From news so far, it looks like the terror attack in London is a failure

[Bucky]

They can smuggle bombs onto public busses and subways. That's not a difficult trick. The goal of terrorists is striking terror in their victims. In this, the terrorists have failed. The people of London are remaining calm, dealing with the injured, and steeling their resolve to destroy whoever did this.

They are not panicking and they are not backing down.

http://photos21.flickr.com/24230239_4746c5f953.jpg?v=0
piacture from http://flickr.com/photos/qwghlm/24230239

[Brian_Expat]

1. Londoners, like New Yorkers, are tough

We'll get through this and we'll get who did this.

[Debbi801]

3. Just wanted you to know that you are in my thoughts...

and prayers. So is everyone else in London right now.

Stay safe.

Debbi

[TyeDye75]

5. I was thinking about that comparison too

the terrorists are picking the wrong cities if their goal is to shake the will and resolve of the people.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. This is hardly the first time...

That London has felt the lash of terrorist bombs. The British are a hardy and defiant people in the face of aggression like this. I do not expect them to buckle.

The concept of "bottle" is genetically encoded into the British people.

[htuttle]

4. London has probably had more terrorist attacks than any other city

...outside of Israel, of course.

Things have been blowing up unexpectedly there for almost 100 years. If anyone planned to panic Londoners this way, they didn't know London.

[Lorien]

43. Exactly; the "troubles" with the IRA, WWII, much of which

still remains in living memory. A good friend of mine lived through the Blitz, and she, like I, was flabbergasted by American's reactions to the Sept. 11 attacks. "Now is the time to say "Dammit-I WON'T change a single element of my life", she said "because once you do, they win. NEVER let them have that satisfaction-it only emboldens them to do worse". and she was right!The media and BushCo lead Americans into doing everything WRONG after 9/11. I doubt that Londoners will take the bait.

[endarkenment]

6. The goal is to attack the west where it is vulnerable.

I rather doubt that al qaida thought that London would collapse in panic because a half dozen bombs were set off. Rather al qaida has demonstrated that almost four years after 9-11, two years after Bush and Blair embarked on their crusade to fight them over there so that we don't have to fight them here, we are in fact fighting them right here. Al qaida has retained its international capability to strike the west where it is vulnerable. The attack in London exposes the lie that Iraq is keeping us safe.

[Island Blue]

7. It will depend on what happens much later - what freedoms are taken away

That will be a measure of the success of the attack. A lot of damage from the World Trade Center attack happened after the fact, when OUR "leaders" used the attack as an excuse to curb the freedoms we enjoy.

[The Magistrate]

8. Well Said, Ma'am!

[ms liberty]

10. But the Brits won't let it happen like we did...

because they've been through it before with terrorist attacks, and from groups who were NOT Islamic. They won't fold and allow their leaders to get away with it.

[GeekMonkey]

9. If we had gone after the terrorists instead of invading Iraq

we may have prevented this.

Bush and Blair have more blood on their hands now.

[Bucky]

12. No, terrorists are to blame for this, not the idiots.

It's clear that Bush is not up to the job. He has blood on his hands for Iraq. But London is the work of terrorists. The blame of killing goes to the killers only. Let's not muddy the waters while people are still being rescued in London.

[acmavm]

11. Londoners, in fact all the people of the British Isles, were amazing

during the Blitz of WWII. They showed a courage which, if they hadn't, would have allowed the Nazis to prevail in their takeover of Europe.

Look at British history. The Celts, the Romans, the Norman decimation of the native British nobility, the Saxons, the Anglo/Saxons, even the historic wars between contenders for the crown of England. The British have had practice at survivorship under hardship and difficult conditions. They'll show their bravery now, like they always have.

But they need to find their resolve and get rid of Tony Blair, like we need to get rid of pResident Can't-even-ride-a-frigging-bicyle-let-alone-run-a-country.

