Why is it such a hard truth to accept that only fifty or so died in the bomb blasts in London? “Only,” because out of the three million or so commuters (i.e. one whole once yearly Haj) who travel into London every working day, “only” 17 millionths were killed.
As an attack in military terms, where it appears that the casualty rate was 100 percent among the aggressors, it was a disaster.
As a disrupting tactic it affected the capital badly for a few days, but the city soon returned to close on 100 percent full operation.
So why then all the media brouhaha over London?
Why no 24-hour wall-to-wall coverage of 48 - mainly civilians - at a recruiting center two days later in Baghdad? Why only relatively modest mention of 27 people killed - 18 of them children in Iraq just six days after London’s attack? Where was the synchronized gnashing of teeth when anything up to 50 children targeted and blown to red mist in the 100 so killed Baghdad by Iraqi insurgents nine days later?
Was it because the attacks were on innocent people going about their business in capital city and innocent of involvement in anything as nasty as a war? You could say that about Baghdad after all.
Perhaps it was more because it was an attack on a symbol; not as in the case of the US the physical symbol of the Twin Towers, but a more subtle and even more powerful one: The normality and “rightness” of a way of life - as perceived by the West, the British and the citizens of London.
What, for instance, could be more normal for a Londoner than straphanging in a crowded underground train on the way to work? A day later, few dared.
Let us take one step back; how did this “normality” come about? It is the distillation over centuries of the culture of a country that has woven a complex tapestry of assumptions into a society.
Before we are even conscious of ourselves as individuals, we have been profoundly influenced by our unconscious relationship to other individuals who have complicated histories. We are also members of a society that has both more complicated and longer history.
At any time you care to think of, we are members of a society that has reached its current state of development through the lives of generations of human beings who came before us. These predecessors wove the tapestry, fiber by fiber, as we do and it is uniquely “our” tapestry and the right one where reasonable people carry on in largely predictable ways, because these are the only one most of us know. These social mores are supported by religions and politics and institutionalized into officially sanctioned “rightness.” Any damage to it causes outcry and deep indignation.
In the UK for example, the law assumes the existence of “the reasonable man” to measure actions by. Shops assume that customers are not going to steal; schools assume pupils are not going to burst into anarchic behavior at any moment; the government assumes that revolution by the populace is not just around the corner. All this is the non-physical symbol of a way of life; in other words a living, breathing and largely un-self-aware idea of what is “right.”
The liberty we enjoy in this context is very vulnerable to attack.
Acts of terror are the techniques that other - sometimes equally powerful ideas - use to challenge these assumptions. The ideas and assumptions that sustain our sense of “right” have grown over generations and have been tested and taken on the shape of the culture that produced them. When they are challenged and attacked, we get angry and shout, stamp our “media” feet and want to have something done.
However, we assume killing in Iraq now to be the new normality; people blow up civilians on their way to work; target children clamoring for sweets round a US HumV and blast civilian Iraqis looking for work as policemen.
That’s not “normal” for us; it is normal for “them,” so why the need for any public fuss?
How did this new “normality” come about? Not from the slow organic growth of ideas, assumptions and social codes over generations; no society would have lasted for generations under the conditions that now obtain in Iraq. No slow molding of culture there in the way comfortable shoes flex to fit a changing foot.
Could it then be the import - some say imposition or even invasion - of an alien way of doing things under the banners “liberation and freedom?” In short, the imposition of an idea maintained by force?
Indeed, perhaps the two forces at work in Iraq - insurgent and Western - are both doing the same thing. Attempting to change ideas and the fabric of social order.
Perhaps the same was being attempted through the London blasts and explains the huge reaction. In both cases, the assumptions and ideas that sustain a culture and the assumptions of normality that result from it were under attack.
The reaction of shock and horror to the London bombings is not about numbers killed; it is from the visceral horror of having ideas, beliefs and assumptions that are deeply held by British society attacked by alien ideas, manifested in the form of four young men and using the technique of terror.
But these young men, it seems, were the product of “British society” in all its multicultural splendor. So how could they possibly do what they appear to have done? It’s just not “British” to go around blowing people up.
Ideas - alien to the traditional British way of life - have taken root, been nurtured, hot-housed and finally borne bloody fruit. The enemy is the alien idea; it is not the terrorist or terrorism - respectively the simple expendable foot soldier and delivery technique.
Without doubt, the foot soldiers have to be contained, the technique disrupted. On its own, this is not enough. The main target in any drive to eliminate the physical attacks is to disable and destroy the idea.
Herein lies the seemingly insurmountable problem. In the case of an identifiable opposition, there are leaders to talk to. Some Western governments have said that they would not and have not talked to “terrorists.” They have; the history of Ireland and Israel - to name but two - give the lie to that.
In the case of Al-Qaeda or the extremists responsible for the killings, to whom exactly can anyone talk? The idea, that most powerful enemy, producer of beliefs and “normality” is not housed in any one man or identifiable group of individuals. The “cell” structure ensures that the idea, even if one group of its adherents are caught and dealt with, survives and is possibly strengthened through aspirations of martyrdom.
Yet the idea is what we have to address. We may not like it or agree with it but we have to acknowledge its existence. There is no future in using rational techniques to address it - for you cannot, as Karl Popper contended, “have a rational discussion with a man who prefers shooting you to being convinced by you.” That is complicated further by there being no visible “man.”
The situation has further escalated because the ideas - those of the British attacked on July 7 and the attackers - that may have once been rational and possibly negotiable, has morphed into a belief. In brief our way, our assumptions and techniques of doing things, are right. That so, no rational argument will have any effect on people who do not wish to or cannot think rationally - that is assuming of course you can find anyone to argue with.
So now we have a clash of ideas. Terror, the technique of imposing these beliefs, is reduced to a simple technique. To prevent the attacks is of course essential to the West; human life is held as valuable and the loss of it both abhorrent and politically damaging.
But that is not the new or main target. We have to find a way of disempowering the idea. Dropping bombs on people or trying to impose our own will not do it.
First we have to find someone to talk to.
