On May 30, Inside Maine columnist James Carignan unequivocally blamed President Bush for the behavior of individuals employed at Abu Ghraib prison. That culpability, according to Carignan, derives from the “tone” set by the president in justifying a military response to international terrorism.

It is revealing that the “tone” set by militant clerics in Iraq (and Iran, Syria, Gaza and Saudi Arabia) does not elicit the same condemnation.

Carignan and the leftist monolith dominating American academia have proven themselves masters at evading the fact that we have been at war since the late 1960s, and that defending ourselves is not what has created the current international climate. A pragmatic foreign policy of negotiation and reams of scholarship vindicating the grievances of “the Arab street” have armed militant Islam with a moral sanction and the conviction that we are unwilling to prevent their advance.

Islamic terrorism is not a product of isolated groups and individuals worthy of criminal trials. It is a decades-long attempt by a totalitarian ideology to wage war against a militarily superior opponent. Such a sustained, global offensive is impossible without the aid of sympathetic governments and the refusal of victims to acknowledge that complicity.

Until the ideology of militant Islam is identified as the evil which it is, and the governments of those countries sponsoring its efforts are identified as enemies deserving of a fate on par with that of Iraq, America will remain at risk of another Sept. 11, Carignan’s morally agnostic fantasies notwithstanding.

Michael Braun Jr., Lewiston

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