I am also filled with rage at the way American liberals have been caricatured as sympathizers to terror. The American right has been successful in ascribing liberals' desire to find the root causes of terrorism as "therapy." The right, intrinsically anti-intellectual, is not interested in causation & mocks those who are. Unfortunately, however intellectually & morally bankrupt the strategy, it is effective politics. I'm not sure that liberal can do much about being painted as sissies by the right except to point out that the rage & revenge of the right is not very effective at actually preventing terrorist attacks.

Specifically, the Iraq Adventure has made the citizens of Western democracies less safe than they were prior to the war. Are you listening Mr. Bush? Are you listening Mr. Blair? Your citizens are less safe than we were before this entirely elective adventure rationalized with elaborate, deliberate & systematic mendacity. Less safe. Instead of rushing off to Iraq, had the Bush administration created a real anti-terror coalition that could engage in the sophisticated police work & secutiry enhancements necessary to actually protect people from terror attacks, Americans & Britons would be safer today. Instead we are less safe.

And that is indeed cause for rage & loathing. At the perpetrators of terror & at those who have created the conditions in which terror now flourishes.