Good reasons not to be terrorised by the London bombings

Rather than the bulldog spirit, or the memory of a blitzkrieg no Londoner under seventy can possibly remember, there are some legitimate and constructive reasons not to be terrorised by the London bombings, at least for the great mass of us lucky enough to have not been directly involved.

The first is only possible for those who opposed the war, and stayed in touch with it’s consequences the whole time. If you’ve been paying attention to what’s been going on since 911, and you weren’t directly effected by the London bombs, then there is a definite limit to how shocked this event could make you. Incidents of this kind will have been plugging away at your conscience every day, and this looks much like any other day. In fact you could say that the degree of grief one can feel as a non-victim is inversely proportional to the amount of attention you’ve paid to the years of savagery that led us here.

It’s difficult for this not come out as indignation, particularly when confronted by other people not directly effected, but who are, nevertheless, genuinely shocked to the core. It’s difficult to hold back. You might end up with a smack in the mouth. What were you doing while Falluja was being razed? Did you grieve this much for the Iraqi wedding party, or were you busy watching Big Brother? No wonder some uninjured Britons are traumatised. For them this really is a bolt from the blue.

It’s one advantage of keeping yourself inoculated with the horrors of the world, I suppose. The next time someone asks you why you read things and watch things that clearly upset you so much, well this is one sound answer. It doesn’t hurt so much or shock so much when the pain and suffering draws closer. You can remain calm and try to discuss how it happened, and how it might be prevented in the future. You have better immunity to government propaganda, you're better prepared to pick your way through their lies. It’s the person who ignores the suffering in faraway places that is mortified by its arrival on these shores. In the long run, it’s them that really get upset.

All said, it is still difficult for even the most sincerely anti-racist, universally compassionate Briton not to feel more shocked by these killing than those abroad. But not for any noble reason. It’s just that we’re not used to concentrated coverage of the consequences of the ‘War on Terror’. The violence our side dishes out isn’t fit for discussion. Iraq’s own ceaseless suicide bombings have become just a detail, low down the running order on the evening news. Just like Vietnam and Ireland before, they’re just a faint repetitious noise in the background. A body count, a concerned expression, and on to the Beckhams.

A good measure of the media’s sincerity is it’s reporting of other atrocities subsequent to July the seventh. Clearly their newly discovered compassion ran out quickly, or was swallowed in one go by the London attack. Every day since has seen comparable horrors in Iraq itself. Will The Independent post a billboard of photographs of the victims faces on its front page? Will each photo be accompanied by eulogies about these peoples lives, their hopes and expectations? Will this mother have the chance to speak of her son’s plans to go to college, or marry in the spring?

The second good reason not to be terrorised is purely statistical, and available to every rational citizen. Unless this is the beginning of a sky-high escalation of attacks (and remember, it wasn’t after 911) you still have far more to fear crossing the road or driving, and the level of potential grief is comparable.

I’ll have to tread very carefully through this minefield. To be clear, I am NOT suggesting that there is moral equivalence between the criminal negligence of reckless drivers, awful as it is, and the psychopathic behaviour of suicide bombers. What I am saying is that from the victim’s perspective there isn’t much difference. To have a loved one torn to pieces in either way creates similar trauma. If you don’t believe me try telling a father who has lost a child in a road accident that his grief is less than if it had been in a terrorist attack. I only ask this rhetorically. I really wouldn’t recommend it.

So if the level of pain and misery induced by each kind of loss is comparable, you can then factor-in likelihood. And of course incidents of road death and injury blow terrorism out of the water, in this country at least. In the UK there are around 3,500 road deaths a year, attended by around 300,000 injuries. Nine deaths a day. Around one London bombing every six days. But of course that’s each and every six day period of the year.

Day in, day out, the infernal combustion engine swats innocent humans like flies. If we should feel frightened by bombs in the UK we should be in perpetual hysterics about road injury. If we feel worried sitting on the tube we should be soiling ourselves going down the motorway. But we don’t. Rightly or wrongly we are all but indifferent to this vastly greater danger, until it actually picks one of us off.

I stress again, I’m not talking morality here, just about likelihood of injury and legitimate states of fear. For this is all about using fear to control people. The power of nightmares. Make no bones about it, there are two groups of terrorists vying to capitalise on this vile deed. The people who organised the bombing, for sure. But equally the state terrorists who lied to us to take us to war, even after being advised in advance that this would be the likely consequence. Tony Blair, Jack Straw and George Bush are well aware what is at stake at this time. The finger of treachery points directly to them.

Our subservient media is doing a fine job helping with the smokescreen. It seems astonishing that we are yet to hear from any victim who opposed the war, and is furious at Tony Blair. I can’t bear to listen to the radio at the moment, but when I catch it the permissible agenda seems to be:

1. This is nothing to do with Iraq.
2. This is a good reason to increase state power, ID cards etc.
3. What’s wrong with Islam?
4. We must work to heal our communities.

Stray from this vacuous agenda and you support the bombers. Any closer analysis is necessarily a justification for what they did. Gavin Esler can muster great offence when George Galloway speaks the truth ‘too soon’ after the event (is it ever to soon to speak the truth?) but Tony Blair, who brought about this tragedy, is given a platform to spin more lies on the very day of the bombing: This is nothing to do with Iraq. Evil ideology. They hate our freedoms.

Quite pathetic. No human would do this for religion alone. Whatever other crankiness the bombers believed an essential part of their ‘brainwashing’ was the truth. Learning what the West was doing to other Muslims, things you won’t see on the BBC. This was an act of intense sickening violence, prompted by intense sickening violence. We should think long and hard about the motives of anyone who tries to tell us different.

George Bush’s success has always been terror, death his lease of life. After a rough couple of months he is now walking proud again, chest puffed out. Terrorism is his oxygen, his soul, his mandate, his gift to the world. We went along with it and now it’s come to back to visit us, and he and Tony Blair hope to make good of it. These people really do hate our freedoms. They hate us questioning their actions. They'd rather we were suspicious of each other. They want us frightened in our beds.

This can’t go on forever. The ‘War on Terror’ must be derailed, sooner rather than later. We must refuse to be terrorised and get thinking. Making innocent British Muslims feel like they’ve done something wrong won’t help. The best way to ‘heal our communities’ is to get out of Iraq and impeach Tony Blair. Perhaps the victims’ families are our best hope. How many of them were on the February 2003 march? How many Rose Gentle’s and Reg Keys’ are stirring from their grief and preparing to confront Mr Blair? We must give them all the support we can.