Terror bombs in London.

I have no doubt the London police force, and whatever other intelligence agencies are involved, will eventually find the people who placed those cars with the bombs in them. London has more surveillance cameras than any other city in the world. It didn’t take them long to find the subway and bus bombers from two years ago. These people won’t get away. No doubt about it.

I also have no doubt that both sides of the war debate here in the U.S. will try to use this event to bolster their own arguments. Somehow, the pro-Iraq war people will link this very-nearly successful terror plot which could have had terrible consequences, to support for George Bush’s war in Iraq against who knows who. Yes, the world is still not a safe place, even after five years in Iraq, 3600 American servicemen and women killed, and trillions of dollars spent. I would think that would be an argument FOR the case made by the rest of us, that the war in Iraq really has nothing to do whatsoever with terrorism, in the way the pro-war folks like to think, and has actually made the world less safe.

It’s all pretty much a useless debate anyway. No matter how good the arguments that are made by us, the only person who really matters is in the White House. And he isn’t budging. The military forces of the U.S. are not leaving Iraq in any significant numbers until Bush leaves office. The only question is, what is going to happen between now and then? How many more American lives will be lost or destroyed? How much more money will be thrown away? How much worse will the situation become? And keep in mind that we have what I consider the real war still going on in Afghanistan. That’s the place that broke the back of the Soviet Union. We could very easily lose there, even if we weren’t bogged down in Iraq. Bush will keep his head down and plow ahead, doing just the opposite of almost everyone else is recommending, even his own party. Our military will continue to serve as targets in a shooting gallery. The region will continue to be unstable. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (remember those people who we are supposed to be “helping”?) will continue to die and suffer without any acknowledgement by the Bush administration. And that is only if the dynamic does not change. It could get significantly worse. Things can always get worse.

I am so thankful that, by both luck and vigilance, neither of those bombs in London went off. I have been to that area of London many times. I can’t imagine the consequences of those explosions would have been. My personal opinion of what this proves is that how we really need to combat terrorism is through police and intelligence work. We should be pouring our resources into those areas, not into some ill-conceived, terribly executed war in Iraq whose only purpose, at the moment, seems to be to boost George Bush’s opinion of himself.