Thoughts on the Terror

At The Office of the Independent Blogger I take terrorism quite seriously.

Woke up this morning to the news that London was rocked by a series of blasts that most, including Prime Minister Tony Blair, believe were planned and executed by al-Qaeda (which is reasonable to assume as al-Qaeda has taken responsibility for the attack). The BBC is running first-hand accounts of the explosion on its website. You can read Blair's statement and Bush's here.

There are many lessons to take from a terrorist attack such as this one, and these are my thoughts on what is occurring. First, a newspiece. A few days ago, Russia and China called for America to leave Afghanistan. These are security council nations telling us to leave a country that is not yet secure and which, if left to its own devices, would become a terrorist sanctuary and an even larger outpost of opium production. The other Security Council nations are France, Britain and America.

Britain and America are constantly under the threat of attack from al-Qaeda whereas the other three, with the possible exception of Russia though the problems it has aren't a matter of terrorism but of civil war, essentially. Why is that? Some on the fringes of the Left will allege that it's because those other three are peaceful, wonderful nations whereas we are warmongers who provoke it; the Hard Right will claim it's because we are a Christian Nation and they loathe that. (Both claims are ridiculous.) al-Qaeda doesn't lash out at France but it's not because they're such a wonderful country (their banning of religious clothing outside the home didn't go over well with the fundamentalists in the Middle East) it's for the sake of division.

In America, we remember the September eleventh attacks and will do whatever it takes to prevent them; Britain, with this attack and with their fondness for America, will do the same. France has never been rocked like this, and neither have the Russians or the Chinese. They just don't understand the threat of global terrorism (indeed, the people of these countries, surveys suggest, believe that America is the great threat to civilization) and that is because terrorists don't want them to feel as though they're under siege; they don't want them to understand.

So long as these nations are on the Security Council and don't understand terrorism and choose to work against us every chance they get the terrorists will not target them because targeting them would force them to realize that, hey, the Americans aren't crazy after all. al-Qaeda is real. Until then, terrorists will continue with their current strategy: Attack Israel, Britain and America but do not harm any other nations, except for others occasionally when you see an oppurtunity to make a statement (the Madrid Bombing, for instance, on 3/11) and thus divide the world which will believe that the West (Britain and America) are insane when they retaliate to strikes on their nations; then the terrorists will focus on destroying our nations from the inside by weakening our resolves.

When violence like this occurs, my thoughts and prayers go out to the victims. But I also wonder when the rest of the world is going to realize that we all need to join together to fight terrorism. France and China and Russia aren't safe. They are merely pawns in the terrorists' strategy, but I am sad to say that they sometimes play that role a little too eagerly.