The London terrorist attacks
As everyone now knows, London has been hit by a vicious terrorist attack. Antony Loewenstein assesses the day after. According to ABC Online, a group calling themselves the Secret Organisation of Al Qaeda in Europe has claimed responsibility. The group has been reported as saying the attack is a response to Britain's role in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Jack Straw, Britain's Foreign Minister, spoke of the attacks in these terms:
What they cannot and will not succeed in doing is in their overall objectives, which is bluntly, I mean literally to destroy the way of life of people in the civilised world, whatever their religion.
Note the total absence of any attempt to address causality. You can't reason with terrorists, whether they wear stupid glasses or have stupid names. The attack on London counts as one of the most cowardly, criminal acts in recent times. The perpetrators must be brought to justice. Not as devils whose acts, it will be argued, retrospectively justify Western violence in other corners of the globe. The perpetrators must be prosecuted as the criminal human beings that they are.
Having said that, expect the British Government to act as it already does. Using the attack as another pretext for maintaining or escalating the ill-described 'War on Terrorism' and its presence in Iraq.
My heart goes out to lovely London.
posted by Iqbal Khaldun @ 1:58 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Iqbal - causality is for pussies. As Bill Clinton said, people want 'strong and wrong', and their leaders deliver in spades. It's strange. The immediate aftermath of terrorist attacks is so often the setting for stunning acts of bravery and compassion. But it's never long before we start feeding on each other, encouraged by our politicians' ritualistic baying for blood. So we should not be surprised that the Muslim Council of Britain received more than 1,000 emails containing threats and messages of hate in the aftermath of the bombings. Someone has to pay, so it may as well be that curry-muncher down the road. Let the feeding begin.
A fair argument. There's no doubt one very natural way to respond to something like this is to blame a conspicuously different other. It doesn't help that people remain ill-informed about these issues. Most people are busy surviving, and I think powerful interests channel working people's insecurity towards cardboard cut out villains. But whether people naturally favour 'strong and wrong' over more measured analysis is another question. Maybe they do in our present social situation. I'm just not convinced that people think that way purely by design. Certainly, the way our society runs, social comment favours the meat grinder approach.
The funny thing is, even the 'strong and wrong' approach is based on causality in some very crude sense.
And as you say, the media is feeding us no casuality for these acts. Blair says they're barbarians, media repeats. Repeat again for Howard and Bush.
Sigh. Will they ever learn?
They will never learn, me thinks, because they've staked their political careers on this endless war on terrorism. Also, one of the greatest faux pas a person of authority can do these days is admit that they are wrong.
Public awareness, on the other hand, may be a different matter. At least, we have to think so!
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