As We Sowed, So Do We Reap

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As We Sowed, So Do We Reap
Eric Margolis
July 10, 2005

LONDON — "The purpose of terrorism is just that — it is to terrorize people and we will not be terrorized." So declared a sombre, determined Prime Minister Tony Blair on Thursday after the worst bombings in London’s recent history.

Blair spoke for all Britons. In the crowds milling about central London right after the four bombings, I saw people who were dazed, confused, and edgy, but no fear or mass panic. Britons rise to their full measure in adversity. And so they did in spades on 7/7, their smaller version of America’s 9/11.

London’s emergency service functioned brilliantly. There was none of the chaos or jingoism we saw after 9/11 in New York. Britons uniformly exhibited stiff upper lips, coolness, and manners for which they are deservedly respected. I was very proud of them.

The bombings paralyzed London during morning rush hour, but by afternoon the city’s trademark red buses were again careening around corners and even subway service partly resumed.

There were no witch hunts against London’s Muslims, 10% of that great city’s population.

A senior British police official declared there is no reason why the words "Islamic" and "terrorist" should go together, even though Blair had just used them.

The cop is right. The terrorists who struck London on 7/7 may have been Mideast Muslims, but their primary goal was political, not religious.

Britain’s most outspoken, controversial MP, George Galloway, ignored the outpouring of platitudes from British and G8 politicians and hit the nail on the head: "Londoners paid the price for Tony Blair’s decision to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan."

A hitherto unknown group called European al-Qaida affirmed the transit attacks were indeed revenge for Britain’s invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. You can’t expect to invade other nations without getting some form of return fire.

Iraq and Afghanistan’s regimes were too feeble to resist U.S.-British invasion, and quickly crumbled. But angry Mideasterners and Afghans have launched their own privatized war to counterattack the West. Lacking any modern arms or military organization, they resort to their only major weapon, human cruise missiles.

We are horrified that anyone would attack innocent civilians packed in subway cars. But the extremists and fanatics who do so say they are exacting revenge for the 500,000 Iraqi civilians who died (confirmed by the UN) from the 10-year U.S.-British embargo of Iraq. Or for the destruction in 1991 of Iraq’s water and sewage treatment plants, causing massive cholera and typhoid. Or for the occupation of Iraq that has killed tens of thousands more civilians.

We saw the frightful TV footage from the London bombing but no footage at all of the destruction of an entire Afghan village just days before by the U.S. Air Force.

I am not justifying terror attacks, only putting them into context. When we kill them in droves, some of them will strike back.

Osama look-alike?

Calling on such avengers to fight fair is a waste of time.

The London bombing was clearly designed to humiliate U.S. President George Bush, who had declared his so-called "war on terror" almost won.

If Osama bin Laden was behind the attack, it showed America’s nemesis is still alive and dangerous. But the relatively modest number of casualties suggested this might not have been a bin Laden operation but one carried out by a new, like-minded extremist group. Embarrassingly, the attacks came right after Blair had assured Olympic officials Britain’s security was solid.

The bombers may have come from among Europe’s 20-million-strong Muslim community, or were perhaps angry, radicalized British youths of Mideast or Pakistani origin. We do know the head of British counter-intelligence, MI5, just reported to Blair that "Iraq is producing a new generation of militants," replacing the former role of Afghanistan. In other words, the U.S. invasion of Iraq supposedly designed to end terrorism has backfired badly.

Al-Qaida has gone from being a small, isolated organization into a hydra-headed transnational movement whose power and danger is growing.

So this bloody week of 7/7 should make the G8 turn from pop-star evangelism about saving Africa from itself to asking what the Western powers can do about those hothouses now germinating anti-Western violence — Iraq and Afghanistan.