I'm not questioning your assertion that the English are dealing with terrorisim with greater "unremarkable defiant indifference" than Americans do; I'm just looking for some specifics.
Also: Can't someone somewhere do a better job of translating whatever the Arabic name of the organization is into actual English than "The Group of al Qaeda of Jihad Organization in Europe," which sounds like something that all our base might be belong to? (For example, "European Al-Qaeda Jihad Organization" sounds like it might be plausible, and at least sounds like it was translated by someone who speaks English.)
Honestly, anyone who knows anything about Londoners culture should have known the operation was doomed to failure, anyway. The whole point of terror bombing is to send a message, and everyone knows you don't strike up conversations with strangers on the Tube. It's just not done.
This is why New Yorkers (like Giuliani) are so upset. We schmooze everywhere: on the street, in the supermarket, on the subway (for the record, I do it on the London Underground as well).
Keep in mind that this is not exactly the first time London's been attacked. Once you've survived a full-on attack by the Luftwaffe, subway bombs aren't going to scare you as much.
We did deal with it, with about as much indifference as 3000 deaths over four states in a single blow could allow. But initially, there was remarkably little psychotic claptrap. Even Rudy Giulianni, whom you unfairly characterize as running around like a chicken with his head cut off, showed a great deal of restraint, calling for calm and doing the only sensible things he could: ask people who weren't already part of the emergency response to stay home and wait for what was left of the city's first responders to sort things out. What else was he supposed to do, and how did that qualify as some sort of panic?
Then the Only President We Got showed up and told us all to go shopping. I know who I blame for the jingoistic psychosis the nation experienced in reaction to 9/11, and it isn't Giulianni. Likewise, I know that Mr. Blair's Home Secretary, Mr. Clarke, has taken 7/7 as an opportunity to admit that his national ID scheme wouldn't have done anything to prevent yesterday's bombings, but nonetheless, this is why the UK needs national ID cards and a curtailing of civil liberties in general.
Sure sounds like someone over there is overreacting to me. He's just doing it while using words of more than two syllables.
yeah, i think of histrionics as part of the american national character, and it's not a part that i am fond of. it's too ... bipolar for my taste. :)
that said, IIRC, new yorkers handled their tragedy amazingly well, and i wouldn't have characterised rudy guiliani as running around like a chicken with his head cut off at all. in fact, it was the first (and only) time i was ever impressed by his behaviour and actions.
it was the rest of the country that went ga-ga, and then the bush regime started milking it for all it was worth and then some, and continues to do so to this day.
In addition to reasons already cited in comments, I think that we should also consider that Londoners never had the invincibility complex that most of America had. I think that a good part of the reason that people in America are all "OMG SPAZ!" about the whole thing is that we've been brainwashed for so long to believe that A) shit like this doesn't happen, and B) even if it *does* happen, it can't possibly happen to *us*.
London, on the other hand, has been rather intimately involved, for a very long time, with people that make Al-Qaeda look like amateurs.
The brits are keeping a stiff upper lip and all, but at the same time, in a back office somewhere, british military planners are working on how to send the guys who worked on the IRA problem into the middle east. The ones with the black unmarked uniforms, sharp knives and silenced guns. The US sends in armies, the UK takes a smaller, more personal approach. They've been blown up before, they already have their response worked out.
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And I, for one, just can't face that. Much as I like tea.
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I'm not questioning your assertion that the English are dealing with terrorisim with greater "unremarkable defiant indifference" than Americans do; I'm just looking for some specifics.
Also: Can't someone somewhere do a better job of translating whatever the Arabic name of the organization is into actual English than "The Group of al Qaeda of Jihad Organization in Europe," which sounds like something that all our base might be belong to? (For example, "European Al-Qaeda Jihad Organization" sounds like it might be plausible, and at least sounds like it was translated by someone who speaks English.)
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Leaving aside the ways Americans react...
(Anonymous) - 2005-07-08 18:49 (UTC) - Expandno subject
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Honestly, anyone who knows anything about Londoners culture should have known the operation was doomed to failure, anyway. The whole point of terror bombing is to send a message, and everyone knows you don't strike up conversations with strangers on the Tube. It's just not done.
This is why New Yorkers (like Giuliani) are so upset. We schmooze everywhere: on the street, in the supermarket, on the subway (for the record, I do it on the London Underground as well).
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That said, given your admiration for the UK, wanna move there? :D Or at least get passports so we can travel there on vacation?
[I'm now wondering what rhymes with July. Defy, defy, the fifth of July: buses, trains bombed in a plot?]
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Then the Only President We Got showed up and told us all to go shopping. I know who I blame for the jingoistic psychosis the nation experienced in reaction to 9/11, and it isn't Giulianni. Likewise, I know that Mr. Blair's Home Secretary, Mr. Clarke, has taken 7/7 as an opportunity to admit that his national ID scheme wouldn't have done anything to prevent yesterday's bombings, but nonetheless, this is why the UK needs national ID cards and a curtailing of civil liberties in general.
Sure sounds like someone over there is overreacting to me. He's just doing it while using words of more than two syllables.
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Re: Dear Fellow Americans
that said, IIRC, new yorkers handled their tragedy amazingly well, and i wouldn't have characterised rudy guiliani as running around like a chicken with his head cut off at all. in fact, it was the first (and only) time i was ever impressed by his behaviour and actions.
it was the rest of the country that went ga-ga, and then the bush regime started milking it for all it was worth and then some, and continues to do so to this day.
but not new york. new york did great.
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London, on the other hand, has been rather intimately involved, for a very long time, with people that make Al-Qaeda look like amateurs.
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British born!
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