The unspoken thing, the elephant in the room, is the war against terrorism, it's tainting everything.
But it then very soon became clear that the response of a war against terrorism, initially conceived of in a metaphorical sense, began to be taken increasingly seriously and came to entail waging a real war.
It is necessary to name the enemy of human civilization, and this enemy is international terrorism associated with religious fundamentalism and religious intolerance.
Damascus is the center of world terror. All these organizations, Jihad and Hamas, their headquarters are in Damascus. Syria supports Hezbollah.
Terrorism needs to be fought against and certainly delegitimized or attacked, but some of the underlying grievances that might in fact lead individuals astray to terrorism cannot be ignored.
Ministers may not be responsible for administrative errors, but they are responsible for major policy blunders.
If U.S. occupation is a primary recruitment tool and what inspires Islamic terrorists, are many of our current efforts overseas actually fighting terrorism and diminishing the threat?