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Bombs in London

Jill

By now, everyone has probably heard about the atrocities that occurred today in London. This afternoon, I walked into the hotel that the family I’m staying with manages — we have lunch here every day. When I came in, the grandpa of the family — “Nonno” — walked up to me, and said, “Jill, come.” We walked to the lobby, where the TV was turned to CNN, and we watched footage of a destroyed bus and terrified people. When a visibly shaken Tony Blair came on the screen, Nonno, in slow, broken English said, “He talks to the people… the families…” and I turned around to see this always-smiling, always-proud Sardinian man crying, without shame, in the lobby of his hotel.

If you pray, say one for the people in London today. If you don’t pray, send them your best wishes. To Mike and every other Londoner, you are in my prayers and my thoughts.

I would like to write more, but I don’t have the words.

20 thoughts on Bombs in London

  3. I was just talking about this on my blog. My husband’s family is all there. They are safe–but I think it’s a morning when no one feels safe.

    And all I can think when something like this happens is: it’s about to get worse. If not for us, then for people somewhere.

  5. We are all speechless, again… The terrorists sure are clever. What smart people to hurt and kill men, women, and even CHILDREN in the recent London bomb blasts. Now, world citizens will surely say, “Okay, we give up, come control our lives with your ideologies.” Right? The problem with the leadership at al-Qaeda is that they haven’t figured out that people have no love for killers. Their point of view will only attract the very young and impressionable or the very old and desperate. They miss the largest demographic- law abiding citizens who want peace. If it’s the masses a group wants to affect, do something absolutely worthwhile and positive with the resources. Win hearts. The world may be talking about al-Qaeda , but it’s not in love with it and the goods it’s selling. Without winning hearts, MommyCool.com notes the change al-Qaeda hopes for will always be shallow.

  8. I happened on this post by accident, linking through bitchphd over at blogspot. I would like to thank the people writing here for the sentiments expressed.

    To take MommyCool’s ideas a bit further I think that an apt quaestion is ‘whose need is greater, the cause for the person or the person for the cause’?

    When the answer is ‘the person for the cause’ this is the sort of thing you get. Those who lead organisations that engage in these sorts of activities need to recruit people with this need.

    As for George W, well what do you expect.

    Thanks, once again, to you all.

    Yours KC (in the UK as if you hadn’t guessed).

  9. Thanks, Lauren!!

    Ryan, I almost think it’s more tragic–and terrifying–if we listen to Bush sympathetically. That’s part of what I was sort of implying above. What does it mean when someone really believes that the best response to militant absolutism is…ah!…more militant absolutism? Well, when the that someone is the commander in chief of a big army, it means that more innocent people are going to die.

    Not that I’m any more trusting of Bush than you are, and I’m sure political ends aren’t far from his mind. I guess I’m just proposing *more* things to cry about .

  10. If only the “christians” who hijacked our country would actually behave like christians, and turn the other cheek. This ever-escalating violence does nothing but enrich arms pedlers. Times like this make pacifism seem so clearly correct, yet hopeless.

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  12. I don’t see Bush’s statements as exploitative, as if he had replied to the London attacks with some sort of non sequitur. Tony Blair already made the comment that the attacks were “particularly barbaric” in the face of the G-8 summit. The “war on terror” is a British effort as well as an American one.

    As defined by its supporters, the war on terror encompasses all violent Islamic fundamentalism, including the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. So I don’t think it’s much of a stretch for the president to say that “the war on terror goes on.”

    What about Blair’s statement that “our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world.” Is that exploitative? Because I don’t see much of a difference here…

  13. They’re both guilty of “non sequiturs,” which makes their lying seem so polite and gentile. “Terrorists are acting to fight our way of life” – that’s the lie. They are acting upon us because of their perception of our aggressive actions against them (Muslims). Iraq, Afghanistan and indirectly Palestine… we’ve committed violence against these Muslim nations, and these terrorist attacks are desperate and disgusting responses to that violence.

    Theses attacks are not our fault, but we are not innocent. To hijack the attention of the world turned in horror and concern to London and spin this as another justification for our misguided (at best) military actions is absolutely exploitative of the tragedy.

  14. The greatest tragedy is that these figureheads deftly redirect our feelings of horror at these tragedies for their use as chess pieces in a greater scheme. If not today, Steven, soon.

  15. That’s so sweet, Jill. Your comments were just right.

    I was, ironically, planning to go into London today to see the play “Talking to Terrorists” which seeks to understand the minds of terrorists.

