After London, Britain’s doubts

Last thursday, terrorists failed in their mission to murder and maim. The next morning, in a scene that smacked more of Hollywood than London, police shot and killed a man they mistakenly linked to the attempted bombings. Are the jihadists succeeding in their wider mission to spread fear and despondency in Britain?

Much was made of the spirit of the Blitz after the first attacks. Phlegmatism still seems to be the prevailing emotion: Londoners are again crowding onto buses and tubes. But that does not mean that they are rallying to George W. Bush’s war on terror. Quite the reverse in fact -- especially when you listen to the chattering classes.

On the surface, British politicians are doing pretty much what American leaders did after 9/11 -- rallying the people without stoking fear and extending the government’s power to deal with terrorists without sacrificing the essence of a free society. Yet there are also striking differences that could have big implications for Britain’s continued participation in the war on terrorism.

The first is the almost complete absence of the bellicose nationalism satirized in the 2004 movie “Team America: World Police.” In Britain, there have been no calls for Osama bin Laden’s head, no gearing up to invade a foreign land. That is not just because there is no quick, convenient target, no Taliban helping Bin Laden hide in the Afghanistan hills (though the alleged mastermind of the London bombings was a Pakistani with links to Afghanistan). It is because 7/7 has shaken rather than reinforced Britain’s national identity. The fact that three out of the four initial bombers were born and bred in Britain -- and that until their conversion to Islam they were most notable for their enthusiasm for soccer and cricket -- has shaken Britain’s belief in its multiculturalism, its assimilative powers.

The second difference is that the British are much more willing to fault the West for the atrocities. In the U.S., very few people followed Susan Sontag and Ward Churchill in blaming American imperialism for the assaults on the twin towers and the Pentagon. After the attempted second attack on London, journalists peppered Tony Blair with questions about “the root causes of terrorism,” which in context were clearly root causes in the Sontag sense.

Last week, London’s mayor, “Red” Ken Livingstone, said, “I don’t just denounce the suicide bombers. I denounce those governments that use indiscriminate slaughter to advance their foreign policy” -- which presumably means Israel and the U.S. “The bombings would never have happened if the West had simply left the Arab nations alone in the wake of the First World War, rather than trying to control the flow of oil.” You only have to imagine Rudolph Giuliani uttering these words to see the gap between British and American politics.

Why are Britons striking inward, rather than outward? Chronology explains a lot. The London attacks have taken place after the invasion of Iraq, which most Britons opposed. It is not difficult to pick holes in the Iraq-war-is-to-blame argument: Tube bomber Shahzad Tanweer was much exercised about India’s conduct in Kashmir, for instance. And the polls show few Britons demanding an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. All the same, two in three also hold the war at least partly responsible for the London bombings.

Another big difference between Britain and the U.S. is the balance of power between left and right, especially in the world of ideas. In the U.S., the anti-war left has long been balanced -- many would say outgunned -- by the right-wing intelligentsia. In Britain, the conservative intelligentsia offers remarkably thin gruel; the left dominates both the universities and the BBC. Even middle-of-the-road members of the chattering classes tend to blame the West for committing innumerable atrocities and assume that terrorists act out of poverty and frustration rather than nihilism and fanaticism.

The third difference is Britain’s 3 million Muslims. It is in the nature of politicians to pander to constituents. This is not to imply that most British Muslims sympathize with suicide bombers. But there is a significant minority of fanatics; perhaps 10,000 British Muslims are Al Qaeda supporters. More important, throughout the British Muslim community there is fury about the United States’ prosecution of the terror war and its support for Israel.

So far, Blair hasn’t wavered in his commitment to the war on terrorism. He has rallied a shocked nation. He has set about demolishing claims that the bombs were payback for British involvement in Iraq. He has even dared to use the word “evil” when describing the ideology that motivated the terrorists. But make no mistake about it: There are millions of Britons who, despite their stoicism, see the world very differently from their prime minister.