Gerard Baker
WHEN THE IMMEDIATE shock and grief at yesterdayâs carnage subsides, a hard, almost callous, question will be on the lips of all those who seek to understand its true meaning.
Is this the best they can do?
It does not seek to minimise the tragedy that visited a normal, busy London morning. It does not devalue a single life, the emptiness of a single bereavement, the pain of a single mother, son or best friend whose life has been forever shadowed by a light extinguished.
Itâs a truly important question, with geopolitical implications. It will be asked first by The Power of Nightmares crowd, the documentary film-makers and columnists and left-wing politicians who argue that the terrorist threat has been got up by right-wing ideologues in Washington and their pliant poodle in London.
At first, of course, yesterdayâs events do not look good for the âal-Qaeda was all an inventionâ party. The bombings surely demonstrated, to those who doubted it, that there really are people out there with the motive and the capacity to inflict mass murder on the innocent.
But on deeper reflection, the conspiracy theorists will, quietly, claim a kind of vindication for their argument. They will say that for all the fear and terror inspired yesterday, the first and much anticipated attack on London in the post-September 11 era was a conventional and, by any standards, a rather limited business.
A few pounds of plastic explosive on the least impregnable parts of the London infrastructure. Dozens dead; horrific, of course; larger in scale than anything the city has seen before, but no different in kind. Is this really evidence of some new global terrorist threat? There was no ricin, no sarin, no smallpox, no nuclear detonation, no dirty bomb.
Not even the commandeering of aircraft for use as ballistic missiles. Just old-fashioned, 20th-century techniques in the service of 14th-century fanaticism.
Is this the best they can do? Theyâll take the argument further, too. Theyâll say that the terrorists wouldnât even have been capable of this if we had not bolstered their cause by invading Iraq and producing thousands more martyrs for their cause. There was no threat before, theyâll say: if there is one now, itâs our own fault.
Somehow I think that most people, especially Londoners, will see through the emptiness of this argument. The idea that al-Qaeda was no threat until we created it does not stand the slightest scrutiny of events in the 1990s â from the first attack on the World Trade Centre in 1993, to the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and, of course, the September 11 atrocity a year later. And no one seriously thinks that only America was in their sights. The ideology of Islamism doesnât stop at the superpowerâs borders; its ambitions sweep through Europe; indeed that is where it is breeding so many of its jihadists.
The fight in Iraq is not, as the opponents claim, a self-inflicted wound, suddenly giving rise to new threats on our homeland from people we should have left well alone. We are, steadily, beating the terrorists in Iraq. Not only in the military operations, but also by demonstrating who and what the enemy really is. and thereby creating the only real long-term conditions for safety from Islamo-fascism â free states that do not deny the most basic human rights to their peoples. The people who murdered innocent Londoners yesterday are the same people who are murdering innocent Iraqis.
Thereâs another way in fact of looking at the question that offers a rather more optimistic perspective. Is this the best they can do? Is this what we have reduced them to? The damage to al-Qaeda wrought by four years of war is clearly impressive. The leadership is disconnected from its fanatical followers. The support infrastructure has been broken up. And yes, by fighting them in Iraq, side by side with Iraqi soldiers and police, we are showing too just how empty their death-loving cause is. We are still not safe from a much larger, more destructive attack than yesterdayâs, but we are steadily eliminating the conditions that create the motivation.
Thereâs one more, rhetorical, sense in which the question is germane today. On Wednesday morning in Washington I watched TV coverage of the climax of the Olympic bid competition. I canât, if Iâm completely honest, say I felt that surge of pride that many of my fellow Londoners felt when they learnt of the success of the Olympic bid. On this one, Iâm a confirmed member of the curmudgeon tendency, the cynics who regard with some suspicion the great, glorious celebration of a public-spending enterprise.
But, my goodness, through the sorrow, the pride welled up in me yesterday. Pride at the selflessness of emergency workers, blood donors, plain ordinary people eager to help. Pride at the matter-of-fact, dignified calm with which Londoners faced unexpected horror. And Iâll even admit to a little bit of pride for the first time ever in Ken Livingstone, whose remarks in Singapore managed to hit precisely the right tone.
But above all, I felt a surge of pride at the resilience and defiance of Londoners. They showed once again that fierce solidarity we have seen so many times when they have been tested; a determination to face down nihilistic terror and intimidation. What poured through the television screens yesterday was their will to elevate life over death, freedom over tyranny, love over hate. Nothing could better illustrate why our cause is right than what happened yesterday in Bloomsbury, the West End and the City.
United, tending to their dead and wounded, but looking out at the world beyond with a derisive snarl and a clenched fist, like one of those Low cartoons from the Second World War, belittling the designs of the enemy: Is this the best they can do?
