I Didn't Do It!

That catch-phrase launched Bart Simpson's 15 minutes of fame in early '94. It's enjoyed a longer run in the Arab world, where it excuses responsibility for anything and everything. MEMRI has a transcript of the latest liar--Egyptian professor Abd Al-Sabour Shahin, from an interview on Saudi state-run Channel 1 TV on August 8, 2005:

Shahin: Our enemies weave many lies about us, which we are not necessarily aware of. For example: One day, we awoke to the crime of 9/11, which hit the tallest buildings in New York, the Empire State Building (sic). There is no doubt that not a single Arab or Muslim had anything to do with these events. The incident was fabricated as a pretext to attack Islam and Muslims. The plan was to take over the world's energy sources, and to achieve this control by force and not by agreement or negotiations, by interests, free trade, or anything like that. This is what they wanted.

So this incident was fabricated - and Allah knows that the Arabs and Muslims are innocent of it - in order to serve as a pretext to attack Islam and the Muslims.

All of a sudden, after we were used to consider America to be a rational and balanced country... All of a sudden, it violates international conventions, cancels treaties, ignores the U.N., acts on its own accord, attacks nations, kills innocent people, and claims it has the right to do so - and all this is based on lies. These were lies from beginning to end, and we were not used to lying - not in policy, not in our discourse, and not in the media. Imagine what crisis the Arab and Islam nation finds itself in, in the midst of these peculiar events, which we cannot explain or believe. All of a sudden, we were framed for an international crime, on the basis of lies.

I believe a dirty Zionist hand carried out this act. Zionism has taken the opportunity to escalate the war in Palestine, killing hundreds of thousands so far, while we watch from the sidelines in astonishment and ask: What's going on?

Here's what's going on, Prof and Saudi viewers: I'm willing to concede radical Islam didn't fell the Empire State Building. Yet. But the rest of the "peculiar events" and "crimes" affecting Muslim nations are homegrown. The sooner Arab governments, religious leaders and intellectuals accept responsibility for their own "crisis," the quicker it may be resolved. Continued denial is implausible and only ups the pressure from disaffected subjects on one side and enraged Westerners on the other.

There's still time, barely, to escape this pincer--but not by misdirection, spinning, and duplicity. We've become wise to the lies; they only make us madder.

What's acceptable in a cartoon character, supposedly a 10 year-old boy, won't do for a billion-strong region aspiring to greatness. Growing up is step one to be considered civilized. And grown-ups clean up their own mess.

More:

In comments, SC&A points to liberal Nick Cohen's Op-Ed in Sunday's Guardian, questioning Western leftists whose Bush/Blair hatred distorts their assessment of Islam. Cohen sticks to his socialist international dream, and won't exonerate the President or Prime Minister, but warns that one-sided tolerance and multi-culturism are worse:

The least attractive characteristic of the middle-class left - one shared with the Thatcherites - is its refusal to accept that its opponents are sincere. The legacy of Marx and Freud allows it to dismiss criticisms as masks which hide corruption, class interests, racism, sexism - any motive can be implied except fundamental differences of principle. . .

[T]here's little doubt that few apart from George Galloway and others in the gruesome leadership of the anti-war movement were keen on saluting Saddam Hussein. The reason why one million people marched through London without one mounting a platform to express solidarity with the victims of fascism was that it never occurred to them that there were people in Iraq who shared their values.

It felt like nit-picking to point this out at the time. Wars are usually worth opposing, especially capricious wars advocated by a slippery Prime Minister in alliance with a repellent US President. But arguments have their own dynamic. If you start by refusing to look Baathism or Islamism in the face, the logic of blaming everything on Tony Blair and George W Bush pushes you into making ever more excuses for the extreme right. . .

On the other hand when confronted with a movement of contemporary imperialism - Islamism wants an empire from the Philippines to Gibraltar - and which is tyrannical, homophobic, misogynist, racist and homicidal to boot, they feel it is valid because it is against Western culture. It expresses its feelings in a regrettably brutal manner perhaps, but that can't hide its authenticity.

The result of this inversion of principles has been that liberals can't form alliances with the victims of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan or Iraq any more than the [poet WH] Auden generation could form alliances with the victims of Stalinism.

Cohen's confused -- recognizing the murderous and autocratic goals of radical Islam, yet opposing deploying force against it -- but spot-on that the flowers of Western Civilization loathe Western Civilization. A few on the left have seen the light--is it too little, too late?

(via LGF)