Take Care, London Town
I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the UK, and London suburbs, where I spent a fairly short but significant chunk of my early childhood. It's all love today though, especially for the red double decker buses which are any child's delight. My condolences and prayers go out to the injured and killed and their loved ones, and all the workers struggling to make things right.
Glancing around the blogosphere and the oozing commentary, I have to say one thing. When people like me who were against the Iraq invasion bring it up in times like this, one should not assume that we are indicating a strict cause and effect. I am not trying to tease out the exact relationship between Britain's involvement in Iraq and the recent motives and causes of these particular terrorists. The point is not that invading Iraq might have been morally bad and that it then caused some other people to make definitely amoral choices. That argument is beyond me, especially right now. The point is that it's a drain on resources that was not justified in comparison to our other problems. We have finite intelligence officers, finite translators, finite money to spend on guards and emergency equipment, etc. etc.. Having to spend on these things in a foreign war cannot be ignored as a drain on budgets being cut or not increased for domestic emergency responders and domestic intelligence. Unfortunately it's a drain we're now stuck with, and we have to deal with the situation as it exists now. But as we deal with problems of terrorism using dwindling resources, we should remember that one reason much of those resources are scarce is that they're getting sucked up in another war. And we should remember that the next time someone asks us to go to war in a country that's not actually attacking us. And we should choose leaders who are likely to remember that as well, and care about it proportionately.
People may say the above in a nasty or partisian way, because they're angry or upset, but that doesn't make the analysis any less important to consider.
