Mark Steyn says that Britain doesn't even seem to understand how big a problem it's got:

The choice for Britons now is whether they wish to be Australians post-Bali or Spaniards post-Madrid. That shouldn't be a tough call. But it's easy to stand before a news camera and sonorously declare that "the British people will never surrender to terrorism.'' In reality, unless it's clear a threat is primal, most democratic peoples and their political leaders prefer to regard bad news as a peripheral nuisance which can be negotiated away to the fringe of their concerns.

That's what Britain thought in the 1930s -- back when Hitler was slavering over Czechoslovakia, and Neville Chamberlain dismissed it as "a faraway country of which we know little." Today, the faraway country of which the British know little is Britain itself. Traditional terrorists -- the IRA, the Basque separatists -- operate close to home. Islamism projects itself long-range to any point of the planet with an ease most G-8 militaries can't manage. Small cells operate in the nooks and crannies of a free society while the political class seems all but unaware of their existence.

Mark Steyn appears to be saying essentially "join the club", but with all due respect Londoners have lived with terrorism much longer than the US. They knew what it's like to have a building in their financial center go up in mushroom cloud back in the 1990s, albeit without the massive casualties of 9/11.

As a Brit in the US I remember making a mental note of how lax aircraft security was before 9/11 when taking a flight from Salt Lake City to London. Thereafter I even told people that aircraft security was wide open. People could not be told. To them, security was a nuisance and in any case they felt the FAA was in the pocket of the airlines and nothing would change.

I myself narrowly missed being blown up in the 1990s while shopping in my local town on the outskirts of London. The bomb was discovered in a shop I was in minutes before it was to go off and it was destroyed in a controlled explosion.

I was in Finchley Road at my father's house the evening after the IRA detonated a 100 yard section of it, and I remember the mood of the people in the local pub.

And by chance I flew into London last Thursday night, and that is where I am now.

I would submit to Mark Steyn that the stated strategy of Al Qaida is economic damage. That's why the target was the London transportation system rather than politicians in Scotland or the Royal Family. And that's why Londoners must shrug this one off with minimal disruption. If they can do that, the terrorists have failed.

To seek vengeance is all very well but if nurturing one's hatred is the only force guiding the resulting anti-barbarian campaigns (in the Sun Tzu sense), then that plays directly into Al Qaida's strategy of economic harm.

Rather than lecture the British about the realities of terrorism and how to go about fighting it, I would like to suggest to Mark Steyn that in some ways it is journalists who can make a difference in this struggle.

We are in a war of ideas, and the terrorists wish to make ideologically vulnerable people see the West through their own narrow ideological prism. What else do these uninformed people have to go on?

You would never understand the warmth, generosity and spirit of the British and American people as we feel them every day just by reading the papers or watching films.

The memes that shape our societies don't come across well enough. It's about our ideas, our values and communicating them. It is writers and journalists who have the power to do this. They should be free as they always have been, but they should be acutely aware of this dimension of the power of the pen.

In fact, many of the reports of this tragedy have undermined the terrorists. People around the world have now seen and hopefully felt something of the true spirit of Londoners. They cannot think less of us for that. That spirit and the reporting of it has undermined the economic and ideological objectives of the terrorists. It was for a similar reason that the IRA had to scale back down their attacks in the 1990s.

To seek vengeance is all very well but if nurturing one's hatred is the only force guiding the resulting anti-barbarian campaigns (in the Sun Tzu sense), then that plays directly into Al Qaida's strategy of economic harm.

Who said anything about seeking vengeance? That's not the point of his piece at all. It's about preventing future occurrences. We didn't overthrow the Taliban to "seek vengeance." We did it to disrupt Al Qaeda and the training camps that had a safe haven there. Now we have to do the same thing in London and the Midlands.

Indeed Rand.

Travis didn't put Old Yeller down because he hated him, he put him down because he was mad and uncurable. Much the same reason we hunt the Islamofascists.

It is entirely possible to not hate something and have a rational reason for destroying it.

yes, there is a rational reason for destroying something while not hating it. The islamofascists should be viewed in this context. These people are mentally deranged, terminally so, and should be destroyed in the same dispassionate manner that one would put down a rabid dog.

These people should not be terminated, they should be "retired".

Fair enough Rand. It was mostly the end of the article that rubbed me the wrong way:

"But, if the political class goes about business as usual, that's not a stiff upper lip but a suicide cult. The question now is will the British return to the fantasy agenda of Bob Geldof or avenge their dead?"

And I should add that the adgenda of Bod Geldof is to end the poverty and gross inequities in Africa. I think everyone agrees on the endpoint, but has different views of how to go about it.

Certainly, it's in Al Quaida's interest for there not to be an agreement on Africa. Personally I like the US approach of wealth creation through trade rather than direct aid. Of course that will mean Europe (and the US) will have to do something about agricultural subsidies...

Sorry, I missed that bit. I think it was just a rhetorical flourish. The point remains that Britain now has a serious infection, and it's going to have to rid itself of it.

I think this is what happens when you feed the crocodile so it won't eat you. The Sauds have been feeding their's since the 1920's and it has grown to be a big dangerous beast. They have even managed to avoid being eaten by letting it roam the neighborhood rather than keeping it in the yard. Other arab governments have there own crocodiles but not as big as the saudi one. If we get rid of the Saudis we still have to contend with the croc. We have started to drain the swamp but this at first might only make the croc easier to stumble upon by some unfortunates to get eaten. Just like Florida gators some idiots will decide to feed the croc which can make even more dangerous. Also untill we start draining the swamp we will only begin to get an idea of how many crocs we are dealing with.

If the English do as well fighting Al Quaeda as they have done in fighting their own home-field terrorists... I expect a Jihadist delegation in the House of Commons inside of five years, right next to Sinn Fein.

Say, how IS that 'disarmament' program going?

Say, how IS that 'disarmament' program going?

There hasn't been an IRA bomb on mainland Britain in about 5 years, there hasn't been a "significant" (i.e. massive) one in a decade. There are still sectarian attacks happening in NI on both sides of the divide with a goodo question mark as to which group are more dangerous. Generally though, things are looking very good for NI at the moment in terms of peace and investment.

Infection? Yes. Serious? Remains to be seen. Britain has been infected for years and has been trying to deal with it. The US is almost certainly infected too. The issue will be how best to fight that infection.

Steyn's piece is downright sloppy journalism and designed to rub Brits up the wrong way. His comparison to the 30s is really noisome.

...except for the fact that the IRA just pulled off one of the biggest bank robberies in Irish history, publicly announcing its successful transmutation into professional organized crime; there's no proof that any of the weapons were actually destroyed and even a peace booster like The Economist smells a rat in the arras; the fact that the IRA still seems to be able to murder Irish citizens with impunity...
and all you had to do was to give political power and representation on your Parlaiment to a terrorist organization.

Sorry, but the UK has traded honor for "peace" once already, and I see no reason that they mihgt not do so again.

So with tongue in cheek I ask myself how the US administration of today would combat the IRA if they were the ones running Britain.

Would they first invade Ireland and "drain the terrorist swamps"? Would they begin a campaign of assasinations, refuse to negotiate with terrorists? Would they negotiate, or strip away civil liberties in an attempt to identify cells?

I wonder how Baghdad will compare to Belfast in 20 years?

It's a mistake to compare the IRA with Al Qaeda and Islamism. The former had a specific political agenda. It wasn't ideologically driven, and they weren't trying to conquer the world.

No, I was asking how the US would deal with the IRA if it were the UK.

Then I was wondering how the security sitation of two cities might compare in 20 years.