Citizen Journal

And then I read the article.

To be fair, in one sense it is apparent that Amanpour may indeed be “getting religion”: "In our investigation,” she writes, “we found shocking evidence of the bigotry, intolerance and hatred preached by some Muslim fundamentalists in the UK. We met men like Anjem Choudary of the now-banned Al-Mahajiroon extremist group, who denounces democracy and predicts Britain will be ruled by Sharia, Islamic law....He publicly distances himself from suicide bombings here in the UK, mindful of Britain's tough new anti-terrorism laws, yet we filmed him openly condoning violent Jihad abroad."

Then this: "Increasingly we found mainstream Muslims are realizing that they can no longer be quiet, but they have to stand up to have any hope of winning back the debate from the extremists who dominate it now....The question is whether they can form a critical mass of voices to finally drown out the growing ranks of extremists."

Fair points – although ones the rest of us were thinking, oh I don't know, by mid-September 2001. CNN calls it "The War Within" and seems to think their hard-nosed investigation is revealing new truths. We here in realityland call this old, old news.

More significant than CNN’s arrogance, though, is Amanpour’s lead-in to the above discussion: It's George Bush's fault. She writes: "What struck us most was how deeply the Iraq war has radicalized today's generation of young Muslims in Britain. Whether extreme or mainstream, they are angry about the war, angry that their country so devotedly follows U.S. foreign policy, angry at what they see as a worldwide war against Muslims and Islam."

Amanpour doesn’t even furrow her brow at the notion that President Bush and Iraq are responsible for Islamic fascism, which is of course the fascists’ newest and self-serving justification for all things jihad. She seemingly cannot stop herself from taking a poke at W. (In fact, in reading the article as a whole, the “Blame Bush” lead-in seems so out of place that I can’t help but wonder whether one of CNN's editors hastily popped it in. It’s stock copy at CNN, anyway.)

Western democracy should be praying in unison that more people at least reach the point Amanpour has reached and recognize Islamolunatics actually do want to kill all of us. That would indicate progress. But let’s be practical – it’s far too much to ask for even smart folk like Amanpour to blame Islamic "anger,” if it is indeed a threat, on anything other than Bush and Iraq. Of course, it strikes many of us that Islamic young men were pretty ticked off as of 9/11/2001, just as one pre-Iraq example, but what do we know? We’re not citizens of the world.