The headline might read:
Suicide Bomb Rips Through Train; Unknown Number of Civilans Killed and Wounded
Not too long ago we would have assumed that such a story originated in Tel Aviv or Haifa or Jerusalem. Today it could as easily be London or Cairo or Madrid or Rome or New York.
Welcome to the New Millenium, where terror knows no national boundaries.
We grow used to armed soldiers at airplane gates. We think nothing of being asked to take off our shoes before we board a plane. We watch for travelers with backpacks. We are cautious and yes, fearful as we go about the ordinary activities of daily life. The War with Terror has come home.
I refer to it as the "War with Terror," rather than "On Terror" because, and make no mistake about this, the terrorists have been at war with us long before we were at war with them.
For more than 40 years, this is what life has been like in Israel. No place is really safe, vigilence can never be relaxed. Terror can strike on the bus, at the beach, at our child's pre-school. No place is truly "safe," no one is truly a non-combatant. One must be ever vigilant, ever alert.
But for those of us in the rest of the world, we were safe. We could read about the events that happened to others and think "That couldn't happen here." But now...it can and does.
Bombs on the London subways and buses. Almost two hundred dead in the Madrid bombing. The apartment building bomb in Moscow, the besieged theater and the horrible death toll among the children of the school in Beslan. Car bombs in Rome. And, of course, the destruction of the World Trade Center.
And the cost of terrorism is far-reaching. I was on-line with a friend from Britain when the shooting of ean Charles de Menezes. the Brazilian national, took place. My friend said that he must of have been doing something, because "our police don't shoot very often." It is now clear that the shooting was a "regretable error." I feel for the de Menezes family, but I doubt that this will be the last civilian casualty. These terrible things happen in a war zone.
I wish that I could offer an easy answer. Voices have been and will continue to be raised that will question Britain's alliance with the US. Perhaps the British could buy some temporary security by pulling their troops out of Iraq, as Spain did. But long term that will no more by "Peace in our time" than giving Nazi Germany Czechoslovakia did in the times of our fathers.
The war with terror is not about Iraq. Despite the recent escalation of bombings, terrorism in Europe goes back to the Munich Massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics and farther. Remember that the bombing over Lockerbie took place in 1988, well before Iraq.
The terrorists are not interested in justice or Palestinian freedom. One day BEFORE the bombings in London, Tony Balir announced that the G8 Summit had commited $3 billion a year for the next three years to the Palestinian Authority. In a separate aid package announced at the same time, the US commited $350 million to the PA to build housing and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.
The war with terror is about power. For the terrorists to declare victory, the governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt would have to fall. The US and Britain, France and Spain, Rome and Russia are their enemies,idealogical and religious. They oppose religious and idealogical freedom.
And if we valus our freedom, we must remember the words of Thomas Jefferson, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."