7-7

It's July Seventh - one year after four Islamists killed 52 and wounded over 700. Writing that, I'm wondering if the four suicide murderers are included among the 52. Put simply, their lives don't count.

There are certain things people can choose to do to make their lives less than worthless. They can choose to participate in murder, rape, or torture. Theft is borderline on this scale. It's difficult to steal enough to get yourself kicked out of the human race, but a guy like the late and unlamented Ken Lay had cracked it. By looting the retirement savings of millions and creating the deadly and bankrupting California energy crisis, Lay opted out of the species.

On this anniversary of a despicable and cowardly mass murder, we must ask what the proper response is to these animals. On one extreme, it's tempting to consider banning them, evicting them, rejecting them out of the social body like disgorging germs with a sneeze.

When you read the hate speech that passes for internet chat with even Mississauga Muslims, you wonder why they are allowed to stay. They enjoy the peace and prosperity that the Western world provides, while murderously despising the open society that generated the wealth. If they hate it so much, send them back.

Of course, sneezing rarely cures a cold. And it would be a resounding defeat to all our ideals if we were to abandon them at exactly the same time that we need to be defending them. You cannot defend freedom by eliminating it. And you can't claim to allow 'free speech' when you expel or jail people for expressing political opinion (short of actual threats and plots).

Two of the 7-7 mass murderers were out playing cricket with friends 12 hours before their attack. They weren't known to be particularly religious, either. Terrorists defy profiling in that way - they're both rich and poor, immigrant and later generation.

What's the other solution? To make them more comfortable in society? To somehow create a more welcoming space for them so they don't feel so alien?

I think there's something there, both in the West and in the Middle East. Our outreach to their cultures is beyond pathetic. The stone-dumb political appointees Georgie sends over there are an embarrassment. We can make a real effort, using smart people, to bridge the gap.

But as we build toward them, we must understand that they will not build back toward us. In most Middle Eastern countries they live under a strict law that says: "hate Christians and Jews." It's a religious-political system straight from the middle ages. The "law" they practice - sharia - is as cruel as it is unjust.

And it's perpetuated by our oil money. These tin pot dictatorships would be a distant memory by now if they weren't propped up by Western oil gluttony. Money and hate keep them going - who's going to make them stop using either one?

Certainly their list of grievances has grown since 9-11. The terminally venal and block-headed Bush administration took that attack as an excuse to go medieval themselves. The first thing they did was douse the Bill of Rights in kerosene and spark it.

Then they started a regime of illegal spying, indefinite detention, torture, bombing, and unperformed invasion. All against Muslims.

So, yeah, they're pissed.

But no amount of provocation can justify atrocities like the 7-7 bombings. Nothing.

So no answers today. You can't please them, no matter what you do. And you can't crush them without betraying your own democratic values - as the Junta has tried to do.

I think it's going to be a very long contest of wills, but eventually freedom will win out.

If we can keep it alive here in the face of a dictatorial president.