I think the basic idea being conveyed is that the gung-ho rah-rah-rah actions of the war hawks has exacerbated an existing situation.
The fundamental issue is a clash of culture; Western consumerism and liberalism is encroaching on the good ol' Islamic fundamentalism that these people like so much. There's not much we can really do to stop this, unless we want to attempt to turn back the tide of globalisation by cutting our own nose off.
Given that this conflict is relatively inevitable, how do we deal with it?
(God, I hate that sort of question. Blargh.)
This is where Bush and Blair and all that come in. After all, we could have planned attacks and contemplated reactions and that sort of thing, created a well-thought-out strategy that would have ended or minimised this 'war' and its casualties. However, we did not; instead, we let a group of modern-day cowboys shout out "WOOHOO! YEEHAW! LET'S STIR UP SOME SH|T!"
Almost, anyway. And the problem with charging into situations and carrying out irrelevant interventions like the relatively unnecessary Iraq war and its pursuit of non-existent WMDs and terrorist links is that it really, really messes up the swamp. Lots of foul air comes to the surface; lots of young people, incensed at big, fatass, arrogant America, source of all those things that utterly disregard and destroy their most sacred concepts, walking into their country and just presuming that they can tell them how to do things.
Then, when somebody asks them if they want to blow up a train, they think of the Coalition of the Willing and say 'Okay.' I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that the Iraq war, which has accomplished little save destabilise a region and impose democracy from above (which I do hope works, though I suspect it won't be as simple as that), has pissed off a lot of people and made terror attacks for the Al-Qaeda 'group' easier to carry out.
I mean, come on, people: it's basic cyclic causality. You charge in to save your oilfields, they declare holy war. They fly a plane into a skyscraper, you invade a country (or two). It's like a gang war: the Al-Qaeda Crew does a drive-by on some of the Neo-Con Hood, so the Neo-Cons firebomb one of Al-Qaeda's houses.
And you know what pisses me off? It's always the people in the middle who die - the people in the WTC, the people in Iraq, the people in London. You pro-war types sit on your sofas and declare war from your living room, and bin Laden and his cronies hang out in his cave and make big speeches about dying for the greater good and pleasing Allah and all that, but you never pay for your actions. Innocents die, and we all keep making the same mistakes.
Instead of being like certain American news stations and indulging our sense of drama with big Churchill-esque speeches and swearing revenge to the last, and just adding another level into the cycle, another excuse for a higher death toll... we should be stopping, thinking and trying to sort this out once and for all. Instead of invading Iraq again, let's a) find and prosecute the perpetrators, b) tone down interventionism in this 'hostile' territory, and c) make the advancement of Western culture so subtle and low-key that the fundamentalists are lulled into sleep and only wake up when it's too late and everybody else thinks that human life is more important than a ****ing book.
You know, because, short of genocide, there's no zerg rush capable of wiping out an entire culture.
I'm not particularly good at being a drama queen with exciting statements of how I'll stand firm with London and we Britons shall never be cowed or whatever, nor am I good at pretending utter despair or feeling sadness for thirty-seven people I don't know, nor at throwing my balls around and screaming defiance at Al-Qaeda, so I'll just say that I am deeply concerned about this incident and feel a mental sympathy for thirty-seven families who won't be seeing one of their own tonight because of somebody else's war, and that I wish more people had thought about this before taking leaps into the unknown.
