war of the worlds?

Besides New York, London is probably the only other city in the world that can claim to be a contender for the title of "capital of the world". London has this uncanny ability of being irrepressibly modern and yet steeped in history. It evokes melancholy and convivality in equal proportions. It may be an overstatement, but not my much, to outright claim that New York and London symbolize the collective yearning, creative lustre, vibrancy, tolerance and erudition of today's civilization. It is precisely this that makes these 'terror' attacks particularly painful. While I want to guard against reading too much into these exercises of barbarity, I can't help but feel violated.

London, like New York, will bounce back from this tragedy but scars will remain. Will the Londoner be able to look straight into the eye of the Pakistani grocer he shops at tomorrow? Will a mother travelling with her kids get nervous on seeing a bearded man? How can a tragedy like this happen without scarring? Sure it was done repugnant individuals who lost course in midst of ideology but does that answer a mother's anguished cry for her dead daughter? We want answers but will we be careful not to look at wrong places for them?

Al-Qaeda and all their cohorts have neither the ability nor the support for being more than an aberration in our history. These organizations have been aggrandized in this current war on terror but most political scientists seem to think of them as nothing more than small blips on the radar screen. It is important to guard against resorting to stereotypes and prejudices for it is exactly in those gestures that organizations like Al-Qaeda succeed.

I refuse to see terrorism as an instantaneous phenomenon - people becoming terrorists after going through an Israeli checkpoint. Terrorism happens where frustration and angst meets careful scheming and dementia and megalomania.
If poverty bred terrorists, Ethiopians would be leading the list of International terrorists. We need larger questions and larger answers....maybe there are no answers and that we probably will always have to live with a certain level of idiocy, dastardliness and corruption.

I can't end this piece without saying something about G8. This attack has severely jeopardized G8's stated plans to come to a positive agreement over debt forgiveness and climate change. I sincerely hope that the G8 leaders won't succumb to the temptation.

Article Author: Spincycle

Spincycle is interested in questions around media, governance, and political economy. He strongly values reading good fiction for he feels that it imparts the important value of empathy.

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