Terrorism and an open society

The Washington Times ^ | July 4, 2007 | Tony Blankley

[2ndDivisionVet]

The world seems to be divided into people who see the silver lining in a darkly clouded sky, and those who are transfixed by the slightest bit of cloud in an otherwise azure sky.

Last week's terrorist events in England and Scotland have certainly brought out the silver lining spotters. Exemplifying such giddy optimists is The Washington Post's Anne Applebaum, writing from London. While not in the group of people (usually intense Bush-haters) who even deny the reality of the terrorist threat, nonetheless, Ms. Applebaum concluded her article with the proposition that this week's terrorists events are "an excellent reminder that we — and our open societies, and our liberal values — are still winning [the terrorist war on the west]."

She based her belief that we are "winning" on the response of the open British society and the level headedness of the British people: "the London bomb plot failed because open western societies are more resilient than we sometimes think they are... That Britain has functional ambulance services and working traffic wardens (the people who reported the cars to the police) all of whom are civic minded enough to call the police when they suspect something is amiss, may not sound extraordinary. But these are precisely the kinds of institutions that are missing in many places, among them Baghdad."

Now, as a former Englishman, I certainly share Ms. Applebaum's admiration for the phlegmatic and sensible British disposition. And I also agree that Western democratic societies (particularly the English-speaking ones) are deeply resilient. But I strongly reject her conclusion that we are currently winning; and, more importantly I am not yet convinced that our open, liberal democratic culture is necessarily an unalloyed competitive advantage in the struggle against culturally aggressive and violent radical Islam.

[livius]

An excellent article. It was dumb luck (well, dumb jihadis, as well) that saved the Brits from this attack and gave their routine civil servants time to do their job. In the Madrid attacks, for example, the terrorists were actually stopped several days before by the police while driving a stolen car loaded with explosives - but were not searched and were merely cited for having a falsified license plate. This was probably because the drivers were Moroccans and the police are always accused of picking on Moroccans, so it was one of those PC moments the West keeps having.

Like the author, I am not in favor of cameras and biometrics either, but I realize that they could be useful and if it comes to that, fine. However, my main objection is that we know who the people are who are doing this (they’re Muslims), we know the ideology that is driving them (Islam), and we know who they are and where they meet (hint: the local mosque). So why are we punishing our own citizens, harrassing people at airports, surveilling everybody in the universe - and not kicking all Muslims out of our countries ASAP?

This is the first war in which the victims rather than the attackers are supposed to be subject to surveillance and restraint.