On the BBC today one British official was quite puzzled that the terrorists would strike during the G8, a time when world leaders were addressing “poverty, inequality and injustice.”

That presupposes that the terrorists care about “poverty, inequality and injustice.” How stupid do you have to be to believe that someone who takes money from a Saudi billionaire to buy bombs cares about “poverty and inequality”? How ignorant do you have to be to believe that to Radical Islamists “justice” means anything other than infidels choking on their own blood, their civilization burning and a glorious, renewed caliphate arising from the ashes?

Similarly, a German official lamented that the G8 was about alleviating poverty in Africa and, she suggested, alleviating poverty is imperative because otherwise we have to expect more terrorism.

First, though the sub-Saharan regions are mired in poverty, there has been very little terrorism out of Africa. Most Africans do not appear to be of the view that one can murder one’s way into the middle classes.

Second, in a very real sense, the German official was legitimizing terrorism, implicitly arguing that poverty is sufficient justification for killing other people’s children.