LONDON ATTACK Part 2; My reflection
Ken Livingstone, London Major, made a great speech yesterday despite his dodgy Arab connections in the past. It summed up a lot of Londoners feelings in the aftermath of the attacks. Here is the second half of his speech…
Quote:
“…I want to say one thing specifically to the world today. This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever. That isn’t an ideology, it isn’t even a perverted faith - it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other. I said yesterday to the International Olympic Committee, that the city of London is the greatest in the world, because everybody lives side by side in harmony. Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack. They will stand together in solidarity alongside those who have been injured and those who have been bereaved and that is why I’m proud to be the mayor of that city. Finally, I wish to speak directly to those who came to London today to take life. I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others - that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail. In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential. They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don’t want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.”
Yesterday I had a discussion with a young Cameroonian who started the conversation with “Not that the killing of those innocent people can be condoned, but it is understandable in the light of Iraq…” To which (after counting to ten) I politely pointed out that Al Queda and it’s ilk preceded Iraq and that though Iraq has undoubtedly been a useful recruiting tool the leadership of these terrorist organizations does not talk in terms of foreign policy, oil, cultural imperialism or other geo-political concepts, they talk in terms of “infidels”, “unbelievers”, “enemies of Islam” and other concepts of radical Islam.
That is why the deaths of a number of Muslims in an area dominated by Muslims where one of the attacks took place doesn’t surprise me. These terrorists do not mind killing their co-religionists both here or in North Africa or the Middle East. Their brand of militancy protects no particular ethnicity, faith or creed... we are all lambs to the slaughter, because we, the world, do not accept or acknowledge their incredibly narrow, self-defeating view of the world. It is why those who blame western imperialism and the war on Iraq for these attacks, saying that the means is unacceptable but the ends is understandable... do not understand who and what they are dealing with. These people are not like the IRA or the Basque separatists who use terrorism to try to achieve a particular political aim or as a response to a particular political situation. Understand that and you will understand why Iraq helps recruitment but it doesn't explain the threat.
One of the reasons why radical Islam has turned to terrorism in the West is because it is their way of life, not ours, that is most at threat, and it is a small step to terrorism when for centuries the radical Islam that has held societies in sway to its irrational, fundamentalist anti-liberal doctrines and intractable laws has been attacked and eroded not by deliberate external invasions from without, such as Iraq, but from within by globalization and western influences which presents an alternative set of values, beliefs and way of living which is far superior - and attractive - to that which these terrorists represent. That more than anything is why they hate us, because they cannot compete with us. Since living in London I have had the opportunity to meet many Muslims, Africans, Arabs and others who have come to London because despite the pollution, the overcrowding, and the expense of the city it lives and breathes by a set of values that they have made their own, a set of values that they appreciate even more so because they have lived under the alternatives.
This is why the terrorists are a pathetic footnote in history that future historians will pass over with a sneer, and it is secular, liberal, democracies that are the future - both here and everywhere in the world, as the triumphs of the Enlightenment that set out the blueprint that our secular, liberal, capitalist democracies rest upon continue to spread, blossom and thrive.
Two links to some American reaction, the first amused me, the second moved me.
http://www.deanesmay.com/files/deanesmay-DontMessWithMomma.jpg
http://www.publiuspundit.com/?p=1319
Quote:
“…I want to say one thing specifically to the world today. This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever. That isn’t an ideology, it isn’t even a perverted faith - it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other. I said yesterday to the International Olympic Committee, that the city of London is the greatest in the world, because everybody lives side by side in harmony. Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack. They will stand together in solidarity alongside those who have been injured and those who have been bereaved and that is why I’m proud to be the mayor of that city. Finally, I wish to speak directly to those who came to London today to take life. I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others - that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail. In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential. They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don’t want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.”
Yesterday I had a discussion with a young Cameroonian who started the conversation with “Not that the killing of those innocent people can be condoned, but it is understandable in the light of Iraq…” To which (after counting to ten) I politely pointed out that Al Queda and it’s ilk preceded Iraq and that though Iraq has undoubtedly been a useful recruiting tool the leadership of these terrorist organizations does not talk in terms of foreign policy, oil, cultural imperialism or other geo-political concepts, they talk in terms of “infidels”, “unbelievers”, “enemies of Islam” and other concepts of radical Islam.
That is why the deaths of a number of Muslims in an area dominated by Muslims where one of the attacks took place doesn’t surprise me. These terrorists do not mind killing their co-religionists both here or in North Africa or the Middle East. Their brand of militancy protects no particular ethnicity, faith or creed... we are all lambs to the slaughter, because we, the world, do not accept or acknowledge their incredibly narrow, self-defeating view of the world. It is why those who blame western imperialism and the war on Iraq for these attacks, saying that the means is unacceptable but the ends is understandable... do not understand who and what they are dealing with. These people are not like the IRA or the Basque separatists who use terrorism to try to achieve a particular political aim or as a response to a particular political situation. Understand that and you will understand why Iraq helps recruitment but it doesn't explain the threat.
One of the reasons why radical Islam has turned to terrorism in the West is because it is their way of life, not ours, that is most at threat, and it is a small step to terrorism when for centuries the radical Islam that has held societies in sway to its irrational, fundamentalist anti-liberal doctrines and intractable laws has been attacked and eroded not by deliberate external invasions from without, such as Iraq, but from within by globalization and western influences which presents an alternative set of values, beliefs and way of living which is far superior - and attractive - to that which these terrorists represent. That more than anything is why they hate us, because they cannot compete with us. Since living in London I have had the opportunity to meet many Muslims, Africans, Arabs and others who have come to London because despite the pollution, the overcrowding, and the expense of the city it lives and breathes by a set of values that they have made their own, a set of values that they appreciate even more so because they have lived under the alternatives.
This is why the terrorists are a pathetic footnote in history that future historians will pass over with a sneer, and it is secular, liberal, democracies that are the future - both here and everywhere in the world, as the triumphs of the Enlightenment that set out the blueprint that our secular, liberal, capitalist democracies rest upon continue to spread, blossom and thrive.
Two links to some American reaction, the first amused me, the second moved me.
http://www.deanesmay.com/files/deanesmay-DontMessWithMomma.jpg
http://www.publiuspundit.com/?p=1319
posted by Anthony Burn at 4:34 pm
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