The clamour over the three "terrorist" incidents in Britain over the last few days speaks of manipulated hysteria, Islamophobia and a collective myopia over real dangers and disasters. Nobody has been killed. Minimal damage to property has been caused. A clear inference from these acts is that those responsible are amateurs, unlikely to pose a substantial threat.
They are quite unlike the IRA of 15 years ago who devastated the centre of Manchester and the financial district of London, while killing a few innocents along the way (and with, incidentally, nothing of the hysteria that now abounds). Far more people were killed on the roads of Britain this last week than have ever been killed in "terrorist" actions in the last decade (about 3,500 people are killed on the roads of the UK each year, far more than were killed in the US on 9/11, where around 60,000 are killed on the roads every year).
And in Iraq 156 British soldiers have been killed there, having been sent on false pretences. More than 3,500 American military have been killed (George Bush is responsible for the killing of more Americans than is Osama Bin Laden) and, who knows, a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand civilians. The spectacle of alarm over minor fire damage to a terminal at Glasgow airport in the context of the havoc Britain is causing to the lives of millions in the Middle East is unedifying.
The revelation that a group of medical doctors based in the UK have been fomenting plans of destruction and death is unsettling, however amateurish they may be. But how could otherwise decent, compassionate people (I know this may be a brittle generality to devise about the medical profession, but isn't that our perception?) be intent on causing such destruction in a society to which some of them must have formed some attachment? Why generally is there such anger in the Islamic world about the Americans and the West?
They are not all crazy, not all devoured by irrational hatred, not all mindlessly angry. They are incensed by what we - the West - are doing to counties where Muslims are in a majority, by our unconditional support for a state (Israel) founded and maintained by the brutal denial of the rights of Palestinians; by the invasion and despoliation of Iraq on a pretext to do with weapons of mass destruction but, in reality, to do with oil; the support of despotic regimes in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan; the continued threat to two other Islamic states, Iran and Syria.
Aside from that, the support of the invasion of yet another country by a neighbouring country (the recent invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia), the continuing slaughter of civilians in Afghanistan and now the threat to boycott Turkey's application to join the EU essentially because Turkey is primarily Muslim. Does it not make sense to defuse that anger? All the more so when doing so also accords with the demands of justice? A familiar response is anticipated: that an amelioration of such anger "plays into the hands" of "terrorists", encourages them and others to threaten our "way of life" and our "freedoms" (all these parentheses do imply a scepticism of the underlying ideas - "terrorists", do they include those who drop bombs from the sky and order others to do so; "way of life" what way of life, one heedless of the rights and sufferings of others; "playing into the hands of terrorists" a linguistic cover for injustice; "freedoms", freedom to vote every five years, freedom of be poor and remain poor; "democracy" fine except when we don't like the outcome as in Palestine).
There is an example for dealing with "terrorists" which we know a little about here, which Britain should know about and which has worked rather well. Talking to them. Co-opting them. Meeting their demands for justice. It worked with the IRA, why not with the Islamic terrorists? All the tired arguments were deployed about not talking to the IRA. And those arguments seem a little silly now.
There is a way out of this awful mess the West has artfully devised: require Israel to disengage from all the lands it acquired in and since 1967; require Israel to disengage from Gaza and all the West Bank; establish and fund a new Palestinian state (the funding must be generous); disengage from Iraq forthwith; stop threatening Iran and Syria; withdraw support from the dictators in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and elsewhere; welcome Turkey into the EU; respect the Islamic religion and culture and stop the celebration of works that are seen to disparage Islam. But then that would be playing into the hands . . .