London Buses, Blowing Up

As President Bush summed up this morning in Gleneagles, Scotland, "The War on Terror goes on."

At least two people have been killed and scores injured after three blasts on the Underground network and another on a double-decker bus in London.

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said it was "reasonably clear" there had been a series of terrorist attacks.

He said it was "particularly barbaric" that it was timed to coincide with the G8 summit. He is returning to London.

An Islamist website has posted a statement - purportedly from al-Qaeda - claiming it was behind the attacks.

Well, duh.

Here's the chronology of the attacks per the BBC.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush had this to say:

BLAIR - I am just going to make a short statement to you on the terrible events that have happened in London earlier today, and I hope you understand that at the present time we are still trying to establish exactly what has happened, and there is a limit to what information I can give you, and I will simply try and tell you the information as best I can at the moment.

It is reasonably clear that there have been a series of terrorist attacks in London. There are obviously casualties, both people that have died and people seriously injured, and our thoughts and prayers of course are with the victims and their families.

It is my intention to leave the G8 within the next couple of hours and go down to London and get a report, face-to-face, with the police, and the emergency services and the Ministers that have been dealing with this, and then to return later this evening.

It is the will of all the leaders at the G8 however that the meeting should continue in my absence, that we should continue to discuss the issues that we were going to discuss, and reach the conclusions which we were going to reach. Each of the countries round that table have some experience of the effects of terrorism and all the leaders, as they will indicate a little bit later, share our complete resolution to defeat this terrorism.

It is particularly barbaric that this has happened on a day when people are meeting to try to help the problems of poverty in Africa, and the long term problems of climate change and the environment. Just as it is reasonably clear that this is a terrorist attack, or a series of terrorist attacks, it is also reasonably clear that it is designed and aimed to coincide with the opening of the G8. There will be time to talk later about this.

It is important however that those engaged in terrorism realise 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. Whatever they do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilised nations throughout the world.

BUSH - I spent some time recently with the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and had an opportunity to express our heartfelt condolences to the people of London, people who lost lives. I appreciate Prime Minister Blair's steadfast determination and his strength. He's on his way now to London here from the G8 to speak directly to the people of London. He'll carry a message of solidarity with him.

This morning I have been in contact with our Homeland Security folks. I instructed them to be in touch with local and state officials about the facts of what took place here and in London, and to be extra vigilant, as our folks start heading to work.

The contrast between what we've seen on the TV screens here, what's taken place in London and what's taking place here is incredibly vivid to me. On the one hand, we have people here who are working to alleviate poverty, to help rid the world of the pandemic of AIDS, working on ways to have a clean environment. And on the other hand, you've got people killing innocent people. And the contract couldn't be clearer between the intentions and the hearts of those of us who care deeply about human rights and human liberty, and those who kill - those who have got such evil in their heart that they will take the lives of innocent folks.

The war on terror goes on. I was most impressed by the resolve of all the leaders in the room. Their resolve is as strong as my resolve. And that is we will not yield to these people, will not yield to the terrorists. We will find them, we will bring them to justice, and at the same time, we will spread an ideology of hope and compassion that will overwhelm their ideology of hate.

And, finally, the official statement of the G8 leaders:

"We will not allow violence to change our societies or our values nor will we allow it to stop the work of this summit," Blair said in a statement on behalf of the Group of Eight leaders and the heads of other nations meeting here. "We will continue our deliberations in the interest of a better world."

Earlier, Blair termed the blasts terrorist attacks and said it was reasonably clear they were "designed and aimed to coincide" with the meeting.

"We are united in our resolve to confront and defeat this terrorism that is not an attack on one nation but on all nations and on civilized people everywhere," the world leaders said. ...

"Today's bombings will not weaken in any way our resolve to uphold the most deeply held principles of our societies and to defeat those who would impose their fanaticism and extremism on all of us," the world leaders said in the statement read by Blair. "We shall prevail, and they shall not."

I think that sums up the obligatory condemnation commentary. Which is not to make light of it by any means, but it's both what every leader says at a time like this and what every sane person believes. After a while it becomes boilerplate, which is the nature of what might be described as "episodic warfare." Unlike conventional war, which starts, unfolds more or less constantly and traceably, and has a recognizeable conclusion, the terror war has no such visible boundaries. We can estimate approximately when it began from the perspective of a quarter of a century down the timeline of history, but it's only attacks like this one that serve to remind us that there is still a war on, and though we have the upper hand, when that war can be considered to be over (and won) is impossible to say.

I would say, just from my own gut reaction, that this attack was meant as OBL's reminder to the civilized world that al Qaeda is "still here." The attack level (no WMD aspect, e.g. radiological) isn't sufficient to cause a people as hearty as the Brits, much less a leader as steadfast as Tony Blair, to panic like the Spanish did sixteen months ago.

