Lessons of the London Attack
July 08, 2005
The hideous attack in London is a stark reminder that George Bush and Tony Blair have not come even close to vanquishing Al Qaeda.
Almost four years after 9/11, and still Osama bin Laden rubs his beard in our faces.
Almost four years after 9/11, and still Al Qaeda is gaining recruits.
Almost four years after 9/11, and still Al Qaeda can pull off a coordinated attack in one of the lungs of the Western World.
Bush will go down in history as the commander in chief who let his enemy escape.
Rumsfeld’s blunder at Tora Bora will rank right up there with Goering’s at Dunkirk.
And Bush, with his fool’s war in Iraq, has only served to reinvigorate Al Qaeda, which was discredited throughout the world after 9/11.
But Bush insisted on playing the role that Osama bin Laden had scripted for him: the invader, the aggressor, the torturer, the plunderer.
And so, even by the CIA’s own estimate, Iraq has become a recruiting center and an on-the-job training camp for Al Qaeda.
For two years now, Bush has been so fond of saying that we are fighting terrorists in Iraq so we won’t have to fight them here at home.
But as Robin Cook, one of Blair’s former cabinet members, put it in The Guardian the day after the London bombings, “Whatever else can be said in defense of the war in Iraq today, it cannot be claimed that it has protected us from terrorism on our soil.”
This act of terror is reprehensible in every way. Those who committed this act, and those who orchestrated it, are loathsome, deranged, and maniacal.
But Bush should not be breeding the loathsome and the deranged and the maniacal.