Where will terror strike next?
While our hearts go out to the victims of the terrorist bombings in London, our minds inevitably turn to one question: After nearly four years, why hasn’t al Qaeda returned to attack America again?
There are two possible answers. One is that terror networks have been hit so hard by our military overseas and our defenses are so improved that they can’t come back to prey upon our homeland. Another, more troubling possibility is that al Qaeda has deliberately chosen a strategy of striking elsewhere and that it will turn its sights on us when it is ready.
Both answers must be considered, but the first explanation falls apart quickly when we look at al Qaeda’s actions in the past few years.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/07/10/INGRADJFBF1.DTL
January 1st, 2001 at 12:00 am
July 17th, 2005 at 10:32 pm
well, for the suicide bombers, i guess it’s more a poverty of dignity than a poverty of material. I’m so shocked to know one bomber is a British citizen, with a young child and a pregnant wife. I don’t know much about religions, but i think these Muslim men just feel humiliated about the fact that they are tempted by a society that they consider morally inferior. And when this internal conflict grows to a certain extent, they are easily converted by the radical preachers to seek that sick prestige, and finally they will choose such a way to implode and also explode.
I try to understand such shocking things happening on and on in this civilized world, yet I could never ever accept these.
London has always been a place I dream of, mourn for those who lost their beloved ones in this tragedy.
I know there are dark sides in human nature, but I’ve always believed that the loving, sympathetic and altruistic components have a dominant role. Yet with such tragedies happening on and on, I can’t help thinking about Darwin’s and Huxley’s words: we are “red in fang and claws”, and try to “slay the dragon” of our animal past.
Maybe the world is just too chaotic to interpret with our intellectual reach.