"it's a mistake to seek a single cause of an empirical event in human history. ...There's the psychological dimension of some individuals being pushed over the edge. There's the sociological dimension of the relationship between "Asians" and the rest of British society ...There's the political dimension of the US/UK war against Iraq. There's an ideological dimension... Etc."
But despite the exhaustive list, Jim forgets the most important of all, the will of the bombers themselves. Like Marx says, 'men make their own history', and like EP Thompson says, the second part of that quote ('but not in circumstances of their own choosing') ought not to be invoked to cancel out the first.
Carl Remick:
"Your strenuous efforts to deny the obvious are impressive, James,"
Well, it is "the Obvious" that so often turns out to be some unexamined ideological preconception masquerading as the truth, Carl.
Carl: "There is every reason to believe the prime motivation was political,and I think we can safely assume that ... Grievance over Iraq seems the most likely cause for their actions."
That's you imposing your rationalist framework onto the actions of the religious obscurantism of Islam, doing violence to the actual belief structure underneath. You want it to be about Iraq, because that is what you feel unhappy about. Maybe the Leeds bombers are unhappy about Iraq as well. But my guess is that they would have added it to the general melange of anti-modernist complaints alongside prostitution, pop music and mixed bathing. And what do they want in Iraq, one wonders, a popular democracy, or a theocratic state?
More to the point, what right have they to speak for the Iraqi people than anyone else? They are not even from Iraq, but have lived their whole lives in Leeds, their parents coming from Pakistan. Like George Bush, they assume the right to speak for Iraq by force of arms alone.
Carl: 'Here we have George Bush and Tony Blair "democratizing" Iraq in what appears to be an exercise in ritual humiliation of Islamic people.'
Strange slippage in your argument here. One might assume that the occupation of Iraq was an exercise against the Iraqi people. At a pinch you could argue that it was a blow against the putative Arab Nation (as if Nasserism was still a force). But the Islamic People? Is there even such an entity as the 'Islamic People'? And if there is, what rights do they deserve? (The right to searing criticism, or humiliation, of their beliefs, one might say.) Do the Leeds bombers represent the Islamic people, given that most Muslims that have had anything to say about the matter have denounced them?
Here's more slippage from Carl:
'Here, too, we have the electorates of both the US and UK saying, "Way to go, George and Tony!" and returning both war criminals to office.'
That is leading up to the argument that the British people are complicit in the 'humiliation of the Islamic people', and therefore a legitimate target. But the British electorate is generally assumed to have rejected the argument for war, and Blair only won by default (there were no credible anti-war candidates in most constituencies). London is a city that saw two million march against the war. One of the bombs blew up just outside of the cnstituency of the anti-war candidate, George Galloway.
Finally, this gruesome argument:
'George Bush said that his reelection was a "moment of accountability" for the war on Iraq -- the London bombings look like another.'
So Tony Blair is to be held accountable by any nutjob with a bomb in his backpack? Why is the inner light that guides the Leeds bombers any more trustworthy than the bomber who blew up the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho? This rather confirms Trotsky's point about individual terrorism: that it springs from the same contempt for the masses as does statist reformism.