Adam's Apple
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- Apr 25, 2004
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Let's Learn from London But Don't Veer from Plan
By James Carafano, The Indianapolis Star
July 13, 2005
Speculation, often grossly uninformed, filled the radio and TV airwaves immediately after the London attacks last Thursday. Pundits, politicians and so-called experts tried to offer instant analysis based on the fragmentary information available.
You'd think after the Madrid bombings and the crisis in credibility that confronted Spanish officials (they initially blamed the wrong terrorist group for the pre-election train station bombings), the talking heads would have learned to be a bit more circumspect. Based on the banalities filling the airwaves and pages of print, though, they haven't.
So let's go beyond the usual bromides and consider a few serious lessons we can draw from the attacks and their implications for U.S. security:
We must take the threat of transnational terrorism seriously. Less than four years after 9/11, many were claiming that the United States had overreacted, that the notion of a "war on terrorism" was wrongheaded. London reminds us that they're flat wrong. The murderers behind these attacks are deadly serious; they're trying to kill us, and we must stop them. By any sane definition, that's a war.
The successful attacks on Britain, a country that takes counterterrorism seriously, are sobering. The plain fact is no country can guarantee that its citizens will never fall prey to terrorism. Killing innocent civilians is relatively easy for anyone with the stomach for the job. We have to recognize that no government can guarantee total security. And we can't remove every risk without fundamentally compromising the liberties and destroying the free flow of goods, peoples, services and ideas that sustain free-market economies.
Terrorists have limited means. They can't be everywhere, all the time. As terrible as the London attacks were, by the evening rush hour the city was on the move again. By the next morning, most of London's transit system was up and running. A few cannot stop the determined many.
Beyond these basic realities there are probably not a lot of immediate lessons for U.S. homeland security. Europe is a different kind of target than the U.S. Transnational terrorist groups have a well-established presence in many European countries, as witnessed not just by the London attacks but also the arrests over the last few years in Britain, Spain, France and Germany.
With that in mind, some things clearly should not be done:
for full article:
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050713/OPINION01/507130357/...
By James Carafano, The Indianapolis Star
July 13, 2005
Speculation, often grossly uninformed, filled the radio and TV airwaves immediately after the London attacks last Thursday. Pundits, politicians and so-called experts tried to offer instant analysis based on the fragmentary information available.
You'd think after the Madrid bombings and the crisis in credibility that confronted Spanish officials (they initially blamed the wrong terrorist group for the pre-election train station bombings), the talking heads would have learned to be a bit more circumspect. Based on the banalities filling the airwaves and pages of print, though, they haven't.
So let's go beyond the usual bromides and consider a few serious lessons we can draw from the attacks and their implications for U.S. security:
We must take the threat of transnational terrorism seriously. Less than four years after 9/11, many were claiming that the United States had overreacted, that the notion of a "war on terrorism" was wrongheaded. London reminds us that they're flat wrong. The murderers behind these attacks are deadly serious; they're trying to kill us, and we must stop them. By any sane definition, that's a war.
The successful attacks on Britain, a country that takes counterterrorism seriously, are sobering. The plain fact is no country can guarantee that its citizens will never fall prey to terrorism. Killing innocent civilians is relatively easy for anyone with the stomach for the job. We have to recognize that no government can guarantee total security. And we can't remove every risk without fundamentally compromising the liberties and destroying the free flow of goods, peoples, services and ideas that sustain free-market economies.
Terrorists have limited means. They can't be everywhere, all the time. As terrible as the London attacks were, by the evening rush hour the city was on the move again. By the next morning, most of London's transit system was up and running. A few cannot stop the determined many.
Beyond these basic realities there are probably not a lot of immediate lessons for U.S. homeland security. Europe is a different kind of target than the U.S. Transnational terrorist groups have a well-established presence in many European countries, as witnessed not just by the London attacks but also the arrests over the last few years in Britain, Spain, France and Germany.
With that in mind, some things clearly should not be done:
for full article:
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050713/OPINION01/507130357/...
