... Hugh was interested in various Republican candidates sniping at each other over which American president is responsible for "creating" ISIS: Was it Obama? Was it Bush? I responded:
... MS: ... in keeping Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda leadership holed up in Abbottabad and various other places, what emerged free from al Qaeda control was next generation al Qaeda. And there will eventually be a next generation ISIS that will even be more barbaric and evil ... even if we did nothing, even if we just behaved like Sweden, it would still be there. And to blame it on Obama or Bush or Coolidge or Chester Arthur is completely a waste of time.
... HH: [Sayyid] Qutb [Muslim Brotherhood leader and inspiration for al Qaeda] was radicalized by his time in America ... I'm not declaiming against Western culture. It simply is, if you're going to be provoked by people's lifestyles that are different than yours, you're going to be at war with the West regardless of whether or not we do anything with you.
... even when we weren't decadent, Qutb and his pals thought we were - and hated us anyway. I think the Rand Paul view - that Bush interventionism is responsible for the metastasizing of ISIS - will gain some traction with Republican voters ...And aren't liberals perpetually blaming America and the West for provoking Islamist terror? You'd think they might stop and consider that for Qutb, al Qaeda and now ISIS it's Western "decadence" that inspires their hate - and the biggest world-wide purveyor of Western, especially American, cultural imagery is uber-liberal Hollywood with its non-stop, big-screen caricatures of American crime, sex, violence and "capitalist greed". Hollywood didn't "create" ISIS but it's sure doing more than its share to keeping the hate going. And it's these same liberals who have the chutzpa to rant against Pamella Geller, accusing her of provoking Muslims with her relatively miniscule anti-Islamist campaigns.