#1
I think he's on to something here. I ride a subway twice a day, so I do not take 7/07 lightly. But 7/07 does not compare to 3/11, which did not compare to 9/11. Maybe that really was the 'best' they could do.
Project for the serious student: Plot the number of innocent people killed by political terrorists per year from, say, 1970 to the present date. Don't forget the Israelis. Not sure where to include tribal warfare (i.e., Somilia), or ethnic cleansing (Bosnia).... Where does Pol Pot fit in? Gassing Kurds and Saddam's other excesses? Might not be as easy - or useful - as I thought.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/11/2005 10:54 Comments ||
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A few days old, but a good opinion piece.
States which shelter these killers will know no peace
SOMEWHERE around London at about a quarter to nine yesterday morning, there must have been people turning on their TV and radio sets with a look of wolfish expectation.
I hope and believe that they were disappointed in what they got. There just wasn't quite enough giggle-value for the psychopath.
It must have been infernal underneath King's Cross, but above ground no panic, no screaming, no wailing and beating the air, no yells for vengeance.
I'm writing this in the early aftermath, but I would be willing to bet there will have been little or no bloody foolishness, either: no random attacks on mosques or shops or individuals. After all, devices on our buses and tubes are an open proclamation that the perpetrators don't care if they kill Muslims. Which, of course, is part of the point. When we use the weak and vague word "terrorism" we imply indiscriminate cruelty directed at civilians.
"Sadism" or "fascism" or "nihilism" would do just as nicely: all the venom that lurks just on the sub-human level of the human species.
In a tightly interwoven society, all that this poison has to do is ally itself with a certain low cunning.
People are afraid of plane crashes and of heights: in that sense 9/11 was the perfect strike on the collective unconscious. People are likewise afraid of fire and of crowded or subterranean conditions: the mind of the fascist is naturally attuned to exploit such dreads. I am guessing the planners of this coordinated atrocity hoped for more mayhem than they got, but the casualty figures are in a sense beside the point.
WE all knew this was coming, and that one day a homely and familiar name like Tavistock Square would become a synonym for barbarism. The good old red London bus, a worldwide symbol of our capital, ripped to shards in an instant.
Random and "senseless" though such violence may appear, we also all know it expresses a deadly ideology; indeed that in some ways it is that ideology.
The preachers of this faith have taken care to warn us that they love death more than we love life. Their wager is that this makes them unstoppable. Well, we shall have to see. They certainly cannot prove their point unless we assist them in doing so.
My American friends have been impressed by the composure of the Londoners they have seen on the screen: I bet London Transport runs again rather sooner than US airlines resumed flying after 9/11.
I remember living in London through the Provisional IRA bombing in the 70s. I saw the very first car-bomb explode against the Old Bailey in 1972. There was no warning that time, but after a while a certain etiquette developed.
And, even as I detested the people who might have just as soon have blown me up as anyone else, I was aware there were ancient disputes involved, and that there was a potential political solution.
Nothing of the sort applies in this case. We know very well what the "grievances" of the jihadists are.
The grievance of seeing unveiled women. The grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people. The grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law. The grievance of a work of fiction written by an Indian living in London. The grievance of the existence of black African Muslim farmers, who won't abandon lands in Darfur. The grievance of the existence of homosexuals. The grievance of music, and of most representational art. The grievance of the existence of Hinduism. The grievance of East Timor's liberation from Indonesian rule. All of these have been proclaimed as a licence to kill infidels or apostates, or anyone who just gets in the way.
FOR a few moments yesterday, Londoners received a taste of what life is like for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, whose Muslim faith does not protect them from slaughter at the hands of those who think they are not Muslim enough, or are the wrong Muslim.
It is a big mistake to believe this is an assault on "our" values or "our" way of life. It is, rather, an assault on all civilisation. I know perfectly well there are people thinking, and even saying, that Tony Blair brought this upon us by his alliance with George Bush.
A word of advice to them: try and keep it down, will you? Or wait at least until the funerals are over. And beware of the non-sequitur: you can be as opposed to the Iraq operation as much as you like, but you can't get from that "grievance" to the detonating of explosives at rush hour on London buses and tubes.
Don't even try to connect the two. By George Galloway's logic, British squaddies in Iraq are the root cause of dead bodies at home. How can anyone bear to be so wicked and stupid? How can anyone bear to act as a megaphone for psychotic killers?
The grievances I listed above are unappeasable, one of many reasons why the jihadists will lose.
They demand the impossible - the cessation of all life in favour of prostration before a totalitarian vision. Plainly, we cannot surrender. There is no one with whom to negotiate, let alone capitulate.
