Al Qaeda's shallow bench fails in the UK

James Robbins:

Imagine a plot device in a novel in which a terror attack is foiled because the car in which the bomb was placed was parked illegally and towed away. Would a publisher buy it? Maybe not. They would call it far-fetched, implausible, a little too cute. But sometimes the implausible happens. As Scott Macmann observed, “Truth makes better fiction.”

There are several lessons to be learned from the failed terrorist attacks in Britain. Some are obvious, such as the fact that the terrorists are still a threat, the war is still on. Also that the terrorists are seeking softer targets, which speaks to the effectiveness of hardening others. The Glasgow airport attack in particular illustrates this — despairing of actually getting on an airplane, the bad guys just rammed the gate with a Jeep Cherokee with a bomb in the back. It was not a well-planned or thought-out attack; the vehicle was hung up on the static defenses, which worked as intended. And did one of the perps really as was reported pour gasoline directly on an open flame? No wonder he ignited. These are not superstars.

One should also credit the intangibles. It was fortunate one car was towed, and that both bombs failed to detonate when they were supposed to. Luck was aided by the sloppiness of the terrorists who parked the car illegally and manufactured the faulty bombs. Heroism was also a factor, in the bravery of the policeman who defused the bomb still on site. Those who think that terrorism can be countered with cookie-cutter precision should note well the role chance plays in almost every such operation.

Some alleged lessons should not be learned. For example newly appointed international security advisor Lord Stevens said that the techniques were “imported from Baghdad,” since one of the alleged plotters (still at large) is an Iraqi. But surely car bombing is nothing new to London. The Israeli embassy in London was car-bombed on July 26, 1994. On June 25, 1992, the Provisional IRA used a car bomb near the London branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank. A car bomb was discovered near Harrods on December 17, 1983. The IRA frequently used car bombs in Northern Ireland, and an IRA splinter group car-bombed downtown Birmingham on November 2, 2001. The car bomb per se is not an Iraqi export.

What drew my attention was the intended set of targets in London, nightclubs and their patrons. This has been compared to the club bombings in Bali in 2002 and 2005, but the comparison is inexact. The Bali bombings were aimed at killing foreigners, and clubs happened to be where they congregated. An al Qaeda statement after the 2002 bombing stated that they were targeting “nightclubs and whorehouses in Indonesia” that are part of a “Jewish Crusader” alliance, and two of the bombers later stated that they sought vengeance for deaths of Muslims worldwide. But last week the targets were not foreigners clubbing in “Muslim lands,” they were young Londoners out having a good time. That alone was enough to condemn them in the eyes of the terrorists.

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Their target was “those slags dancing around.” This tells us that their objectives are not simply political, they go much deeper than that. The jihad is not about Britain’s Iraq policy, not some form of revenge for lack of economic opportunity, but is rooted in a basic rejection of the human spirit as expressed in any life-affirming activity.

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I was reminded of a story from Afghanistan in 2001. When the Taliban regime fell, a group of Northern Alliance fighters celebrated by playing music that previously had been banned. Some women soldiers began to dance. One of the younger men watched raptly, and then began to cry. He had never seen a woman dance before — he said it was the most beautiful thing he had ever witnessed. I thought then that this was a microcosm of the war and its meaning, the reason it was being fought and why it must be won. We see it again in London. This war is not simply a contest of grievances, or a difference of opinions, but a defense of the human spirit, of the right of people to express that spirit, to sing, to dance, to live.

It turns out President Bush was right when he said they hate our freedom. Mass murder to prevent fun does not seem worth fighting for, but the war against fun is one we have to win.