We Are All Londoners

Today London grieves, only 24 hours after celebrating its winning bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics. Terrorists have reportedly brought a different torch to that city, igniting a different cauldron. Shame on them.

According to reports, Islamic extremists are now warning Denmark and Italy to consider their own fates; and to bow before the almighty sword of Allah.

Yes, the G8 summit is occurring now, in Scotland. The summit's focus is on aid to Africa and global environmental issues. But the G8 agenda, important as it is, is meaningless in a world where the environment is polluted by people who perform acts of unconscionable terror with cheer. Moreover, why worry about air pollution when there are people who aim to prevent us from breathing at all?

And by us, I mean the Euro-, Anglo-, American-centric West. I am talking about the people who read this essay; who live and move about in the civilized world. We are, as this blog repeatedly reminds us, targets. And we are targets because of who we are, not merely, or even largely, because of what we do.

The difference between the West and our Muslim accusers is simple to define: We do not flood the streets in celebration upon a military victory. Does anyone think that the Americans are going to flood Ground Zero, guns raised, effigies burning, if Osama bin Laden is captured? Do you think we Western "crusaders" delight in burning people alive, dragging them through streets, and hanging their scorched corpses on bridges and then, for sheer fun, posing for pictures with the smell of burned flesh on our hands? Does the American military post on the web declarations of celebration every time a cruise missle finds its mark, telling the world, as terrorists did this morning, that our enemies should burn "with fear and terror, from north to south, east to west"?

This is what was found on the web this morning, posted, allegedly, by the London attackers:

"Rejoice, Islamic nation. Rejoice, Arab world. The time has come for vengeance against the Zionist crusader government of Britain in response to the massacres Britain committed in Iraq and Afghanistan ... The heroic mujahedeen carried out a blessed attack in London, and now Britain is burning with fear and terror, from north to south, east to west."

Nice!

I will say this: The worst thing the Islamic extremists can do is turn Europe against Islam. I mean that. It is the worst thing they can do. And they are just about to do it.

London and the rest of us have an Olympian task before us, simple in theory, but difficult in practice. We need to show our resolve, yes, but what we need to show is the superiority of our world. We need to win the propaganda war, proving that Osama bin Laden and his derivatives are pathetic, snivelling critics dripping with envy, and quivering with an unsated lust for power. We need to show that the world Osama bin Laden sought to trade at the World Trade Center is not a world that is worth a thing. We need to show the foolishness of terrorism, not by denouncing its violence, but declaring its impotence.

What more demonstrative proof of weakness has ever been shown to the world than 9/11? For on that day the West was attacked by airplanes created and sustained by the West; in a country so free even its enemies can walk through airports without so much as a question; on a day when travel was as easy as picking up the phone. Where are the Islamic plane-builders? And why, if Osama bin Laden is so strong, could he not attack with weapons his own superior world built for itself? Why steal ours, if not in admission of his abject impotency? Damn it, I guarantee you that every piece of technology used in London this morning was created by a Westerner. I know it in my bones. There is thus nothing strong in an ideology that is so weak it cannot fend for itself; or offend for itself.

But the Arabic world did indeed bring ONE thing to 9/11, and if you think about it, it makes one tremble. For there was a time, deep beneath Arabian sand, that the very oil used to thrust the jet engines into the Twin Towers once sat cool in the prehistoric darkness. In short, the oil of Arabia did start the whole thing tumbling down.

My liberal friends are right: THE WAR IS ALL ABOUT OIL -- the very oil that fell down on New Yorkers, scorching (as it did) horror-struck faces turned upward, mouths agape at the face of impotent evil.

Oil: the residue of dead carbon-based life forms. The residual blood of countless organisms, decayed beyond the millennia. Perhaps it's the blood of the Garden of Eden, long since dead.

Today, we are all Londoners. But London is not burning, and it is not falling down. It is a stalwart city in a stalwart nation, of historic resolve. It may quake, but it will not tumble.

I pray for London, just as I pray for peace in a world where peace refuses to come easy.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes