Blair: London Blasts, Iraq War Not Linked

Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Tuesday against making a connection between the London bombings and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, saying that would be adopting the "perverted" logic of terrorists....

"Of course these terrorists will use Iraq as an excuse. They will use Afghanistan," Blair said at a news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

"Sept. 11 happened of course before both of these things, and then the excuse was American policy, or Israel. They will always have their reasons for acting. But we have got to be really careful of almost giving in to the perverted and twisted logic with which they argue."...

--AP

This is a favorite argument among supporters of the war -- here's Hugh Hewitt making the argument last week in The Weekly Standard. Does it strike you as counterintuitive? If so, let me clarify it by using a metaphor:

You're in your backyard, sitting in your favorite chair. Suddenly half a dozen bees swarm around, and one of them stings you. Now you head out into the land surrounding your property. You come across a beehive. There's no evidence that your bees came from this hive, but it is a hive.

So you whack it with a baseball bat.

You kill some of the bees. But you're stung. Repeatedly. You swell up and you have to go to the emergency room.

Now, here's the thing: No one is allowed to say that your new bee stings were the result of your decision to hit the hive with a baseball bat, because you'd already been stung by bees.

Does that clear everything up?