This post is submitted under “Anti Fascism” for a reason.
Whilst we grieve for the dead and pray for the injured, it is of the utmost importance that the cowards responsible for today’s outrage are left in no doubt that they have failed and will continue to fail.
It’s gut-wrenchingly obvious that these depraved beings take pleasure in the slaughter of innocents, but it remains the case that the goal of terrorism is to terrorise; killing people is a means to an end, and not the objective. The website carrying a claim of responsibility for the bombings made the point, irrespective of the authenticity of the boast. It talked about a Britain “buring with fear”. This is precisely what they want….need, to believe. (Either there is another “Britain” somewhere that suffered a bombing attack today, or they are seriously deluded.)
The point is that the terrorists themselves cannot win; they can only hope we hand them victory. They can only hope that we reflect on today and consider what it is we can do to make ourselves less of a target, rather than to continue to do what we know is right.
And if I know my compatriots, and if the establishment of the new Caliphate is contingent on the acquiescence of the British people, our brave, bombing friends have at least another millennium of disappointment stretching before them.
I think the following is relevant and whilst I know some will misinterpret it as tasteless jingoism, I’m referencing it because it exemplifies the character of Londoners and Britons in general, and ought to ensure that the most diehard fanatics with the blackest of hearts, can be in no doubt that today, they’ve picked on the wrong people.
Winston Churchill, Sept. 11, 1940
These cruel, wanton, indiscriminate bombings of London are of course, a part of Hitler’s invasion plans. He hopes, by killing large numbers of civilians, and women and children, that he will terrorise and cow the people of this mighty imperial city, and make them a burden and an anxiety to the Government…Little does he know the spirit of the British nation…This wicked man, the repository and embodiment of many forms of soul-destroying hatred, this monstrous product of former wrongs and shame, has now resolved to try to break our famous Island race by a process of indiscriminate slaughter and destruction. What he has done is to kindle a fire in British hearts, here and all over the world, which will glow long after all traces of the conflagration which he has caused London have been removed. He has lighted a fire which will burn with a steady and consuming flame until the last vestiges of Nazi tyranny have been burnt out of Europe, and until the Old World – and the New – can join hands to rebuild the temples of man’s freedom and man’s honour, upon foundations which will not soon or easily be overthrown”