The New York Times and others misunderstand root causes. This continuing misunderstanding in the face of available evidence causes a lot of peripheral irrational behavior. Example: Matthew Yglesias’ meltdown after Glenn Reynolds copied and pasted this summary sentence from an MY post:

The situation, clearly, can only be resolved by Russian concessions on the underlying political issue in Chechnya.

Click here http://instapundit.com/archives/017601.php to see why it’s not a good idea to get into a pissing contest with Instapundit.

Matt’s a little confused because he assumes the root cause of the Russian school masacre is politics in Chechnya. The facts on the ground don’t support that, though, and Matt’s smart enough that the conflict is causing him some cognitive dissonance. So, he lashes out. (I think the depth of Bush hatred by many comes from the same cognitive dissonance. It’s easier to think of Bush as Satan than to believe x thousands of fanatics want to off us all. No one is really viscerally scared of Bush, no matter what they chant at the protests. Angry young Arabs who aren’t afraid to die scare the piss out of us, though.)

The root cause of 9/11, Madrid, Bali, and now Beslan isn’t politics. The root cause is Jihad. Whether people like Matt and the editors at the NYTimes believe in Jihad is irrelevant; Jihad believes in them, and us. And unless countered and fought, eventually Jihad will find us all.