Today’s NY Times and Washington Post both carry prominent articles saying London is, and has for some time been, a hot bed of terrorists. Let’s leave aside for today all the arguments about how to fight terrorism in a democratic state. Implicitly blaming London and Londoners for last week’s atrocity is in rather poor taste. Yes, there’ll need to be analysis, discussion and perhaps further refinement of how the UK deals with domestic terrorism. But for today, let’s put the shoe on the other foot. After the 2001 terrorist attacks, people who tried to blame the US for attacks against it were rightly condemned. So let’s have a little equal treatment, please, a little respect. At least till the bodies are buried.
I had to travel to Oxford last Thursday and stayed overnight, so I was, thankfully, away from a keyboard during the initial reaction to the terrorist attacks in London. Catching up on the online and print commentary, there appear to be just three sorts of response. First, there are the people who point out that, though this was a most terrible day for the victims and their families, Londoners (and the British generally) have put up with terrorist bombing campaigns before, and have managed to do so without launching pogroms. I agree with this and haven’t anything to add to it. Second, there are the numerous people who write variations on the “adequacy.org 9/11 standard column”:http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.9.12.102423.271.html : Robert Fisk (an especially bad one in the Indie on Friday morning), “Nick Cohen in today’s Observer”:http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1525172,00.html , and so on. “Harry’s Place”:http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/ is now showering one adequacy-variant with praise for insight and brilliance whilst castigating the other. This is pointless. Finally, there are the “Eurabia”-obsessed nut-jobs who are falling over themselves to tell us that Ken Livingstone, “whose speech was excellent”:http://no-doors.blogspot.com/2005/07/full-text-of-mayor-livingstones-speech.html , has said and done things of which they disapprove in the past. The Eurabians thereby merely remind us how much they value promoting their nasty agenda above elementary concerns with compassion and solidarity (ditto the egregious “George Galloway”:http://www.respectcoalition.org/?ite=819 btw).
[I think the “excellent John B”:http://www.stalinism.com/shot-by-both-sides/ probably linked to the adequacy.org piece first]
I blogged “the other day”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/06/16/pledgebank/ about the “PledgeBank”:http://www.pledgebank.com/ project, and, specifically in favour of “one particular pledge”:http://www.pledgebank.com/justonepercent :
bq. I will give 1% of my gross annual salary to charity but only if 400 other people will too.
Time is running out, as this pledge expires on the 23rd of July. So if you thought about it at the time, but didn’t get round to signing on, or would like to now, visit the site.