War - On the cheap !

The terrorists had a cheap victory in London.  All we know at this stage about Khalid Massood, the fifty-two year old perpetrator is that he was known to police for possession of offensive weapons and public disorder offences, but he was not on a terror watch list.  Credit for the attack has been claimed by Islamic State, but it is probable that the perpetrator was not known to them and was radicalised by what he was reading in the newspapers.

This is the type of incident against which there is no defence.  When someone deliberately drives a car off the roadway and onto a footpath and mows down pedestrian the only answer is to turn the city into a fortress with bollards and barriers - and that would be unacceptable to most people.  This incident left four dead and twenty-nine wounded.  Had the terrorists managed to get the use of a heavier vehicle the damage could have been greater.

Here in Australia we awoke on Thursday morning to find the London terror attack dominating the television news channels.  Throughout the day we were bombarded with " breaking news " as the security people raided flats and made arrests.   World leaders expressed their sympathy and in Paris the Eiffel tower was lit in red, white and blue to express solidarity with London.

This is the sort of publicity that Islamic State could not buy with a billion dollars - and they are getting it for free.  In some parts of the world an incident such as this would be suppressed.  The heavy hand of the censors would close down news stories, or the report would be relegated to an inside page.   That is not the sort of society in which we live.   We are horrified that lives have been taken and people badly injured because renegades of a great religion are making war because they want to force their twisted extreme dogma on the rest of the world.

Perhaps we need to evaluate the damage on a rational basis.    Four people are dead and one of them was a uniformed, unarmed policeman.   The British have long maintained the myth of the unarmed " London Bobby " maintaining order in the city.   When faced with a man with a knife or gun, their defence is paltry.  Time for a reality check.

Most likely the death toll on British roads amounted to about four deaths and a similar number of injured on that same day, and yet that was not "news ".   This was wilful murder and that was what provoked the story to world wide prominence.  If the terrorists hoped that such incidents would halt the tourist trade they are badly mistaken.   Death in a terrorist attack is now a hazard tourists accept as part of the risk of travelling overseas - and few are deterred.   The odds of being one of the unlucky ones - is about the same as being hit by lightening.

There is a strange metamorphose taking place in attitudes to terror attacks.   World leaders are duty bound to express sympathy and make public statements and the media compete for viewer attention by building the storyline, but repetition is dulling the impact on the mind of the average person.   It is no longer new and as such it is now accepted as just one of those hazards that is part of normal life.

Watch how quickly this London story retreats from the main news sector and reemerges as " public interest " interviews with spectators and those who suffered minor injuries.  Just as the truck slaughter in Nice had its day in the news and quietly faded from view, this London incident will suffer a similar fate.    To the terrorists, it is becoming part of the " law of diminishing returns "  !