[Plaid Adder]

13. London survived the Blitz. They'll get through this.

Terrorist attacks in London have been a reality since the 1970s; there were a lot of terrorist bombings in London and all over Europe in the late 1980s when my family was living there. This is bad, but it will probably not spawn the same kind of years-long festival of nationalism that 9/11 has over here.

Good luck, everyone over there,

The Plaid Adder

[DemExpat]

14. It does make everyone else wonder, though.....who is next?

This is the fear creeping into our world.

And no one doing anything to try to stop it.

DemEx

[jmatthan]

15. Ask Rove / Negroponte!!

eom

[ProfessorGAC]

16. A Thought That Has Occurred To Me Since 9/11

It's a miscalculation on the part of the terror groups. When attacking a powerful country, it seems only logical that these people will not be cowed into submission, but rather rally behind the continued use of force to get revenge.

People in a country with the wherewithal to retaliate are far more prone to get angry than purely frightened into retreat. It might work in Bali, or in the southern Philippines, or Lebanon. But, attacking a major world player with more weaponry than sense is likely a serious error in judgment.
The Professor

[The Magistrate]

17. It seems To Me, Professor

That two things are at work.

First, this is guerrilla activity on a global scale. The early stages of guerrilla war require establishing the guerrilla force as the champion of a group, and fostering recruitment. Spectacular attacks against an enemy,a and provoking the enemy into blundering over-reaction, is the usual method.

Second, the jihadists do seem, from their own literatire, to share the critique of democracies common to the totalitarians of the twentieth century, that they are weak and soft and decadent, and will fold if struck hard. that was a miscalculation then, and ity is indeed a miscalculation now. An enraged democracy is the most formidable fighting force conceivable.

[JohnnyBoots]

21. It is becoming like a world war only

with out the massive troop deployments of the previous two. They attack us and our allies and we play pin the tail on the donkey trying to retaliate. With all the many theories out there it makes me wonder what the end result will be, if there ever is one.

[ProfessorGAC]

23. My Point Indeed

Thanks. In a full fledged democratic country, with a powerful economy (stodgy as it as right now), and huge military, and the political will of retaliation essentially the result of mob mentality, the leadership has its sway with retaliation. The people, in preponderance, will support retaliation. Then things just escalate from there.
The Proefssor

[htuttle]

18. Maybe that is the point

Seems that the more the US and the west have retaliated, the more powerful and the more popular that the likes of bin Laden have become.

Don't you think that they've considered the likelihood of reprisals ahead of time?

Maybe we are the ones miscalculating.

[ProfessorGAC]

20. No Argument

I think i'm really trying to say the whole thing is pointless. Attack us, and we strike back. We have a bigger fist so more people die. They retaliate in London, so we step up our attacks. More people die. And yet, nothing changes. We still think they're savages, they think we're evil.

All a pointless excercise. You know i never supported the Iraq war, so i'm not going to suggest that we've calculated any better.

In fact, i'll say this bluntly: This attack SHOULD get us to think about whether our approach of bombing people into accepting our way of life is not the right approach. And, this attack in London may be the very proof we seek.
The Professor

[endarkenment]

19. it ain't rocket science and it ain't miscalculation

it is a war of attrition and they are winning. It is also a recruitment drive, and it is succeeding quite well.

I rather doubt that the expectation is that 'we blow up a tube station and you soft westerners will collapse in fear'. Rather they continue to demonstrate their capability to strike us in our urban centers and in doing so they, as pointed out elsewhere here, establish themselves as the champions of the downtrodden of the islamic world, which downtrodden would be just about everyone except the small set of ruling elites and the almost as small middle class.

We of course overreact by swaggering around the planet with our vast military machine leaving a trail of death and destruction behind us, further enraging the base that al qaida is seeking to mobilize. And of course we are squandering our wealth doing this, bankrupting our nations in the process. And at home we are eliminating the institutions of liberal democracy that are supposed to be the difference between us and them that justifies our 'holier than thou' posturing.

I'd say that al qaida's war on the west is going quite well.

