The 'it's our fault' remarks of Ken Livingstone, Omar Bakri Mohammed and Anjem Choudary remind me that we've been here before. Only last time - in the wake of 9/11 - it wasn't Islamists and the Mayor of London who were telling us that we haave only ourselves to blame. It was the New Statesman.

This is what its editorial had to say on 17th September 2001:

“American bond traders, you may say, are as innocent and as undeserving of terror as Vietnamese or Iraqi peasants. Well, yes and no. Yes, because such large-scale carnage is beyond justification, since it can never distinguish between the innocent and the guilty. No, because Americans, unlike Iraqis and many others in poor countries, at least have the privilege of democracy and freedom that allow them to vote and speak in favour of a different order. If the US often seems a greedy and overweening power, that is partly because its people have willed it. They preferred George Bush to Al Gore and both to Ralph Nader.”

If Americans had voted for Gore or Nader they'd have been left alone. And, I suppose, if we'd all voted Respect the same would apply here, too.