""As French war planes bomb Mali, there is one simple statistic
that provides the key context: this west African nation of 15 million people is
the eighth country in which western powers - over the last four years alone -
have bombed and killed Muslims - after Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen,
Libya, Somalia and the Philippines (that does not count the numerous lethal
tyrannies propped up by the west in that region). For obvious reasons, the
rhetoric that the west is not at war with the Islamic world grows increasingly
hollow with each new expansion of this militarism.""