A Skirmish In A Strange War

One of my first thoughts this morning was how light the casualties had been.  Current estimates, as of this writing, put the death toll at between 40 and 50 and injuries into the many hundreds.  Still, it was a relatively good day.  Comparisons to the Blitz were nearly universal this morning on both sides of the Atlantic.  Modern Britain is a place that seems to have quietly conceded the inevitability of its Europeanization.  Britain won all the wars but somehow the Continentals slowly won the long peace of the second half of the twentieth.  Still the Second World War, particularly the years of 1940 and 1941, remain a vital part of the British subconscious.  Like 1815, 1805 and 1759, they are dates the modern Briton believes he can still point to and say: "This is what we are made of."  London, all of us hope, Can Still Take It. 

Fond memories, which are second hand and even third hand memories for most, are simply that, pleasant recollections, often inaccurate.  Few remember that in 1935 the so-called Peace Ballot showed that millions in Britain believed the League of Nations could insure peace and that deterrence through re-armament was unnecessary.  Even fewer recall how wildly popular the policies of appeasement were.  It is comfortable to believe that Chamberlain and his upper class Tory Cabinet were blind fools, but in truth they merely reflected the opinions of the overwhelming majority of their countrymen, regardless of party or class.

This kind of selective myopia seems part of human nature and blaming modern Britons for falling into this common vice is probably unfair.  The lessons to be drawn from the Blitz are not everyone huddling together in the Tube and listening to Churchill give another grand and wonderful speech.  It is bloody carnage sustained over many months.  It is bearing tremendous suffering without collapsing into an Oprahified knocking of breast and gnashing of teeth.  Please, no more flags, no more weeping widows.  The old film clips of the Blitz that will be overplayed in the next few weeks are not what we need.

It is probably in poor taste to compare today's events to a movie, and certainly less so a Hollywood film from that less than brilliant period in film making, the 1980s.  Brian DePalma's 1987 semi-classic The Untouchables captures perfectly what is wrong with how this strange war on "terror" is being fought.  "Everyone knows," says Sean Connery's Malone, "where the liquor is."  The problem of course is no wants to go out and stop Capone's organization.  "They put one of yours in hospital, you put one of theirs in the morgue."  Total war or complete surrender.  "How far are you prepared to go," asks Malone as the life ebbs away from his bloodied body on the floor of his apartment.  Shlock, perhaps, but it captures an essential truth about this war better than anything Michael Moore or the tacitly pro-jihadist Western left has said in the last four years.

We know where the enemy is, but corruption, both moral and economic restrains us from attacking it.

We know how to fight an old fashioned brass knuckles war, we did so within living memory, but refuse to do us because to kill in self-defense is now a crime.  Shakespeare's line from Henry V about how self love is not so vile a sin as self neglect makes little sense to our modern intellectual and political leaders.  Self-indulgence in comfortable notions of ourselves and others - no where more true than here in Canada - in the face of mass death.

So the question remains, how far are we prepared to go to defense ourselves.  Given the last four years the answer seems far, but as long as the Terror Masters continue in rule Tehran, Syria and their spawn find refuge in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the answer will be not far enough.

What happened today in London was not a tragedy, a disaster or even an act of barbarism.  It was a minor skirmish.  Had the perpetrators the capacity they would have killed millions without hesitation.  Eventually they will.

How far are you prepared to go?