It’s not just another day

July 7, 2005

Looking back over the last few hours, I realize that I’ve been treating today like a normal day. I had some of the usual political items on tap, wrote them up, and posted them, as if it were just another day.

I now regret that. Today isn’t a day for political updates and observations; it’s a day for sorrow and condemnation. The same terrorists who killed 3,000 civilians on Sept. 11, 2001 have committed another atrocity, this time against our closest allies. Political analysis of current events in Washington can wait a day.

There are no words to describe the disgust and contempt I feel for these murderers. For all the partisan conflicts we deal with in covering politics in America, days like today offer a sense of perspective when it comes to words like “enemy,” “crisis,” and “attack.” It’s also a reminder that, despite global efforts to undermine al Queda and protect the innocent, the United States and its allies still have a lot of work to do.

For live updates on events in London, the Guardian’s news blog is doing fine work.

yes, it is horrible. but is it anymore horrible than darfur? palestine? chechnya? iraq? death squads in latin america?

those deaths didn’t and don’t stop daily routines.

  • Isn’t it at least very strange that whenever the Bushies get cornered, as it appears that Rove is close to being, the terrorists take over the news scene. I mean Rove is about to be all over the press as committing a serious felony and boom, the terrorists take him off the hook. Time and time again. Weird.

  • This may be controversial, but I think we should stick to our routines, show them that we won’t be shaken.

    Hell, CB, post more than you ordinarily would.

  • It happens every day in Iraq, as a direct result
    of the illegal invasion, destruction and occupation
    of this defenseless country by none other than
    GWB and company. Where’s the outrage?

    In fact, it’s so bad there that it is their daily
    routine.

  • Your words are noted and appreciated, CB, but sometimes sticking to an established routine can be theraputic in helping to maintain internal equilibrium in the face of a brutal atrocity. No blame attaches.

    And frankly, this horrible act should illustrate the failure and fallacy of the entire Bush/Neo-con strategy. Invading Iraq hasn’t done a darn thing to make the world safe from terrorists, and the resurgence of the Taliban in Afganistan shows they didn’t even get that right when they had the chance. The U.S. is weaker than it was before, militarily and politically, so even if invading somebody else might help in this situation ( which it wouldn’t ) we couldn’t do it anyway. We just don’t have the troop strength, and that’s the plain facts. It should be obvious to everyone now that military power is simply not the answer.

    Could we please get our minds around the idea that the only real solution to world peace is to do everything we can to make the people of the world FEEL peaceful? If everyone in the world felt reasonably comfortable, fed, healthy and secure, nobody would be interested in making bombs, or support those who did. This is a hard thing to do, really really hard. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be done. It does mean that the entire world has to work together toward a common goal in with a fixed and steady determination to get it done.

    As John Lennon said, “People say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” I sincerely hope he’s right.

  • “This is a new kind of war” we were told. Yet we continue to fight it the ‘old-fashioned’ way – with troops and tanks and airplanes.

    When will American policy makers and this admin wake up and start doing what we should have done after bombing Afghanistan. Work on infiltration of these groups and the disruption of their supply chains.

    Until then, I agree with Frank above. We will have to continue to deal with these occasional terrorist attacks as a way of life.

  • Rather than a flypaper analogy, I prefer the analogy of stacking a big pile of logs next to your vermin-infested house in hopes that the critters will leave your house and go live in the woodpile, a method sure to give you vermin in the woodpile AND in your house.

  • I’m with Gary. Post on your usual topics–stay with the routine. Add additional posts related to the event as are warranted, but the more you let the terrorists disrupt your rountine the more power that gives them.

  • Flypaper? It’s more like (1) we spend decades stealing the honey from the hive, (2) we finally get stung, (3) then we respond by kicking the hive.

    Somewhere recently (maybe Frank Rich?) I came across a suggestion that – when we get one of those tapes showing Osama bin Laden – rather than asking ourselves if he’s really still alive or how he manages to hide from Bush for these last years, we actually LISTEN TO WHAT HE SAYS. He says it was OUR MILITARY presence in HIS HOLY CITY which originally pissed him off. If we’d have left there he’d have no complaint with us. He has a point. And he hated Saddam and the “infidel Saudis” as much as he now hates us. But then you know all that.

  • Hi CB,

    I appreciate the import of your words, but we can’t allow ourselves to be paralyzed in our efforts to defeat the Bushite incompetents that got us here in the first place.

    Our situation today all goes back to the Bush Administration’s decision in 2001 to focus on the future missile threat from Iran and North Korea rather than the current terrorist threat from Al Queda. If Richard Clarke had his meetings with the Principals, rather than the Deputies…

    …nope, wouldn’t have done any good. Still would have had the same set of Bushite incompetents. As Rice said, she couldn’t IMAGINE terrorists using an airplane as a missile. Obviously she’s never read Tom Clancy (Debt of Honor).

