We are often faced with conservatives justifying dreadful policies, ranging from suppression of civil liberties to the Iraq war, based upon the threat from Islamic extremists. We’ve often seen reports of Muslim terrorists in Europe being used to justify their beliefs, often exaggerating the danger or extrapolating it to situations in the United States which are not analogous. I think that frustration at such writings from the right migh have led Cernig at NewsHoggers to accept an interpretation from the far-left Counterpunch as being a valid account of this Europol report (in pdf form).
The truth is probably somewhere in between what is claimed by the far left and the right. Michael P.F. van der Galiën fills in some of the gaps to show that there is another a real problem. Van der Galiën argues that, “a significant part of the European Left, conveniently ignore the elephant in the room and cherrypick facts to back up their claims that everyone who thinks that Europe has an immigration and integration problem is just making it up.”
I hope that readers note he is referring to the “European Left.” I cannot speak for such Europeans, but this does not reflect the view of many American liberals, who were warning of the problem of terrorism well before the 9/11 attacks, and now object to the manner in which Republcan policies increase this risk. As for liberal American bloggers, this might be a lesson that Counterpunch should be used as a source about as often as we would use Human Events. There are writers on the right who do exaggerate the problem, but there are also writers on the far left who write just as inaccurately based upon their own biases.