    Needless to say, that’s off. I’d still like to see it, though.

    My husband had a close call, nearly getting on at the Edgware station shortly before the bombs went off.

  16. I remember being in the UK on a vacation during and after 9/11, and being touched by the kindness, concern and compassion shown by the folks there. As soon as they learned that my wife and I were Americans (which, of course, was almost as soon as we opened our mouths), they immediately asked us if we had friends or family in the areas that were attacked…

    I’m sorry, but I just don’t think we can invade our way out of this situation…I guess, according to the right-wingers, that makes me an America hater, or a freedom hater, or something…it’s sad that we’ve come to the point that dissent=sedition in this country

  17. But we must dissent! And know that we are not America haters, or any type of hater at all.

    All I could think today and as I watched the evening news after work, was about the comments Jill made yesterday about living in, and gaining understanding of, a different culture than the U.S.’s. I have not had the priviledge of travelling abroad, but as I watched the evening news (a rare occasion to be sure), I was disgusted to observe how this tragedy had to be turned into how it affects those of us in the U.S. It is disheartening. And profoundly sad. I don’t think we have to be travellers to recognize how disjointed our own culture is with the rest of the world, and how many of our government’s actions, or inaction, have an affect on the rest of the world.

    I look over this and I’m not really sure what it is I’m trying to say. I feel so sad, so angry, so tired of all of the continuous BS that I think I’ve lost the ability to string a coherent thought about my many feelings on this subject together. Each senseless act seems to beget a senseless reaction rather than critical thought and compassion.

    My heart goes out to those in the UK. May we all find some peace.

  19. Ryan wrote:

    They’re both guilty of “non sequiturs,” which makes their lying seem so polite and gentile. “Terrorists are acting to fight our way of life” – that’s the lie. They are acting upon us because of their perception of our aggressive actions against them (Muslims).

    It’s certainly not a lie, for two reasons: a) the speakers almost certainly believe them, b) Muslim opinion is not as monolithic as you seem to believe it is. Muslims do not operate under the control of some sort of hive mind.

    Certainly some Muslims are acting against us because we’ve acted aggressively against them, while others are acting against us because we don’t worship their god, or because women in this culture don’t wear burquas and leave the house on their own. This sort of warfare is codified in Fatwas and in the Koran. Bernard Lewis (a respected scholar of the Middle East) wrote in the New Yorker:

    In principle, the world was divided into two houses: the House of Islam, in which a Muslim government ruled and Muslim law prevailed, and the House of War, the rest of the world, still inhabited and, more important, ruled by infidels. Between the two, there was to be a perpetual state of war until the entire world either embraced Islam or submitted to the rule of the Muslim state.

    It’s fair to say that some of the people that the terrorists recruit are in it to get revenge for American and European actions within the last few decades. But it’s ridiculous to totally ignore the underlying culture war that’s going on. Many of the religious leaders that support and extoll terrorist organizations explicitly advocate the abolition of non-Islamic states, and the subordination of all other faiths and cultures to Islam.

    Seriously, for a party that takes religious fundamentalism so seriously in our own country, the Democrat’s willingness to give religious wackos in other countries a pass just baffles me.

  20. Ryan, I, too, respectfully dissent from your position that

    “Terrorists are acting to fight our way of life” – that’s the lie. They are acting upon us because of their perception of our aggressive actions against them (Muslims).

    U.S. military actions and war crimes against Muslims certainly are motivating people against the West. There are people in Iraq, to be sure, who are nationalists first, and just want to be left alone. However, this is not Vietnam, where the claimed ideology (communism in that conflict) was really just an overlay on a group of people strongly motivated by national self-determination.

    bin Laden and the core of his movement may be trying to stop our “aggressive actions,” but that’s not limited to military intervention, or even economic intervention in their region. They might leave us alone if our culture remained confined to the people of the West, but one huge bone of contention with us is that the Enlightenment and the resulting Western liberal democracy is contagious. Sure, it has its critics, but there are lots of women in Saudi Arabia that want to drive, and women in Iran that want to play golf, and women in Afghanistan that want to run for office. There are people who want to move away from the stiffling traditions and reigious interpretations that have ruled the Muslim world for so long.

    Western culture is not going to stop influencing Muslims, and as long as we continue to project a voice for change into the Muslim world, the followers of Qutb will hate us for it. They might have a lot more trouble recruiting if we didn’t act like idiots — but it’s just not true to say that they only hate us because of our aggression, unless you define aggression so broadly that it includes influence.

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