[ProfessorGAC]

22. Attrition/ Don't Be Silly

These attacks will never cause attrition in the wealthy west. If that's what you think they're planning, then the miscalculation is greater than i imagined. I don't support any of our reaction to any of this. Not Afghanistan, not Iraq, none of it. We've miscalculated badly and have done so for more than 50 years.

But, if these people think they'll win a war of attrition against the west, they are grossly mistaken. Not one politician here or in Britain will have the wherewithal to refuse retaliation of a direct attack. We will never back down due to violence. We will just escalate it further.

I'm not defending us and what got us into this mess. But, they are flat wrong if they think killing commuters or office workers will get us to tuck tail and run. Such thinking will only lead to further violence on both sides.
The Professor

[endarkenment]

28. Maybe we mean different things by 'war of attrition'.

I see al qaida spending perhaps $1,000,000 tops on 9-11 and us spending, so far, $200-300,000,000,000 in response. Just how long do you suppose we can keep up that sort of lopsided response before we are completely bankrupt? They will continue to attack us with low level low cost means, box cutters and c-4, and we will continue to use aircraft carriers against them in response. Who exactly is delusional?

Kerry was slammed for suggesting that the way to respond to terrorist groups is good solid police work, and since then nobody is willing to point out that we are using cannons to swat flies and it ain't working.

[ProfessorGAC]

29. I Get You Now!

Still, the political will of politicians is strengthened by the human desire for revenge. An attack here on U.S. soil will get such a preponderance of the people wanting vengeance that the political leaders are free to spend, act, and plan at will. Yes, you're right about the difference in money. Absolutely so.

But, our pot of money is far deeper as well. People will put up with higher taxes if it means "blowing up the bad guys". Doesn't matter whether that's sensible or not. People react in a visceral way to attacks on their home nation. The more we get attacked, the more we attack back. The more we attack back, the more angry they get. The more angry they get, the more they attack us. Etc., etc., etc.

My original post was intended to express my belief that the whole thing is futile. Al Qaeda actually thinks they can win this war. Stupid. We think we can bomb people and get them to stop hating us. Equally stupid.

I think we're sort of saying similar things, but going about it in different ways.
The Professor

[PATRICK]

27. Making terrorism work

is the policy of failed states like the former USSR. When the people don't back policy and are 'led" into a fight against terrorism or whatever the terrorist goal merely has to push the weakness into eroding popular support(aka Sherman's March to the Sea). Success in fighting big powers mired in unpopular wars based on lies(VietNam, Afghanistan) has Bin Laden salivating against the dumbest bunch of warmongering autocrats ever made to order. People in fact like him who think a cadre of ruthless people is all you need(but hey, Bushco has control of the entire USA!). But the fools leading the tools are on top already and are instead undercutting the entire base of their blinding power while Al Qaeda is breeding in the ruins of our failed policy.

Clinton, the optimist and effective president has assured us that terrorism never wins. But it does when Bushco is ion charge. First terrorism simply happens through inattention, then is used merely as a pretext for obtaining more of their first priorities. enabling, not fighting it really, then creating more terrorists. Bush was made to order for Bin Laden.

The upshot for generations is that terrorism is given its greatest example to encourage ALL heretofore hopeless causes. The legacy of W. is showing the mammoth success of terrorism as a tool. The only drawback for both bush and Bin Laden is that for all the glory and blood, neither can get what they want and the people never will rally for either one or the "cause" for which they really fight.

The people will bleed and die for the drama of failed leaders and nations who fail to get rid of them. Terrorists will have encouragement for a long time until they learn the lesson they need to have ruthless idiots in charge of the nations they fight and the populist majority of all "sides" are against them and always will be.

History should belong to hope, but not hope that violence will "win".

[theboss]

45. Keep things in perspective.

If you count the WTC, Bali, Spain, and this as part of a large Al Qaeda plan, they are averaging one significant attack a year on the western world with ever-decreasing casualties. This is hardly a strategy for success.

Islamic terrorism is probably always going to be an issue in the west, at least until fundamental economic and social change occurss within the Muslim World.

However, the leaders of these movements don't strike me as particularly visionary. Bin Laden is essentially a nationalist. He wants to re-establish the Pan-Arabic Empire of the past. That's a goal at least. And a broad one. But he doesn't seem to have any idea how to accomplish it.

These attacks on the west are horrific in the moment but are really just pin-pricks in the large scheme of global affairs. The West can kill more Arabs by accident in a matter of minutes than they kill with years of planning.

It's probably helped "recruiting" in some way, but there has not been the groundswell of support necessary to achieve a fundamental change. Pakistan is not falling. Saudi Arabia is not falling. Syria is not falling. Lebanon is in the throes of change with the outcome unknown. Iraq is occupied.

So, whatever movement is behind these events has achieved some small, short-term successes with little large-scale success. Everytime they strike at the West, Muslims get hit back ten times as hard. All that does is create recruits for the next strike. It's a cycle that simply maintains the status quo.

I think the problem is that most of the recruits are fundamentally nihilists. There goal is to die and kill while doing so. There is no real political or social imperative behind their actions.

[rman]

30. However, people did accept less liberty for more safety -

which amounts to giving in to terrorism.

At least according to what many governments in the west claim these days, namely that "terrorists hate us for our freedom", and that the proper response is for the people to accept the preventative paradigm: "Waiting for a crime to be commited or waiting for there to be evidence of the commision of a crime didn't seem to us to be an appropriate way to protect the American people." - Ashcroft (*)

And what do we do in response to these attacks? We do give up some of that freedom, see the Patriot Act.


(*) source
"The Power of Nightmares - the Rise of the Politics of Fear" (BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3755686.stm

[ProfessorGAC]

32. WE Didn't Give Up Anything

The pols, in their rush to look heroic, took them away. 50% of the people in this country disagreed with that rash act, and still do.

That's hardly a consensus.

I get your point, but i don't think we ALL cowered into a corner and let the terrorists win.

And, from their POV, another 100,000 dead is hardly a victory. I know people think that they believe it's a great recruiting tool, but just as likely is a large segment of the Islamic world looking at them and thinking "Look what you've done!"
The Professor

[rman]

33. Agreed, but also there is not enough opposition

to undo it. Hence, practically speaking, it has been accepted. It is in place, it is being enforced and there's isn't much that opponents have been able to do about it - so far.

on edit:
More importantly, it -is- the official response of the various governments.
It's just that our leaders nor the corporate media make the connection between (point out the dissonance regarding) "they hate us for our freedom" on the one hand, and the giving up of that same freedom on the other hand.

[ProfessorGAC]

36. A Fair Point

But, like i said in a different post, repeal or retirement are things that happen glacially. The attacks made everyone feel a need to do something, even if that something was stupid. Retrospection has a way of making people rethink their support.

Look at the polls apropos the Pat. Act now. Right now, less than 50% think it's a good idea to leave it in place with all provisions as they are. You think that was the case in late 2001. I seriously doubt it. Probably 90% thought it was a great idea. Sure not so, now.

I think it will take time to get the failures of this gang to be clear and obvious in the minds of the millions. Massive countries of 300 million people do not change quickly unless motivated by something huge. (Like 9/11) The rest only happens on an evolutionary timeline.
The Professor

[ChiDem]

24. Are the people of London..

calling this a terrorist attack ? ...or do they understand that they are at war and the enemy is striking back ?

If 'they' are terrorists for killing innocent people, then surely 'we' are terrorists for killing innocent people.

[info being]

37. Exactly. This board sickens me today to be honest.

All this "god bless this" and "god bless that" crap. When was the last time we "god blessed" the people we are killing every day? This is a small-scale war and this was a counter attack.

The day I fail to understand the terrorists is the day they attack an uninvolved country. However, when they attack a country who is essentially at war with them...well, that's just the way war works.

[Lorien]

46. They targeted civilians with hidden bombs, the intent was terror

as the Mayor of London said-they did NOT target the powerful or the mighty. This was not an attack against a military target.

