America overestimates terrorist threats while Europe deals with them

The Columbus Dispatch ^ | July 3, 2007 | Gwynne Dyer

[Loyal Buckeye]

As terrorists go, last week's attacks featured The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. One of the would-be London bombers drove erratically down Haymarket St. -- presumably affected by the fumes from the gas cylinders and gasoline containers that were the heart of his makeshift car-bomb -- before crashing into a garbage bin, getting out and running away. Another parked his explosives-packed car illegally, so it was towed away. The third attack was at Glasgow airport on the following day, but nobody was hurt except one of the attackers, who set himself on fire.

More-competent terrorists might have killed dozens of people, but it's safe to say that this incident will be taken more seriously in the United States than it is in Britain or anywhere else in Europe. An occasional terrorist attack is one of the costs of doing business in the modern world. You just have to bring a sense of proportion to the problem, as people in Europe do in general.

Most major European countries already had been through some sort of terrorist crisis well before the current fashion for "Islamist" terrorism: the IRA in Britain, the OAS in France, ETA in Spain, the Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany, the Red Brigades and their neofascist counterparts in Italy. Most European cities also were heavily bombed in a real war within living memory, which definitely puts terrorist attacks into a less-impressive category. So most Europeans do not obsess about terrorist attacks. They know that they are likelier to win the lottery than to be hurt by terrorists.

Russians also are pretty cool about the occasional terrorist attacks linked to the war in Chechnya, and Indians are positively heroic in their refusal (most of the time) to be panicked by terrorist attacks that have taken more lives in India than all the attacks in the West since terrorist techniques first became widespread in the 1960s. In almost all of these countries, despite the efforts of some governments to persuade the population that terrorism is an existential threat of enormous size, the vast majority of the people don't believe it.

Whereas in the United States, most people do believe it. A majority of Americans finally have figured out that the invasion of Iraq really had nothing to do with fighting terrorism, but they certainly have not understood that terrorism itself is only a minor threat. "We have a threat out there like we've never faced before," said actor, former senator and potential presidential candidate Fred Thompson last month. "I don't think the (American people) realize that this has been something that's been going on for a few hundred years, and our enemies have another 100-year plan," Thompson continued. "Whether it's Madrid, whether it's London, whether it's places that most people have never heard of, they're methodically going around trying to undermine our allies and attack people in conventional ways, while they try to develop nonconventional ways, and get their hands on a nuclear capability, and ultimately to see a mushroom cloud over an American city."

There has been only one major terrorist attack in the United States since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, and that one, on 9/11, is almost six years in the past. So how have Americans been persuaded that their duty and their destiny in the 21st century is to lead the world in a titanic, globe-spanning "long war" against terrorism?

Inexperience is one reason: American cities never have been bombed in war, so Americans have no standard of comparison that would shrink terrorism to its true importance in the scale of threats that face any modern society. But the other is relentless official propaganda: the Bush administration has built its whole brand around the "war on terror" since 2001, so the threat must continue to be seen as huge and universal.

Ridiculous as it sounds to outsiders, Americans regularly are told that their survival as a free society depends on beating the "terrorists." They should treat those who say such things as fools or deliberate liars, but they don't. So the manipulators of public opinion in the White House and the more-compliant sectors of the U.S. media will give bigger play to the British bombings-that-weren't than Britain's own government and media have, and they will get away with it.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

[Clam Digger]

This person is a clueless moron, or does she have an agenda.

The scary thing is that both apply. Idiots with an agenda who buy ink by the barrel.

[DB]

The Russians crushed Chechnya after an apartment building was bombed in Russia.

Hardly a “cool” response...

[Obadiah]

I guess I'm not as cool about terrorism as old Gwynne.

[CaptRon]

Well, I guess that’s in then. We just have to accept it and live with it.

This guy does his own visual colon examinations.

[Man50D]

An occasional terrorist attack is one of the costs of doing business in the modern world. You just have to bring a sense of proportion to the problem, as people in Europe do in general.

