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7/7 The London Attacks
Articles and Excerpts on HNN
- Islamist Terrorists Target Us When They Smell Fear By Caleb Carr
- Grievance Explanations and the Politics of Fantasy By Irfan A. Khawaja
- Weak Brits, Tough French? By Daniel Pipes
- Terrorism Won't Be Defeated in Our Lifetime By Walter Laqueur
- Britain's Homegrown Terrorists By Daniel Pipes
- Why the London Attack Was Not Unexpected By Daniel Pipes
- "He Who Warns of Mass Murder Is Excused of It" By Irfan A. Khawaja
- The Time of Revenge Has Come By Juan Cole
- Interview: The London Bombings By Juan Cole
- Interview: What the British Need to Do Now By Michael Radu
Quotes
- Daniel Henninger:
Every Islamic terrorist, from bin Laden and al-Zarqawi down to the next suicide bomber, knows how politics in the West works now. They know that many people of the West react to acts of violence differently than they did in 1940 when Winston Churchill demanded"Victory in spite of all terrors. Victory, however long and hard the road may be."
But there were no cameras and satellite feeds set up on every corner of that death-strewn road. Yesterday's attack produced another new-media first: Grainy video images fed by a cell phone from a bombed subway tunnel. If the American people had seen daily the up-close reality of every battle and bomb in 1943, might we have"withdrawn" before June 1944?
- Timothy Naftali:
At the risk of seeming callous, the other message [Homeland Security Secretary] Chertoff should have sent is that Americans need to toughen up a bit. Be vigilant; don't panic. Look at how the British are handling these attacks. Their endurance of the Irish Republican Army's 30-year terror campaign has made them masters at picking up the pieces after an attack and moving on. Did they institute a national alert today? No. Did they close down the subways indefinitely? No. Some theaters canceled shows scheduled for tonight, but that was a small and sensible measure taken to lessen the pressures on London's transportation system as it stretched to the limit to get people home from work. Could we possibly expect this sort of sane moderation had Los Angeles been the bombers' target rather than London?
- David Zurawik:
While the American news channels and commercial networks that aired in Britain yesterday were filled with images of carnage and talk of confusion in the wake of bombings in London, the government-supported BBC, the most-watched news outlet in the United Kingdom in times of crisis, offered viewers an oasis of relative calm. Interviews with correspondents and government officials interspersed with videotaped images of emergency workers restoring order provided a sense of stability even as the death toll climbed.... The marked contrast in coverage offers clues to differences in national history and character. It also stems from a philosophy at the BBC that is decidedly at odds with that of the ratings-driven networks and all-news cable channels of the U.S.
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