    Prayers for the people of London.

  • Ed, you’re absolutely correct. Most Americans have no clue why we were attacked in 2001, and they have no clue because the politicans won’t tell them and the news media won’t tell them.

    I remember Dan Rather when Letterman asked him why we were attacked, he answered with something like, “They hate us for all the things we have.” Bush says “They hate us for our freedom.”

    No and no. Osama hates us because 1) We kept troops deployed in Saudi Arabia after Gulf War I – “Infidels in the Land of the Two Holy Mosques” – he also hates the Saudi royal family for letting us stay 2) Unconditional support of Israel in the face of constant human rights abuses against the Arabs there.

    Good luck hearing that on the network news or from any but a sparse handful of politicians.

  • John Lennon wasn’t the only one and neither are you, Mr. McFarland. I couldn’t agree with you more. While we have been wasting billions of dollars and thousands of lives (U.S., coalition and Iraqi) in Iraq, al-Queda has been allowed to flourish essentially unimpeded.

    My initial hope after 9/11 was that our politicians would wake up and realize that we are part of a global community and it is in our best interest to understand our neighbors’ concerns and motivations. That opinion has been vilified by conservatives, labeled “treasonous” and “anti-American.” And, obviously, our leaders have gone in exactly the opposite direction. Don’t try to understand why, just drop bombs, ratchet up the rhetoric, and wave the flag.

    The idiots in Washington could not have made a bigger mess of this if they’d tried – and I sometimes wonder if that isn’t exactly what they did. Like Mr. Rhapsody, it seems awfully serendipitous to me that this happened at a time when it seemed Karl Rove & friends were about to take a major hit on the Plame outing. I hate to be so cynical but I put nothing past these bastards.

  • Not to jump on the conspiracy theory bandwagon, but this “war” is even more unpopular in Britain than it is here (possibly because they were not attacked, until now). Not only does this divert attention from Rove, but it may bring about more public sentiment for the war in Britain (mis-guided as that is). It will be interesting to see if the perpetrators were suicide bombers and whether they trained in Iraq or not.

  • Your right, CB, in that I feel as though I should be paying more attention to this today than I have so far. But the words you mentioned such as “enemy” “crisis” and “attack” have been shoved down our throats on a daily basis since 9/11 courtesy of Bush and the major news outlets that we’re just numb to all this. That is so sad.

    The only think more sad than that is that American’s, too, are arrogant to think that we know squat about what it’s like to live under the constant threat of terrorism. Bombs explode daily in the Middle East. Great Britain used to get attacked frequently by the IRA. Nothing like that happens, ever happened, or ever will happen in America. We don’t know squat and I would think that other parts of the world are probably offended by our attitude and paranoia. Americans need to get over their bad selves. When school zones start getting bombed once a week, then we’ll talk (yes, this happens quite often in the Middle East – google it, people).

  • As to the “conspiracy theory,â€? I would suggest that this is neither a conspiracy, nor just a theory. No, the neo-cons weren’t out planting bombs in London. But they are darn happy it will shift the debate.

    From Media Matters via Atrios via Swing State Project, a little snippet of the dialogue today on Fox “News�:

    VARNEY: It puts the Number 1 issue right back on the front burner right at the point where all these world leaders are meeting. It takes global warming off the front burner. It takes African aid off the front burner. It sticks terrorism and the fight on the war on terror, right up front all over again.

    KILMEADE: Yeah. [Dreamy smile reminiscent of the after-glow normal people might get from lovemaking]
    I mean, how delirious do these people have to be to say this on the air?

  • Obviously she’s never read Tom Clancy (Debt of Honor).

    Or more appropriately the August 2001 National Intelligence Estimate that specifically mentions the possiblity.

  • Great Britain used to get attacked frequently by the IRA.

    And how did Great Britain manage to improve this situation? Was it by the use of massive and overwhelming millitary means? IIRC, no. Why isn’t that ever discussed by the pundits and other “analysts”?

  • I suspect what is wrong is that you are watching the devious, evil TELEVISION, that cloying, manipulative, mass-hypnosis propoganda medium. It will fuck with your head. Calling them “our staunchest allies” indicates you may be swallowing Repug talking-point propoganda. Our allies in what exactly? In an illegal and immoral war? Think about it– I’m not sure that’s anything to puff up your chest about.

    I am not watching any of that shit. I refuse to be drawn into a pit of stand-behind-our-idiot-president dramatic pathos. Fuck him. Fuck Blair too. And fuck bi-partisan unity too. We have things to do. Rove needs to go to jail. The PATRIOT Act needs to be repealed. Cunningham and DeLay need to go to jail. Blair needs to be bounced out on his ass– why is he still in office??! These are important things– and they are also the best way to honour the dead who died specifically because of the incompetence, corruption, lying, cheating, and war-mongering and empire-building of these assholes.

