London Bombing Lessons Learned

On the second anniversary of the London Bombings, Britons mourn the dead and remember the tragedy which took 52 innocent lives.

Fortunately, tragedy was averted last week in London and Glasgow thanks to a combination of luck, alertness and action. Luck by way of the perpetrators' stupidity. Alertness on the part of conscientious and shrewd Britons who notified authorities, and action on the part of the police and citizens who physically prevented the Glasgow bombers from bringing their plan to fruition.

However, one must question what exactly Britain has learned these two years since the July 7th, 2005 bombings.. As Little Green Footballs pointed out, the ethnicity of the perpetrators of the recent London and Glasgow attacks has been murkily described in the press. Gordon Brown and the EU have also made pains to avoid, even ban the use of "Muslim" and "terrorist" in the same breath. Brown is Chamberlainesque in his politically correct pusillanimity. But PM Brown is not alone; the Associated Press has joined the whitewashing club as well, followed closely behind by the liberal Daily Kos: "London Bomb - What a Crock of Crap!!" (Yes, that was really the title of the post.)

Take the reaction among Britain's political doves and the multicultural, terror-apologist press in contrast with that of Britons on the scene in Glasgow:

"I watched the guy burning. He still tried to attack a policeman. I was convinced he was trying to detonate something. "He was on fire and he was still desperately trying to get into the boot. There were another two explosions. "People all around were in tears and shouting and screaming at the man to lie down. An off-duty cop was hosing him down with a fire extinguisher and other people were shouting, 'let him burn.' "He wasn't interested in being saved - he wanted to die and take all of us with him."

This reaction should be no surprise. The bystanders at the scene of the terror attack bore witness to the depths of the plotters' ideological determination: “Every time he threw a punch he was shouting, ‘Allah’”. Fortunately, The British/Scottish members of the public on the scene - military personnel none of them - took the necessary and appropriate action to subdue the attackers with all the means available to them. Taxi driver Alex McIlveen for one "kicked him with full force right in the balls but he didn’t go down. He just kept on babbling his rubbish."

This dichotomy in views - Remorseful understanding on the one hand, and decisive execution out of self-preservation on the other, has been on my mind a great deal lately. Essentially, the entire spectrum of the present debate about the war on terror - including the war in Iraq - seem to come down to one set of competing principles.

The first, and commonly held position among the left, including many of the intelligentsia, liberal politicians, and of course opportunists profiting from the status quo, is well established: These seemingly troubled "immigrants" (of indeterminate religion/ethnicity) must simply become better assimilated. This can be done through a series of social programs, community healing, discussion, public accommodations for the needs of the minority population in question (which we shall not name), and general apathy toward the murderous tendencies by these group's leading sycophants, which are regrettably endorsed wholesale by the leading "cultural community leaders," (Islamic clerics), shall we say across the globe.

The second, and commonly held position among many conservatives, particularly military and former military, police, firefighters, concerned citizens, soccer moms, disaffected Democrats, those disgusted with political correctness, and those of the faithful religious Christian and Jewish persuasion, is equally well established: The growing influence of radical Islam among immigrant communities here in the United States, Britain, France, Spain and other countries that have been so welcoming and willing to provide them economic and political opportunity must be halted quickly and forcefully. Domestically, radical agents of al Qaeda and related organizations should be hunted down and incarcerated or eliminated. The rule of law established among free and open liberal societies of the West must be upheld at any cost, including at the expense of loss of life within our military ranks to stem the tide of Sunni and Shi'ite zealotry throughout the ideological hot spots of the Middle East. The leaders, acolytes, and associates of the murderous Islamofascist, Salafist believers must be made to know through force, if necessary, that the free peoples of the world will not stand idly by while their precious way of life is threatened by a relatively small, but dedicated band of narrow-minded religious fanatics.

It's a simple question: How to react to terrorism? But the answer has become exceedingly complicated and divisive.

It is my belief that a commitment to the first course of action will not result in any sort of meaningful resolution to the present global wave of terror. Show me a modern hot spot anywhere in the world, and you will find a failed peace treaty, failed peace talks or a failed U.N. mandated social solution. The West Bank/Gaza are proof positive that any number of arguable well-intentioned peace talks can and do prove fruitless. And there is Sudan, Lebanon, Somalia... the list goes on.

Along these lines, John F. Burns recently wrote for the New York Times:

"Not for the first time, the Americans learned a basic lesson of warfare here: that Iraqis, bludgeoned for 24 years by Saddam Hussein’s terror, are wary of rising against any force, however brutal, until it is in retreat. In Anbar, Sunni extremists were the dominant force, with near-total popular support or acquiescence, until the offensive broke their power."

Are we not able to draw any lessons thus far? (And the common "cop out" response that we 'shouldn't get involved in other countries business" is dead up on arrival when the security and economy of our nation rests on millions of barrels of oil from one small section of the globe).

Now on the other hand, show me a peaceful state and you will find the result of a decisive military victory by one actor over the other. Germany, Japan, Italy, Bosnia, etc.

Rarely does a passionately held idea wither by the vine and die, as we saw in the former Soviet Union. Yet even the demise of the USSR was supplied via physician assisted suicide, courtesy Uncle Sam - after proxy wars in South Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, a massive and costly military build-up, and a number of disasters barely avoided (the Cuban missile crisis, the Berlin air lift, Afghanistan, MAD).

It would be the height of optimistic ignorance to hope that the present strain of Islamic radicalism will simply retire into the shadows of darkened alleyways in Islamabad, Baghdad, or Kandahar. Nor will the oft lamented missing "dialogue" with Islam simply provide an antidote.

When peaceful society is threatened by violence from abroad through proxies at home, action must come first, thought and reflection later. Ask the brave Britons in Glasgow how much they considered their best course of action, and if they contemplated the pros and cons of diplomatic discussion with a crazed terrorist engulfed in flames, shouting "Allah!" while enacting what he believed was to be a service to his Prophet. What lesson would we have learned today had those Britons attempted to reason with the terrorist 'human torch'?