This type of thinking in Great Britain and Europe has allowed Islamic terrorism to spread. I can't remember who said but the statement was something to the effect "We have to be right all the time but the terrorists have to be right only once".

[Brilliant]

One of the main reasons the Brits stopped these terrorists is that they have security cameras on every street corner. If something like this happened in the US, not only would we not stop it, we wouldn’t even know who did it.

[metesky]

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent leftist journalist whose articles inanities are published in 45 countries.

The Bangor Daily Snooze has been publishing this guy's trash for years. He's as left as left can get.

[Thermalseeker]

I wonder if the Press would be so flippant had it succeeded.

Or, if the bomb(s) had gone off at the front door of the BBC, New York Slimes, or other "news" outlets......

I suspect if bombs had gone off in any of these location the reporting would be much, much different.....

[ilgipper]

This lady deserves a good old fashioned Muslim beheading. What a G_D D_AMN moron.

[metesky]

Mark Steyn

[pgkdan]

In almost all of these countries, despite the efforts of some governments to persuade the population that terrorism is an existential threat of enormous size, the vast majority of the people don't believe it.

Which is just one in a long litany of reasons why Europe is doomed. Unless there is a sea change in European attitudes, a 'European' Europe will be a lost cause in 15-20 years. The Islamists are winning and the Eupropean people are too dense to see it.

[DocH]

What Fred Thompson, and others, have said about the ultimate threat they most assuredly DO want to deploy if/when they get their hands on one - a nuclear device - is what makes ALL the difference in the world between being NOW and THEN (WWII, etc.). If I were a radical islamic fascist (read that, ragheaded terrorist) and wanted to kill all the infidels, hell, I'D want to find/buy and USE a nuclear device in a major Western city or two, or three.

There IS a WOT, you left-wing, euro-weenie, pacifist dolt moonbat "independent journalist" from MB (mediocre britain).

There WAS a terrorist war against us before, and for many years. The difference now is that we (as USUAL, mainly us Americans) are FINALLY joining the battle and taking it to the enemy.

Worthless, mindless twits like this writer (and many more moonbats like her) would have us sit and take it with little or no response.

Ain't gonna happen.

[Krankor]

You just have to bring a sense of proportion to the problem, as people in Europe do in general.
Kinda like the sense of proportion demonstrated by the Spanish people after the Madrid bombings- they kicked out the presiding government three days later and immediately pulled out of Iraq. To many Europeans, surrender is the proportionate response.

[MEGoody]

but they certainly have not understood that terrorism itself is only a minor threat.

Tell that to the thousands of families that have lost loved ones in terrorist attacks. Tell that to the thousands who have been maimed in terrorist attacks.

Gwynne, you're an idiot.

[WestCoastGal]

Underestimating =

I think we are not taking them seriously enough now. 9-11 has been forgotten.

[Uncle Ike]

” If something like this happened in the US, not only would we not stop it, we wouldn’t even know who did it. “

Two guys, one rifle, and an old Chevvy pretty well paralyzed the Washington DC metro area for some three weeks.

It HAS been done here, by ‘amateurs’......

[subterfuge]

One of the would-be London bombers drove erratically down Haymarket St. -- presumably affected by the fumes from the gas cylinders and gasoline containers that were the heart of his makeshift car-bomb

No, most likely he was stewed after leaving a strip club.

[MrB]

This is one of those “terrorism is just something to cope with” idiots.

Did it ever occur to these moonbats that the US government is STOPPING terrorist attacks and can’t tell us that they are without exposing methods?

[MrB]

Why would they destroy their biggest source of intel?

[drpix]

Just imagine if over the last several decades media organizations ( like The Columbus Dispatch and other leftist rags and mouthpieces ) had be the victim of “occasional” but sustained terrorist attacks by another brand of fanatics.

Is anyone so foolish or dishonest that they believe they would they shrug it off as “one of the costs of doing business in the modern world?”