Tea Time Four weeks have passed since those horrific morning blasts shook the foundations of London's transportation system, and that subject has been nearly ignored on Heller Mountain. The terrorist attacks have been mentioned in passing, but not addressed outright. Not than anyone brought it up, but there is a reason for the absence. We don't do much in the way of reporting around here; that's not our thing. When you see two birds sitting up on a wire, grackling away about something, they aren't in some broadcast booth, like a feathered Summerall and Madden. They're just a couple of magpies with something to talk about. That's the Internet, only with more birds and more wires. It would have been too easy to flap up and write about the London bombings, but it would've been an echo, a statement of the obvious. Everyone - including the jihadists - knows they messed with the wrong people. Britons aren't merely tough. They are the most ruthless bunch on the planet, and history bears this out. Beyond that, what was there to add? Like a proper cup of tea, the story had to steep. Today's English are no different than their forebears. They are violent, merciless, single-minded and totally without sympathy... And those are just the soccer fans. As those purveyors of terror are quickly finding out, the Union Jack flies over a different kind of nation than either the despotic theocracies which finance their fury or the land with the amber waves of grain which they hate so much. We're talking about a place where tourists stand in line to see the torture chambers. George W. Bush did the right thing last week when he reminded us that we are in a war on terror. Some administration officials had been caught using inexact terminology, so the president corrected them all, which he should have done. Young people are indeed coming home, either in coffins or minus one or more limbs: Looks like war to me. Whether the people there like it or not, Great Britain is in lockstep with us because of Iraq. Some of the phony intelligence that propelled the United States into the Middle East came from "across the pond", so they have to take the credit for greasing Bush's skids on this one. They also sent troops, and have taken their fair percentage of casualties from an unending insurgency. Now, they have a date (7th July) embossed into their lexicon, just like we do. The British have always had a tendency to view their wars as bloody good tussles, from Crimea to the Faulklands. They don't necessarily micromanage every aspect of their campaigns, so long as the goal is eventually achieved. Whatever sacrifices must be made, by God, make them. At the Battle of the Somme in World War I, for example, they fed 58,000 of their men to the German machine gunners - on the first day. At Gallipoli, they landed their forces on a beach at the base of a cliff (atop which were perched the Turkish gunners) in broad daylight. Before they retreated from the paeninsula, they had suffered well over 200,000 allied casualties, with some 60,000 killed, for nothing. And in World War II, with Hitler's Luftwaffe pounding London on a daily basis, the Brits packed up their bedclothes and went down into their Underground, the same one which last month became either a crime scene or a war zone, depending on how you look at it. In the aftermath of terror, the British officially went out of their way to be considerably more effective at rounding up suspects/POWs than anyone ever expected. It's the temperature of their blood. They swept up Muslims left and right, giving cause to wonder whether or not John Ashcroft had written a handbook for them. Then, after a second bombing attempt was botched, Downing Street went unapologetically nuts. Sadly, this resulted in a trigger-happy subway incident involving a Brazilian, an innocent man whose only crime was an expired visa. That was determined only after he had been shot dead, and the message had been delivered. What message? That swarthy-skinned people in Merry Olde England would now be considered targets. Not long after that, Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that mosques would be closed down if hatred and extremist ideas were expressed therein, and that Islamic firebrands would be deported to countries that they may not like. This is no clandestine act, as Blair made clear from the start. "We will consult on a new power to order closure of a place of worship which is used as a center for fomenting extremism and will consult with Muslim leaders in respect of those clerics who are not British citizens, to draw up a list of those not suitable to preach who will be excluded from Britain," he said, along with, "Let no one be in any doubt; the rules of the game are changing." As it happens, the four principle suspects in the July 7 bombing (all of whom blew up with their lethal cargo) were nationalized Britons. So now their government says it will gin up charges of treason against citizens who partake in terror. This is all very chilling stuff to the civil libertarians, and it surpasses in some ways the response by the United States and its free-spending, results-lacking Department of Homeland Security. Faced with the explosive violence of extremism, Great Britain comes across as being a much more "conservative" nation than does its former Colony. Of course, that's nonsense. From gun control to health care, their policies are anathema to our right-wing ideology. The irony is that those same American Neanderthals who would take umbrage with the many liberal aspects of British life will be the first (and loudest) to champion Blair's trampling of civil rights in the name of waging war on terror. The whole point is that this is a long and unfolding story, exactly the sort of thing the English love so much. As for the evil ones, they will find dealing with the Redcoats to be a much different ballgame than what we Americans like to play, just as cricket is so very different from our beloved baseball. Cheerio! Paul Heller 8/08/05 << back to the archives
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