This is a Warning
“Al Qaeda has imported the tactics of Baghdad and Bali to the streets of the U.K.,” said Lord John Stevens, (British PM) Brown’s terrorism adviser, referring to the 2002 and 2005 attacks on the Indonesian resort island. “The danger here is that we are entering the era of the car bomb,” an intelligence source told The Independent newspaper. “It’s easy to make a gas and nail car bomb without raising suspicion.”
— New York Daily News
“Al Qaeda has imported the tactics of Baghdad and Bali to the streets of the U.K.,” said Lord John Stevens, (British PM) Brown’s terrorism adviser, referring to the 2002 and 2005 attacks on the Indonesian resort island. “The danger here is that we are entering the era of the car bomb,” an intelligence source told The Independent newspaper. “It’s easy to make a gas and nail car bomb without raising suspicion.”
— New York Daily News
No. Not that kind of warning.
A warning that even after London and Glasgow, people don’t understand what they’re looking at. “Entering the era of the car bomb”???? Gas and nail car bombs have been a fact of life in Israel for years and Iraq for the past two. They followed nail-laden suicide bomb vests and preceded nail-laden Katyusha rockets. And in a borrowed signature, there were secondary car bombs in each place, probably intended to kill first responders. (The second car in London was near the first; the second car in Glasgow was near the hospital entrance from which emergency personnel might have left for the airport.)This is actually a warning to Nancy Pelosi and Tony Blair.
The war in which Great Britain, the U.S., Israel and other symbols of freedom, democracy and Western civilization are engaged is not a war against President Bush, not a war to force us out of Iraq (except as an interim step toward forcing us out of the region entirely) and not a war for Palestinian statehood. It is not predicated on stopping or correcting the “mistakes” of the West. It is not even a bid to ease the frustrations of minority people in free societies who have to resist temptations that may not exist in countries where they are the majority.
This is a war for the expansion of the ideology of radical Islam. It comes from a positive view of the 11th Century and a belief that those conditions can and should be restored. Now. It has both Sunni and Shiite adherents and financiers. And, while many Muslims are appalled by car bombings, they believe that if the tactics are wrong, the goal is right. And even more are pretty sure they don’t want to be on the wrong side of the people who believe it. “Burkinis” are a way of hedging bets.
Here is the warning for Ms. Pelosi – to them, you and Mr. Bush are equal parts of the rotten modern structure. Despite your headscarf in Damascus, as an elected female official in a democratic system, you stand in the way of Islamic revivalism as much as he does. It should be easier for you to find common ground in this with Mr. Bush than with the radicals. If you can’t, Americans – not Republicans or Democrats – will pay.
And for Mr. Blair – if you plan to make your legacy by establishing a Palestinian state at the expense of Israel, your legacy will be to have expanded the territory from which the radicals operate. As with Mrs. Pelosi, it should be easier for you as a representative of the Quartet to find common ground with Israel for securing the region than with the radicals. If you can’t, Israel and the West will pay an ever-increasing price.