    As far as I’m concerned, the terrorists are not only evil they are STUPID. What the fuck are they doing bombing working-class people in the tubes? That’s idiotic and pointless. It’s more than wrong– it’s counter-productive. They missed their real targets: the G8 kleptocrats are in Scotland, IIRC. Morons. Leave the working-class Londoners alone. Go fuck with the people who caused this war (and try not to kill them– all we need is to remove them from power). The aggressors are NOT the people of England, who are indeed our staunchest allies– they were 90% OPPOSED to the Iraq conquest. So there.

    But Londoners know how to deal with adversity. The Nazis bombed them and couldn’t break them. They’ve lived under threat of random terrorist bombing since the IRA has been about. Their police and intelligence services also know how to catch terrorist attacks, after decades of dealing with .

    But this shit happens every *day* in Bagdhad, Mosul, Fallujah, etc. I don’t see the media pulling on heartstrings and trying to get everyone together in a big international group hug of condolences about them, and that’s just wrong. And so, I’ll pay my respect to the Londoners– it is indeed a horrible tragedy. And I feel as awful about it as I do about the bombings every day across this planet.

    So, my condolences to the Londoners, and the people of Baghdad, and the victims of state violence and chaos everywhere. We, as a race of humans, can and will do better, if we are to survive.

  • I share the sympathy. FOX, of course, is already framing what our response should be to this, using it to bolster the ignoring of Al Qaeda in favor of the distraction in Iraq. And after 9/11, we should recall that FOX commentator Steve Milloy used the disaster to blame Asbestos regulation, and that before our eyes had time to dry after the shuttle disaster, he blamed it on a new “enviro-friendly” foam (wrong on both counts: the WTC had asbestos, and the Shuttle had the old foam). What should our response be? Do the right thing and give them the lead on focusing people’s anger at the wrong culprits, and more likely, us? Or do what any decent person would do and recognize this isn’t about politics?

    But as long as Bush is in office, EVERTHING is about politics. Every death is just an opportunity to split this country apart, every tradedy a political opportunity. That’s the reality of it, I’m afraid.

  • Looks like wall to wall coverage from CNN. I haven’t
    had the stomach to turn up the volume. Will they
    manage to whip the Americans back into a patriotic
    frenzy so Bush’s policies will regain their original
    mass appeal?

    To be fair, I’m not watching the coverage, but I’m
    guessing the spin has got to be enough to tie any
    thinking person’s stomach into knots.

    Thank God we’re not fighting a war on global
    poverty. Our solution would be to shoot the
    poor.

    To gain perspective on the problem(s) of global
    terrorism, try the State Department’s own site:

    http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/

    As many of you are probably aware, the 2004
    report will not be issued, almost certainly
    because it demonstrates how disastrous the
    Bush “war on terror” actually is, and this is
    without counting the holocaust in Iraq, where as
    many acts of terror occur on Iraqi civilians in
    a single month as there are, on average, throughout
    the world in an entire year.

    On average, over the past twenty-some years, there
    have been 500 acts of terror per year, killing
    somewhere between 500 and 1000 people. The terrible
    tragedy of 9/11 was the worst, as far as I know.
    One of the architects of this report, Terrell E. Arnold, was appointed in the Reagan years, and he
    has written some scathing articles about the
    hysterical overreaction to this problem created
    by the Bush administration. I can’t find the
    URLs, but just check him out on your Google search
    engines.

    Hold on, and just hope we’re not being taken for
    another ride into hell.

  • The London bombings show that the “War on Terror”, just like the “War on Drugs”, won’t succeed when the root cause of the problem is not addressed. Just like jailing an addict doesn’t cure the addiction, sending in troops to countries where you suspect the terrorists have been hiding out or cooperating with may only fan the flames of the original reason for the terror tactics being used in the first place. Scott made the right call when he wrote about Osama’s indignation about “infidel” U.S. troops being stationed in Islam’s holiest county – Saudi Arabia. While we’ve slipped out of there, we’re now in their no.2 holy spot in Iraq and have given them more reason to be pissed-off with the misery in Iraq and the Gitmo/ torture/ extraordinary rendition mess.

    We’re now at the crossroads of where to go next after London. Inivitably Bush will appeal to his base by talking tough and trying to kick some terrorist ass before they kick ours, or we could recognize that getting western armed forces out of Islamic countries would squelch a primary source of fuel for Al Quaeda’s desire to attack. Sadly, both sides seem to be past the point where subtle moves can de-escalate the crisis.

    But the British public, who are more well-versed about the Downing Street memos, may look at today’s events as a sign that following Bush into a war in Iraq that didn’t need to be waged may have precipitated the carnage in London and that bombing more towns in Iraq won’t bring an end to the threat of future attacks. God rest the souls of the dead and compassion for those wounded by the bombs.

    • Comments are closed.