The threats

I know I should have got around to doing so earlier, but I'm going to talk about the pandemonium in British airports and its knock-on effect across the pond.

Did you notice what the British authorities did? They did POLICE WORK, and ARRESTED PEOPLE, thus PREVENTING attacks. They did so without declaiming about "Islamo-fadscists" or mentioning Hezbollah. No one felt the need to draw all the ends togteher into a neat little parcel so that all the sharpened axes were tidily deposited in the same bucket. Did you notice that Blair didn't put on a flight jacket and start a war? Do we think this might be because we've actually, in this country, been fighting a war on terrorism for the last forty years? Bush may only have cottoned onto the whole terrorism thing since 9/11, but many of us in Europe and South America are well-used to its effects on our daily lives. We had the IRA, Spain had (and has) ETA, Germany had the Baader-Meinhof gang, Peru has the Shining Path to name but a few. The ground has shifted, the aggressor varies, but the end is the same. Here, as a nation, we accept the facts that a) we don't have bins in railway stations or on the Underground, because historically that was the preferred hiding place for bombs in the IRA era, b) we've always had more stringent security checks in airports, c) people who work in sensitive occupations in times of heightened threat ought to check under their cars for bombs, d) We may not like it, but in danger areas (aeroplanes, tube, large public events), we regard a particular group with more suspicion than we know we should. It's not good, but there it is.

However, at least no one ever suggested dropping bombs on Dublin because there were terrorists there. Or maybe they did, but wiser counsel prevailed and it never happened. Bush's posturing is the scariest thing about what's happening at the moment, because it is so unbelievably dangerous and utterly counter-productive to whatever he's trying to achieve, assuming he is trying to achieve an end to terrorism, which at times seems incredible. Every bomb dropped by America, Britain or Israel creates another few suicide bombers. As I said a few days ago, brace yourself.

I heard an American commentator saying that they had done some research and it turned out that the majority of suicide bombers were not acting because of their religion, but because of Western foreign policy in the Middle East! He said this as if it was something surprising; in fact as if it was a great revelation. It wasn't. Any thinking person could have told you that months ago! Dear God. The reason things are getting worse is the war-mongering idiot in the White House and Blair, who as a clever man really should know better than to get star-struck and pander to the big boys. I don't actually believe that Bush and Blair are on some kind of quasi-religious quest against Islam, but I can oh so easily see how it would look that way to nervous Moslems who watch as Bush publishes his mainly-Moslem list of countries on whom to wage war, and starts conflicts on purely spurious grounds. There was, arguably some basis for claiming that Afghanistan was harbouring Bin Laden and Al Qu'aeda, but Iraq? The most secular country in the Middle East under Saddam Hussein? Come on! The tragedy is that it seems as if, if the US had stayed in Afghanistan and carried on searching that difficult mountainous region they would have caught up with Bin Laden and perhaps, just perhaps, some of this appalling tragedy would have been avoided. But instead we have been set on the path to destruction. I could have predicted that Bush would somehow manage to use this thwarted attack to his own ends and bingo. He said 'Hezbollah'. You can see the wheels in his tiny mind whirring. "Maybe I can divert some of the flak we're getting about supporting Israel... Let's think..." Depressing, depressing, depressing.

Please, people, next time we're given a choice as to wh should lead us, can we NOT choose the telegenic, charismatic fools over heavyweights?