Archive for July 7th, 2005

London Blame Game

Thursday, July 7th, 2005

Naturally, the blame game over who is at fault for the terrorist bombings in London has already begun. Of course, it would be too simple to blame the terrorists for it, so far too many people have decided that it MUST be the freely elected government of the country that was attacked. That, and Bush. Because everything bad is ALWAYS Bush’s fault.
Luckily, Christopher Hitchens is already attacking that sort of fuzzy idealist thinking. He has also written another article (this one about the Madrid bombings) that is also dated today, but which I suspect was written a year ago. Either way, both are relevent and valuable to read.

London Bombings

Thursday, July 7th, 2005

This morning there was a series of bombings in London. Despite the high number of injuries, there seem to have been remarkably few fatalities, at least up to this point. Powerline has bits here and here on public reactions to the bombings. Chrenkoff is updating regularly as well.
The major long-range question on this is: how with the British react? Will they knuckle under like the Spanish did after the Madrid bombing and withdraw from the broader war on terror, or will they react with the righteous anger of the United States after September 11th, and commit themselves to defying terror regardless of the cost? The British under the leadership of Tony Blair have been valiant allies. How will they respond when terror is staring them in the face?

UPDATE 7/7/05 10.00 AM: Death toll is reported variously between 40 and 45 at this point.

UPDATE 7/7/05 10.10 AM: LGF suggests the UKBlogs Aggregator. The overall tone sounds very much like America on 9/11 and 9/12.

UPDATE 7/7/05 11.06 AM: I think that this prettymuch illustrates the attitude of the braver Londoners to the whole thing. They’re perfectly ready to maintain business as usual and not let the terrorists bother them excessively. Perhaps the question about their response will be more along the line of ‘how can we practically respond to these things’ instead of a simple choice between ‘run and hide’ and ‘stand and fight.’