Double Standards and Terror

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Prime Minister Tony Blair has rejected comments by London's mayor that Western "double standards" in the Middle East contributed to the growth of Islamic extremism and terrorist groups such as al Qaeda.

A spokesman for Blair, who announced Wednesday his desire for a global conference on Islamic extremism in the wake of the London bombings, said the PM and Ken Livingstone had "different views of the world."

Livingstone had told BBC radio that Western intervention in the Middle East since the end of World War I had been motivated by a desire to control the flow of oil.

While condemning suicide bombings, Livingstone indicated he recognized the conditions that had led Palestinians to take that route in Israel.

"Under foreign occupation and denied a right to vote, denied the right to run your own affairs ... I suspect that if it had happened here in England we would have produced a lot of suicide bombers ourselves," said Livingstone.

"But I don't just denounce suicide bombers. I denounce those governments which use indiscriminate slaughter to advance their foreign policy."

Wow. Fueled by the information that the London bombers were seemingly self-motivated and homegrown, and given the extremely difficult cultural situation in Britain [compared to the relatively isolated cultural populations in America, and the lack of the same extreme voices {at least, extreme MUSLIM voices} being heard in America], a perspective such as Livingstone's has a certain ring and honesty to it. Livingstone looks to a historical claim of oppression as being part of the root cause. Obviously, not the root cause, but a significant contributing factor, to Islam's apparent conflict with Western society today.