Pearson digs in

All these clear indications that actions have consequences are ignored. So too is the much longer history of Western interference in the Middle East over the last century, its continual support for authoritarian regimes, little if any of it bringing any good.

How then can anyone of imagination wonder that Muslim (and other) opinion about our bona fides has soured? With such a history, of course many who once were entirely unpolitical will wake to powerful new passions and others will be drawn towards radical action out of some combination of anger, or despair, or ideology. Can this really be so difficult for Pearson to grasp?

Only he can know why he has chosen to move in such a fashion into this new field of proselytising, but I do wonder if the cause may not be rooted in a deep frustration with the “left” gradually acquired over many admirable years of trying to better conditions for his own people. Perhaps he has experienced them as naïve, ill informed, unrealistic, counterproductive, superior in manner, and that sense of the left has been carried over to whatever other policies they tend to support. Like civil liberties and a more humble foreign policy, for example.

Perhaps he has found it impossible to separate the actual issues from his perception of their most active sponsors.