The Evil we seem capable of

I've started a blog item a couple of times now on the Bombings in London. Started yes, but I have abandoned the project each time, since I couldn't really think of a proper way to express my horror.

Almost two days have now gone by and I feel no wiser, nor more capable of expressing a sense of frustration at what seem to be escalating scenes of terror. Suffice to say I have those same uneasy feelings that I had after September 11th, when I heard of the bombings of Madrid, the Bali attacks, the frequent suicide bombings of Israel, the continual carnage of Iraq and Afghanistan and the countless years of horror of Ireland North and South. These are not natural disasters which leave us puzzled about a caring deity, instead these are all the machinations of humans, done in the name of a belief to which no one can truly comprehend.

What possible achievement will come from the callous destruction of lives we witnessed on Thursday. It boggles the mind how the snuffing out of over 50 lives and the ruination of many others will aid the troubled parts of the world. It's doubtful that it will cause England or any other free thinking democracy to pull into a shell and let the world be carved into little niches of hatred. The English who are made of rather stern stuff it seems, have suffered at the hands of violent people for many years. From the waves of bombs in World War II to the urban attacks from the IRA in the seventies, they never caved in to the demands of terror then and one suspects they shan't this time either.

The message delivered on Thursday is one of fatalism, that of a religion not steeped in Islam but instead steeped in hatred. It was designed to splinter a country into factions suspicious of each other, perhaps to drive neighbors to harm each other. And while there will probably be some extremists who will take this horrid event to their cause and look for retribution, the vast majority of Britons will continue on with their lives. Fully realizing that the deeds of misguided followers of evil, do not reflect those that have lived side by side with them over the last half century. The victims in London, like those of Madrid, Bali and New York before, came from all backgrounds and all religions, united now in disgust at the cowardice of their attackers and who now share in a common goal of showing that their way of life will not be taken down the path of destruction followed by the likes of al-Qaeda and their splinter groups.

There is much that needs to be done in our world, real problems that must be addressed. The Israeli and Arab worlds must find a way past their differences, to craft a society that can co-exist. Likewise the troubled landscape of Iraq must quickly give those people a sense of hope, the Middle East is very much a tinderbox these days, ancient hatred and current geo political alliances have that part of the world teetering on the brink. The temptation is there to just wash ones hands of the area and let them have at it, but of course oil fuels the current problem and will for the foreseeable future. It drives the economies of the world and no one can see the industrialized nations abandoning an area so vital to their common interests.

How we approach that area is in need of some refinement however, the people who live in the cities, towns and village are the ones suffering the most. Sickness, unemployment, hopelessness and despair are the breeding ground for the likes of Bin Laden. Whether it's a camp in the Palestine areas, the suburbs of Baghdad or the hills of Afghanistan giving the residents hope for a better life will go a ways to changing the dynamic.

This does not mean that prosecuting the architects and operatives of the terror of London, Madrid and New York should be scaled back. Rather than resigning ourselves to having to live with the concept of a terror filled future, we should redouble our efforts to hunt these despicable people down and bring them to justice. Stuck in the bog of Iraq it seems that the US has forgotten the hunt for Bin Laden and his acolytes. When the twin towers were attacked the world was united in revulsion and lined up alongside to prosecute those capable of such horror. As the years went along that mission somehow got put off into almost an incidental prosecution, as the President took on the task of removing Saddam Hussein it was as though the chase of al-Qaeda was abandoned. It may not have been by design, but by reducing involvement in the hunt and allowing the jihadists to continue with their plans, the blueprints for London were long ago drawn up. And so now we line up with England sharing in the revulsion of such evil.

It's too simplistic and naive to think that we will shortly wave a wand and return to simpler and more peaceful times. Sadly for now, this die is cast and similar attacks as those on Thursday will no doubt fill our television newscasts in the future. In our little corner of the world, so far thankfully free from the atrocities we've seen, we sit back and wonder how we can contribute to making a difference before it is too late. This mindless terror knows no boundary and could very well strike us at any time. Our way of life is a threat to the purveyors of hate, our society exhibits a certain freedom of choice, a place where we are free to worship in our faith if we have one, live without fear of harm, treat each other as equals and seek out a better life for our families wrapped in the adventure of a common cause. Those traits are alien to those that planted bombs of hatred on Thursday, and perhaps those traits are our greatest strength.

The process of changing a mindset and breeding ground for terror will take a long time. And so we will again be forced to confront the evil that we seem capable of inflicting on each other. At our peril the lessons of the past will be ignored, our hopes for the future are now tempered with the reality of today. A reality that at this moment includes prayers for those so brutally murdered and hopes for those survivors to find a sense of peace after such a horrible ordeal.