Regards, Ivan
Posted on 07/07/2005 10:47:37 PM PDT by MadIvan
WHEN THE IMMEDIATE shock and grief at yesterday’s 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.
It’s 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, yesterday’s events do not look good for the “al-Qaeda was all an invention” 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? They’ll take the argument further, too. They’ll say that the terrorists wouldn’t 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, they’ll say: if there is one now, it’s 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 — 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 doesn’t stop at the superpower’s 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 — 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.
There’s 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 yesterday’s, but we are steadily eliminating the conditions that create the motivation.
There’s 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 can’t, if I’m 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, I’m 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 I’ll 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?
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
Great article! :-)
Indeed, we have reason to be optimistic. Their dwindling spiral is evident.
The first time I heard, "Is this the best they can do?"
was on Fox News Channel when Fox's Brit contributor said, "Is this the best they can do?"
That remark and new phrase for many of our Brit brothers/sisters puts the cave man actions into an honest perspective.
But this is a lame attempt by fanitic idiots with a pipe dream that they have a chance to win somthing.
If right thinking people stay the course these murdering idiots will pass by the wayside as murdering idiots in the past have.
God bless the UK and London bump.
What really ticks me off is already we're hearing the straw-dog "warnings" to British Muslims about retaliatory attacks. There was a guy just on Five Live sprouting it, saying in effect the BMP was an equal threat to Islamofascism.
Going out with a whimper, Mr Al Queda?
I'm glad we took the battle to your doorstep after 9-11. I'm glad we killed your commanders and confined your financing.
We will hunt you down and kill all of you.
Rot in hell, islamofascit scum
Good stuff MadIvan. Who of us don't think that if they had more they would have done it? Prayers for the Brits tonight and, for all fighting the beast, every night.
I wrote this some time ago- and the passage of events has not moved me to change a word of it- indeed, all events have done is harden my heart, until it is drop-forged and case-hardened, and nitrided...
From my file, "Fire & Blood & Iron:"
The entire West ( dare I say "the civilized World?" ) is locked in a fight to the death with militant Islam.
There will be no second-place winner, no "third way" solution-- it is March or Die time, folks.
It is Us versus an eighth-century "culture" of plunder & pillage, forced religious "conversions," and the mistreatment of women.
The sooner we face up to this fact realistically and quit dancing around PC talking-point nonsense about diversity and tolerance, the better off we'll all be.
We did not pick this fight- which really has roots in Jimmy Carter's appeasement in 1979 of militants- but we had damned well better see it for what it is, and be prepared to face it and finish it.
I'll put it in raw, personal terms-- I don't want Sharia law visited upon my women, and I don't want a goat-roper "culture" infesting my land.
I don't want their vile, nasty, loathsome weapons of mass destruction loosed upon my fair country, either.
They picked the fight, and now it is up to us to finish it- balls to the wall, hammer and anvil, fire and blood and iron... freedom is never, ever free, and the coin you pay it in is men's lives and tears and blood.
What we saw during Gulf War I was our military doctrine ( high tech ) versus Soviet doctrine ( throw a lot of low tech iron at the problem )-- and we all know how that turned out.
What we saw in the 3-Week War is Information-Tech,
( What some are calling it Hyperwarfare... )
or 21st Century warfare versus 20th Century...
What I would suggest, and call your attention to, is the fact that we, and Israel, are capable of waging 21st Century warfare, and the entire Arab world is not.
Proven fact, by recent events.
One more thing- this will be a war where we are all called to be warriors- so I suggest to you that the time has come to get hard, and stay hard... it really is the time for Fire and Blood and Iron...
God Bless Merry England! May her enemies go down in a hail of bullets
Tot up another country aunder seige by the mad mullahs: Israel, India, Russia, the US and now the UK. Add in Thailand and Nigeria and we see their global aims. The time is NOW to unite -- Western nations, Orthodox Nations, Eastern nations, against these sub-human hordes.
I hope Britain will expell all those islamic terrorist supporters and thier families. Then they establish very good presendent to deal with them for any civilized country.
May be Russia will follow. Russia looks on Europe very much in her actions.
Yeah, and maybe there were Britons uttering the same phrase when a couple of buildings in NYC fell down in 2001? (think: "it didn't happen here and it doesn't affect me, so it doesn't seem like it was so-much")
It didn't have to be "the best they [could have done]" - the point is it was sufficient unto the task. No, it didn't bring Britain to its knees, BUT it screwed up a lot of people's lives for a period of time - and not only in Britain but in the US (security mobilization, increased inspections and slowdowns, etc.) and lots of other places in the world. I'll bet they weren't even suicide bombers - no none of them got hurt, and they live to try it again somewhere else tomorrow, after learning from what happened this time.
It doesn't have to be a 'grand slam' to have an effect - one thing here today, another somewhere else tomorrow... it all adds up in the public's (limited) consciousness as they're still out there, and they're bad, and we're not safe anymore, and maybe we should give them what they want (and where can I find an online petition to sign to help make the world a better place for my chil'ren?).
Look at the sensitivity in the US today - one kid brings a plastic gun to school and they pretty much go into lockdown mode, call in SWAT teams, all the parents come flocking-in for their little moppets, and then the grief counselors get called in to set up shop (okay, a little far-fetched and absurd; but not by a hell of a lot).
Think what would happen if, "for the glory of allah", suicide smoke-bomb-droppers targeted only one very public place (e.g. subway, mall, courthouse) every day in the USA. Minimal material expenditure, no loss of life; but you can bet that every time one place got smoked similar places all over the country would be crawling with cops & etc, thereby tying up resources and loading-up 'the system'. All in the name of preparedness and security just in case "the next one is the big one" - and a big one will never have to happen if all the little ones are chewing up the system. (i.e. "nibbled to death by ducks")
Individuals chose one day to start stealing airplanes (with nothing more than box cutters, if you'll believe the media and the government) to fly them into things (instead of hijackers stereotypically "flying them to Cuba") and look at the whole 'safety industry' that's been built-up in the airline industry just so people can STILL have carryon luggage (think: if you had to check everything, and got the current metal detectoring (a word?), and walked onto the plane carrying nothing, what would you hurt people with?). Hypersensitivity and overengineering in the pursuit of personal convenience.
You don't need to blow something up to make it stop working - all you need to do is keep it working so much, and expending so much energy and resources, that it breaks down of its own accord from wear and tear.
super article ping
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BTTT BACKHOE!
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