We shall track down those responsible. States that shelter them will know no peace. Communities that shelter them do not take forever to discover their mistake. And their sordid love of death is as nothing compared to our love of London, which we will defend as always, and which will survive this with ease.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.
National Review Online. In the middle of a review of the vapid comments of the self-appointed "security experts" appearing on the Sunday interview shows, Mr. Geraghty says:
The governmentâs going to do its part, but they canât be everywhere. But the citizenry can. Of course, this isnât a comfortable message for anyone in Washington to offer. Itâs an admission of limited control and limited power, and argues against endless budget increases.
Posted by: Mike ||
07/11/2005 12:51 ||
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Gennady Yefstafyev, Lt.-General (Ret.), Foreign Intelligence Service, for RIA Novosti
In the last few months the West was inclined to believe that the notorious Al Qaeda was more dead than alive, and that the allied coalition was finishing off what was left of its forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. As for the acts of terror perpetrated in the Caucasus and Moscow, these were primarily attributed to the local "freedom fighters". The involvement of international terrorists was viewed as rather unlikely.
American officials and even experts started saying that Al Qaeda and adjacent terrorist groups were crushed and disrupted, that their scattered and small units were hardly capable of mounting a well-orchestrated act of terror on a large scale. This situation was presented as the Bush administration's major success in the global war on terrorism. In some cases vigilance was giving way to unjustified optimism.
London was no exception. It believed that it could reach a tacit understanding with the "surviving" terrorists along the following lines: "Don't touch us, and we'll cast a blind eye to some of your doings." Incidentally, many political and even government leaders of other European nations, such as Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark, have long been pursuing the same policy.
This policy was obviously myopic. International terrorism has its own agenda and is purposefully implementing it despite the sustained losses. Blasts in London bear this out once again. When international terrorists decided that the time had come, they did not think twice before giving up a comfortable and calm life that London had offered them in no uncertain terms and taking to decisive actions. It would be a mistake to link the blasts to London having been elected as the venue for the 2012 Olympics. The planning and execution of these acts of terror leave no doubt that Al Qaeda had timed them to coincide with the G8 summit. The preparations took months and were very thorough. Only several groups of seasoned terrorists could have mounted such a well-coordinated attack under a single plan and schedule. They obviously have many accomplices, probably even in the law-enforcement bodies. At any rate the timing was precise: the best security forces left London for Scotland because of the summit.
Indicatively, the secret services, even in Britain, did not receive any warnings of the upcoming attack. Some experts on terror qualify this as the failure of the secret services in the leading countries of the world to resolve the main task by common efforts, notably, to infiltrate those terrorist structures that stand behind such major attacks. Of all these Al Qaeda was the first one to regain its strength after the huge losses sustained two years ago, and to revive its capability of waging struggle even in places with tough security.
Ironically, Tony Blair ranked anti-terrorism eighth on the G8's list of priorities. But this is obviously not the right time for gloating. At one time the secret services quite correctly described Al Qaeda as very persistent and patient in preparing for its major actions. They also pointed to its ability to feign the impression of being incapable of any large-scale operation. These conclusions should never be forgotten.
Al Qaeda wants the world to believe in its death. This impression is buttressed by minor actions that take place quite frequently. But these actions, obviously prepared in haste, are staged by some local amateurs who have nothing to do with Al Qaeda. This time Al Qaeda made its presence in London abundantly clear. Moreover, it is bound to plan even more sophisticated and dangerous actions in the foreseeable future.
Apparently, the blasts in London will encourage secret services to enhance their cooperation in the struggle against international terrorism. Hopefully, the world community will again put cooperation in this struggle to the top of its list of priorities, and that this cooperation will become closer, more sincere, consistent and effective. Otherwise, we'll have to wait for another major act of terror the place and time of which will be picked up by international terrorists who know what they are doing. The stakes are high: the lives of dozens and hundreds of innocent people whom the powers that be pledged to protect.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/11/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
Coin flip anyone?
Posted by: Captain America ||
07/11/2005 6:57 Comments ||
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#2
If this analysis is indicative of the thought going into the Russian effort in Chechnya, it's little wonder they've made no progress.
Al Qaeda doesn't wish to appear dead. They want to be seen as the "strong horse" that OBL spoke about. Weak horses don't attract recruits. Weakness encourages members to defect and seek amnesty from the home government.
If Blair put anti-terrorism at #8 on the G-8 priority list, it may be more telling of what he thought he could politically manage with weasels like France and Germany. Given all of their experience with the IRA, I doubt anyone in MI-5 or 6 thought Al Qaeda was gone.
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