The Omega Letter Intelligence Digest
Vol: 46 Issue: 7 - Thursday, July 07, 2005
Special Report: Over There . . . And Over Here
We awakened this morning to the news of a major terrorist attack against London, England. Details are sketchy, but what facts we do have are horrifying.
So far, there have been forty-five confirmed deaths reported, and the death toll has been rising steadily. As of the time of this report, the British have confirmed more than fifteen hundred injuries.
One of London's fabled double-decker buses was attacked by what is believed to be a suicide bomber. According to eyewitness accounts, the entire top level of the bus was blown to pieces by an explosion.
There were at least three, possibly maybe as many as six, other attacks, all aimed at London's underground rail system.
Terrorist groups are lining up to take credit for the attacks, but the odds-on favorite is most likely al-Qaeda. It has all the earmarks of an al-Qaeda operation.
The attacks were coordinated, they were aimed at effecting the greatest number of casualties, they were perpetrated by suicide bombers and they were utterly depraved, carefully selecting innocent civilians going about their daily lives.
What I found remarkable in the early reporting was the fact that, while Londoners were horrified, they weren't terrified. In that, al-Qaeda missed the mark.
The terrorists wanted to inflict terror. Instead of terror, however, Londoners are reacting with anger. And horror. And outrage. And 'outrage' should be the last emotion al-Qaeda wanted to invoke.
In the intervening months and years since the September 11 attacks, there has been a tendency to resume politics as usual, in Washington, and even more particularly, in London.
The only ally al-Qaeda has of any success in its terror war against the West is complacency and it has been Western complacency that has divided the world over the war in Iraq and whether or not it should continue.
Terrorist attacks 'over there' have the effect in the West of making us want to be 'over here' where we are less vulnerable. Which breeds complacency.
Complacency is what gives Teddy Kennedy an audience for his idiotic rantings against his own country and his own government over the conduct of the war that he calls a 'Vietnam-style quagmire'.
It was complacency in America that allowed Vietnam to BECOME a 'quagmire' in the first place. John Kerry testified to a complacent (and safe) American Congress about how evil our troops had become and how useless the war was, and it resonated because the war was 'over there'.
Israel, for example, is the target of almost daily attacks, attacks as brutal as this morning's attack against London, just as senseless, just as cruel. The reaction of the West? Give more land to the Palestinians. Cut off Israeli funding unless it stops retaliating.
Force Israel to make concessions. Ignore Palestinian violations. Treat Palestinian promises of a ceasefire as if they were the equivalent TO a ceasefire and dismiss continued violence as an 'abberation' instead of a deliberate and systematic plan.
Terror attacks 'over there' are not the same as terror attacks 'over here'.
Terror attacks 'over there' -- whether in Israel, Iraq or Afghanistan, invoke expressions of revulsion and horror in the West. But seldom outrage.
The prevailing worldview is that the victims of terror somehow deserve it -- that it is less of an attempt at mass murder than it is a military response by the Palestinians to military aggression by the Israelis or a reaction to some American aggression against the Arabs or Islam.
And therefore, it is horrible, awful, terrible, but not particularly outrageous. It has even been argued, by American politicians like Dick Durbin or Ted Kennedy, that Islamic terror is justified by America's Nazi-like tactics or the insatiable Western thirst for oil.
The London attacks brought the terror war back 'over here'. Even for Americans who are still thousands of miles removed from this particular Ground Zero. The terrorist goal was to scare the British, and by extension the rest of the governments in Europe as well as al-Qaeda's Useful Idiot Chorus in America.
Threats have a tendency to scare people. Actual attacks tend to make them mad.
The Western response to the constant THREAT of terror has been division, infighting, efforts to attach blame for political advantage, etc., etc. When a threat goes to the next level, that of an actual attack, talk gets cheaper.
America's Red State/Blue State civil war is rooted in religious and political ideological differences.
Great Britain has been undergoing a similar political civil war, although with less emphasis on religion. Consequently, England has been no less divided over the war on terror than America is.
All that, I suspect, is about the change. In both countries.
al-Qaeda issued a press release in which it said the attacks were in retaliation for British support for Israel, together with its support for the US efforts in Iraq.
The goal was to scare the Brits into withdrawing both. Osama bin-Laden should have kept rattling sabers.
He made a mistake when he used one.
Assessment:
The attack against London is a stark reminder that this war isn't 'over there' and we aren't invulnerable 'over here'.
That changes the political equation and steals the thunder away from the Useful Idiots and antiwarriors and gives the advantage back to those who realize the difference between 'over there' and 'over here' is an imaginary one.
It wasn't the Useful Idiots of the British liberal left who were grabbing all the headlines this morning, calling for a withdrawal from Iraq or a divestiture of Israel until it gives in to Palestinian terrorist demands.
It was: Tony Blair and the British were less interested in how their government was going to protect them than they are in how the British government plans to retaliate.
Yesterday, the headlines were all about Jacques Chirac's mean-spirited comments about British food and how it was the worst in Europe.
Today, the news photos were of Tony Blair, flanked on one side by George Bush and on the other by Jacques Chirac, all expressing solidarity with the British.
The victims of the London attacks weren't liberals, or conservatives, or Christians, or Muslims or Jews or agnostics. They were just victims.
It hammered home to the British Left, (and, prayerfully, the American Left) that the war is not one of Tony Blair and George Bush vs. al-Qaeda. We have seen the enemy -- and it is NOT us.
The victims in London weren't protected from death or injury by their opposition to the war. Opposing the war only provides aid and comfort to the enemy, emboldening him into believing that terrorism works, and encouraging him to press his advantage.
Opposing the war sounds noble, but, in the final analysis, not very practical. Ideology is not very useful to the dead. It provides no comfort to the wounded. It just gives the enemy a reason for hope. There is an old saying to the effect that 'a liberal is a conservative who has never been mugged.'
It is unlikely that there are any liberals among the survivors currently being rescued from the wreckage of al-Qaeda's latest outrage.
Our prayers are with those wounded in today's attack, and for the families of the victims. But we reserve our outrage for the perpetrators and their hellish ideology.
And for those who offer them aid and comfort.
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