Steyn: Defensive War Against Terrorism FailsThe best in the business at the
hot topic:
As I wrote in The Daily Telegraph last March, "History repeats itself: farce, farce, farce, but sooner or later tragedy is bound to kick in. The inability of the state to secure even the three highest-profile targets in the realm - the Queen, her heir, her Parliament - should remind us that a defensive war against terrorism will ensure terrorism."
To three high-profile farces, we now have that high-profile tragedy, of impressive timing. It's not a question of trying and prodding and testing and finding the weak link in the chain, the one day - on Monday or Wednesday, in January or November, when an immigration official or a luggage checker is a bit absent-minded and distracted and you slip quietly through. Instead, the jihad, via one of its wholly owned but independently operated subsidiaries, scheduled an atrocity for the start of the G8 summit and managed to pull it off - at a time when ports and airports and internal security were all supposed to be on heightened alert. That's quite a feat.My sister mentioned today that her initial reaction was of course shock and horror, but then resignation. It may be hard to remember, but we all thought more terrorist attacks were coming after 9-11. Nobody, nobody at all was predicting that nothing major would happen in the US for another 3 plus years (so far).
But it will happen, inevitably. 9-11 and 7-7 prove that free societies cannot prevent major attacks from the terrorists. We can only hope that we will retain the will to defeat them on their own ground, and to create the kinds of societies in the Middle East where terrorism doesn't seem as attractive an option as opening a donut shop.
