Everyone knows the top story of today by now - the London transit bombings. There is still lots of speculation at this point - hours of coverage on CNN International, BBC World and Euronews and no "real" information is known. Of course that is par for the course, it is hard to know much at first, in the wake of a tragedy, all must be done to treat victims and restore order.
They have determined it to be a terrorist attack, yes, that is pretty well understood. Blair seems to think it has something to do with the G8 summit, others are postulating that it is in the wake of the 2012 Olympics announcement, who knows. It could just be because there are a bunch of assholes who just like blowing things up for no real reason, except they say they do it, ostensibly, in the name of Allah. An Al-Qaeda group has claimed responsibility, but the claims have not been verified as of yet.
You know, sure, I don't agree with the presence of military forces in Iraq. I am not entirely sure that whatever we are doing in Afghanistan at this time is necessary (admittedly I haven't been paying much attention to the goings-on there). Does this justify the way the extremists carry out their "messages"?
On one level, I can actually understand the insurgency in Iraq. This is their home soil, right or wrong, they are, or they think they are, defending their rights at home. You can't tell me that if some country just decided that the U.S. had a tyrant leader that needed to be overthrown, brought a huge force over, took down our leader, and stayed around, that Americans (civilian Americans as well) wouldn't be defending themselves and their country. Our opinion is that it is a matter of right and wrong. Our side is right, their side is wrong. But their opinion is that their side is right, and our side is wrong.
So off they go, planting bombs, destroying lives, sending their so-called message. I don't want this to disintegrate into a post about Islam, because I don't really know enough about it. But I find it really hard to believe that any religion, at least a religion that grew out of biblical mythos, advocates killing on this level. You want to fight back, ok sure - get an army together, list your reasons, and invade. Random bullshit doesn't achieve much but confusion - and that means confusion about the terrorist message as well. How does that solve anything? How does that even convey a message?
In the meantime, numerous lives have been catastrophically changed by today's incident. I share in the grief over the dead and the injured, and hope that Londoners can remain strong in the face of this tragedy.
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