This Belmont Club analysis suggests, though, why destroying (as opposed to defeating) AQ absent a cultural transformation of the Middle East is like trying to grab a handful of water:

These coordinated attacks are, technically speaking, at far higher level of sophistication than the Madrid attacks of 3/11 which involved a single train. The attack on London was a "time on target" attack which required simultaneity so that one incident did not compromise the subsequent. By implication the personnel involved received some degree of training and planned the operation in sufficient secrecy to prevent British security services from getting wind of it. The six attacks probably mean that a minimum of forty persons were involved, if those in support roles are included. The attackers must have an egress plan or access to safe houses where they can weather the inevitable crackdown. [emphasis added]

That last sentence is key. It isn't just the organization and sophistication, but the fact that pretty much wherever al Qaeda strikes, it's an "inside job." The creeping Islamicization of Britain (and the rest of Old Europe) is well-documented, and that means that manpower will never be a problem OBL has to concern himself with. That makes it a matter of training (which has long tentacles reaching back to those '90s training camps in Afghanistan) and materials (which, for a conventional attack can presumeably be obtained locally without much difficulty).

In a word, decentralization. And that means that while al-Qaeda can't conquer anything by blowing up subways and double-decker buses, they can kill a great many "infidels" because as a practical matter it isn't possible to have airtight security in an open society. As Wretchard put it:

Insular Britain, which fought a long terrorist war against the IRA is one of the hardest targets in the Western world. There is no reason, in principle, why similar attacks cannot happen on a larger or deadlier scale in some American or Australian city, less prepared than London - or indeed anyplace in the world - such as Thailand, India or the Philippines - where they have happened already.

As long as Islamic fundamentalist terror exists danger will exist.

Where the ante will get upped is when WMDs come into play. I've long believed that the lesson al Qaeda learned from 9/11 isn't that they shouldn't have attacked us, but that the attack wasn't big enough. All it took to stampede Spain into surrender was a conventional subway bombing. Today's attacks in London, and the 9/11 strikes here, only reenforced Anglo-American resolve. But set off a "dirty" bomb in Birmingham (England) or a suitcase nuke in Chicago, cause casualties not in the dozens or even hundreds but in the tens or hundreds of thousands, and suddenly the very notion of waging a "war on terror" would start losing its vast appeal.

We are unquestionably "all Britons" today, just as "the world" was "all Americans" almost four years ago. And Wretchard adds that, "From the amount of damage caused, the explosive devices used appear to have been in the tens, rather than the hundreds of pounds. This is good news. It also means that the enemy has not grown in overall capability since the days of 9/11 and 3/11."

The caveat he leaves off is "that we know of." But with Saddam Hussein's WMD distributed from Syria to who knows where by this time, North Korea already with nukes and the Iranian mullahcracy closing in on them, and evidence mounting that Iran is not only collaborating with al Qaeda now but did so on the 9/11 attacks, it seems almost a certainty that sooner or later we will all be dead Britons (and Americans) if we don't start fighting this GWOT more strategically and directly.

"Faster, please" indeed.

[HT: Double-H]

UPDATE: Here's Hugh's version:

*There have been jihadists attacking the West since 1993.

*If the London cell had had WMD, they would have used them.

*WMD are being produced by regimes around the world that hate the United States, Great Britain and the west.

*Eventually those regimes will arm cells with WMD unless we either (a) destroy the cells before they get the WMD, (b)destroy the regimes that produce WMD, or (c) do both (a) and (b).

The answer, of course, is (c).

Nobody ought to need a lifeline to answer that question.

UPDATE II: Wretchard follows up on my "creeping Islamicization/inside job" angle here - and it's a toe-curling hum-dinger:

[R]eally effective countermeasures cannot be limited to a roundup of the usual suspects or the destruction of a few hundred or thousand Jihadis in the Pakistani northwest frontier. It must necessarily reverse the dynamic Hitchens is describing: the creeping growth of the radical Islamic political infrastructure under the mantle of political correctness. It means closing mosques, deporting people, outlawing the spread of certain conspiratorial associations. In a word, it means stepping on every sacred shibboleth the Left has worshipped these last half century. It's doubtful whether the loss of less than fifty people in Britain will be enough to effect such a sea-change unless the Brits are made of even sterner stuff than they credited with having. [emphasis added]

Another way of putting it is that whether or not we want to acknowledge this as a "clash of cultures," that's how the enemy looks at it. And if we wait until they have the capability to blow up not a bus and a few subway stations, but an entire city, those "sacred shibboleths" will not just be "stepped on," but completely atomized, because there will no longer be the luxury of having a choice.

Political correctness is the bastard child of decadent prosperity that affords far too many people who think they're far smarter than they really are far too much time to cultivate their galloping pseudo-moralistic hauteur. And yet its proponents are the same ones who, in this country, cluck and squawk endlessly about the inadequateness of our homeland security measures.

Wretchard's reality check is the ultimate calling of that chickenhearted bluff.

UPDATE III: Welcome, Mark in Mexico readers. Wish the pretext was something, anything, better.