Yes, American and British soldiers have caused terror in both Iraq and Afghanistan by killing innocent civilians.But it is against Geneva conventions to TARGET innocent civilians.I've seen a huge outpouring of anguish and concern over the innocents killed in the countries we've invaded on this board (just read the recent "Worth it"? thread). But that wrong doesn't mean that this act of terror in London is somehow "right" or even understandable. The Londoners killed were also innocent, their families will feel the same loss as those abroad. Remember that Blair acted against the majority's wishes-more were against the war there than in this country. Terrorism against innocents is a despicable act, no matter who does it or what their supposed justification for it is.It should be condemned wherever it takes place.

[ProfessorGAC]

49. A Little Naive Aren't You, Lorien?

Carpet bombing of Dresden, Dusseldorf, Munich, Berlin, Tokyo and Kyoto, was not TARGETING civilians? Be serious.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki wasn't a deliberate assault on everything under those bombs? Again, be serious.

You're ignoring reality in order to reinforce a point. Not exactly a strong debate tactic.
The Professor

[info being]

52. Most people on this board have a We vs. Them mentality.

And the We is white people...better yet if they speak English. I consider all humans equal.

[ProfessorGAC]

53. Same Here!

Since the development of siege warfare, the people in those walled cities were put at the same risk as the leaders who built the castles or walled cities. We have not, for a long, long time, differentiated between combatants and civilians.

Dead people are dead people. It doesn't make a difference whether they were combatants or innocents. Unfortunately, people are trying to find a difference without a distinction. There is no good or bad in war. There are only dead people and other dead people. Unfortunate, but factual.
The Professor

[Javaman]

25. This is a blip compared to the blitz, they're tough folks.

I had an uncle in England during the blitz, he always remarked how the Brits showed such courage during such a tragic time.

[Renew Deal]

26. They have been through much worse,

They're no sissy's

[dogday]

31. God Bless The People Of London

As they try to figure out why this happened. I guess that is always the first thing asked is why has this happened...

[info being]

35. Just curious, when was the last time you wrote:

"God Bless the People Of Iraq" when they suffer a US-led terrorist attack? Does it just sadden you when people like us are killed needlessly? Just curious.

[dogday]

38. Check My Post And You Will See My Compassion For Iraqis

Just curious. Every poster basically posted best wishes to the people of London but you choose my post to ask this question. Could it be because mine is the only one that say God Bless on it?

[Name removed]

41. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[dogday]

42. I thought this was a democratic forum

perhaps you are lost.....

[maxsolomon]

44. i daresay "god bless" this or that is one of the main problems

"god" most certainly did not bless london today. except in the sense that there weren't more bombs than those deployed.

they have god's blessing, we have god's blessing. the nazis had god's blessing.

[dogday]

47. That was not the problem but the reason

for the question? I can say what I want and not anyone will stop me from expressing my point of view.

[Toots]

34. If it happened in america the Home of the Brave we would be cowering

in our rooms with duct tape every where while Bush* and Cabal screamed Terra Terra Terra Terra.

[Wcross]

39. Uh, do you recall what happened on Sept 11th,2001?

Yes, some people overracted and bought duct tape and plastic. I also seem to recall how people went to the twin towers site to help in the recovery.
No, Americans are not the cowards you seem to think we are. I have not changed any aspect of my life in fear of terror attacks. There hasn't been a mass migration of people away from highly populated areas. I find your opinion to be false and unwarrented.

[rinsd]

48. Revisionism...not just for rightwingers anymore (nt)

[leftofthedial]

40. My heart goes out to the innocent victims

and my admiration (again) goes out to Londoners

I'm not so sure that these attacks have failed in their purpose though

[Psyop Samurai]

50. Break out the heroic memes...

...it's so emotionally satisfying.

Nevermind the monumental deception already amply exposed - we must steel our "resolve to destroy whoever did this".

As your post and countless others demonstrate, the attacks will prove a success... it's like stealing candy from a baby.

[moondust]

51. Britons have been expecting it.

Ever since Tony enlisted them in the service of the BFEE.