. Forty per cent have no professional job skills. Many Muslims suffer from perceived discrimination and Islamophobia. There is also widespread discontent with the foreign policy of Western governments, which are perceived to be targeting Muslims in Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya, Kashmir and Afghanistan. The paper warns that Britain's role in the Iraq conflict may have pushed thousands of young people to extremism.
As she points out elsewhere in her column (actually it is the point of her column) that this characterization of the "typical Muslim terrorist" is not reflected in truth.
...A blunter answer comes from Marc Sageman of the University of Pennsylvania. He studied hundreds of al- Qaeda recruits. Most, he found, were upper or middle class, in their mid-20s, and alienated from society. For them, radical extremism supplied an answer to the problem of identity. "They become separated from traditional bonds and culture, and drift to the mosques more for companionship than for religion." Extremists offer them an all-encompassing explanation for their feelings. "They hear this narrative, this script, about the corruption of the West, and it seems to make sense to them." Terrorism turns them from a nobody without a purpose to a somebody with a destiny.
narcissism being the root cause for terror is a far bigger (and contentious) point for me to carry on with here so I will go back to my original point of mental constructs. For those opposed to Anglospherian Foreign Policy a fine line is walked in reaction to terrorism. By convincing ourselves that terrorists are poor and disenfranchised it is only a hop-skip-and-a-jump to an understanding of "asymmetrical warfare". It is not terrorism you see, it is the only warfare available to them. Your opposition to the AFP (if I may coin an acronym) leads you to the conclusion that "they had it coming" - so precariously close to justification and becoming part of the 1/7.
