Our heartfelt sympathy goes out to the families of the Londoners murdered and maimed in yesterday’s bombing attacks on the British capital’s transit system.
Although the deaths in London are be far lower than the toll of the Sept. 11 attacks in America, the latest atrocity rekindles the sorrow our country felt after the earlier barbarous assaults.
Because London is a key financial center, the bombings sent ripples through markets around the globe and also raised terrorist alerts elsewhere, including in the U.S.
A previously unknown group reportedly took responsibility for the bombings, but it’s too soon to solidly fix blame. The attacks seem to have been timed to coincide with the G8 economic summit in Scotland.
A group calling itself the al-Qaeda Organization in Europe issued a statement that the blasts in three subway trains and a double-decker bus were in retaliation for Britain’s involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.
London is the third political, financial or cultural capital of the English-speaking world to be attacked, after New York and Washington. The trio are icons of modern Western society and the free institutions so abhorred by fanatics.
And, all too often since Sept. 11, the world has had cause to mourn such senseless slaughter, such as the March 2004 commuter-train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 and wounded 1,600 wounded; the terrorist massacre at a school in Beslan, Russia, that left 344 dead, including 172 children, last September, and the ongoing insurgency in Iraq.
A defiant London Mayor Ken Livingstone, hurrying home from Singapore where London won the 2012 Olympics just the day before, denounced the terrorists for attacking innocent people and vowed they will never shut down London. “They seek to divide London; they seek Londoners to turn against each other,” Livingstone said. “This city of London is the greatest in the world because everybody lives side by side in harmony. Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly act.” He told terrorists that “whatever you do, however many you may kill, you will fail.”
President George W. Bush and French President Jacques Chirac, in Scotland for the G8, stood by Prime Minister Tony Blair, who read a statement on behalf of the world leaders, saying, “The terrorists will not succeed. Today’s bombings will not weaken in any way our resolve to uphold the deeply held principles of our societies and to defeat those who would impose fanaticism and extremism on all of us. We shall prevail and they shall not.”
That is our fervent hope, too. World leaders must stand united and not falter in their resolve to combat and neutralize terrorism and the threat it poses to world peace. And above all, citizens worldwide shouldn’t allow their lives to be taken hostage by the fear of terrorism.
