Tony Blair: Islamic Terrorism ‘Not Something We’ve Caused, Something We’ve Been Caught Up In’

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_KHr2QIzImY

In the wake of last week’s Paris attack and continued terror fears in Europe, former British prime minister Tony Blair rejected the oft-repeated claim that the West is responsible for the rise of Islamic radicalism.

Blair sat down with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday to discuss reaction to the upsurge in violent jihadism sweeping the globe, particularly in Europe. Media outlets such as the New York Times have argued that the violence is due to anti-Islamic sentiment and structural inequalities in European society. U.S. lawmakers like Democratic Connecticut senator Chris Murphy claim that wars like the one waged by Western powers in Iraq precipitated the surge in Islamic radicalism.

Blair dismissed those rationales, saying that ”different programs on unemployment or social regeneration” won’t deal with the problem. He noted that the 2005 London bombers were “not people who are poor, they were people who had all the benefits of the welfare systems and the social support that our countries can give.”

“In the end, this is not something we’ve caused, this is something we’ve been caught up in,” he said.

He explicitly rejected the idea that the Guantanamo Bay prison or the Iraq War helped drive the fundamentalist attacks. “If you look at the justifications given, they’re multiple, and there’s always a justification,” he said. “In respect to France, for example, they were opposed to the war and Iraq. And yet still, this terrorist attack occurs.”