Salmon Rusdie Speaks

The author of The Satanic Verses, and a man that has had personally been targeted for death by Islamic extremism, Salmon Rushdie, writes a blistering diatribe against the Blame America First crowd. Rushdie writes:

Let’s be clear about why this bien-pensant anti-American onslaught is such appalling rubbish. Terrorism is the murder of the innocent; this time, it was mass murder. To excuse such an atrocity by blaming U.S. government policies is to deny the basic idea of all morality: that individuals are responsible for their actions.

It’s clear that the reactionary Left is bringing their anti-American sentiment to the forefront in the wake of our national tragedy. I’ve heard many people say "this was a tragedy, but…"

This wasn’t a tragedy, that implies something other than cold-blooded murder. This was an act of barbarism on a nightmare scale. Nothing that America has done warrants the targeting of innnocent civilians in acts of terror. Our involvement in Israel does not warrant it, our involvement in Latin America does not warrant it, nothing we have done can in any way justify the death of 6000 innocent civilians. While the United States is hardly without blame, the 6000 who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were. This was an attack that cannot be justified, and we must not fall into the abyss of moral relativism.