|
Edited on Sun Jul-10-05 08:43 AM by WearyOne
please indulge me and discuss :
*********************************
When will we negotiate with terrorists ?
I lived in London from 1973 to 1987 and grew to love the place and feel as many do, that I was a honorary Londoner . It was a happy time, I was young and had a good job, money to spend and I lived around the Notting Hill Gate area, a far more fun place than it is now since it it's been discovered and become the smartest and most expensive area of London.
Our peace was shattered one night returning home on a bus from the West End. We were stopped by a police cordon. Word quickly spread that a bomb had been found in the entrance of my local supermarket in Kensington Church Street and was being diffused by an expert.
The low booming dull thud that reverberated about a minute later was a sound I will never forget. Completely unlike an explosion seen in a movie , the IRA bomb had exploded killing the police bomb disposal expert, a man of around 40 who was to become another forgotten victim in the IRA campaigns.
I heard another such thud one morning about 7am just as I awoke and instantly recognized the sound. A politician in nearby upper- market Holland Park had been killed by a bomb when he started his Jaguar, parked outside his house in a beautiful leafy square.
In 1983 I had moved to Marble Arch, it was about 11am on a gorgeous sunny Saturday morning and I was strolling across Hyde Park. I was off to Harrods for lunch with my honeymooning friend , Steven and his new wife . Midway across Hyde Park I heard that familiar thud again, this time much larger and noisier. Seconds later I saw the huge pall of smoke begin to rise above the general area of Harrods. I now knew from experience to continue would be useless. The chaos, the police street cordons would completely block the area. I would talk to Steven and his wife later. They would understand.
I never got to speak to Steven ever again. Part of our lunch was to be a celebration as Steven, at 26 had landed a job writing a column on a Fleet Street newspaper. Being the keen young reporter he was he had got wind of drama happening in Harrods as police had begun to clear the store. He probably thought this would be a scoop of his life and had left his new bride and ran to the direction where much of the action seemed to be. Steven headed straight into the blast of a massive car bomb that blew his unrecognizable body to the roof of Harrods, six stories high. I only knew what had happened when I read the story in the newspaper he was to join, 3 days later.
Throughout all these horrific IRA bombs which killed over 650 civilians from Belfast to London, Brighton and pubs and railways stations through the UK any number of politicians would appear on the telly,or radio or leader writers in Fleet Street newspapers would produce the same waffle " We will never be defeated "-
" London will never cave into Terrorist's demands !" etc etc. On and on it went.
These weren't the feelings I felt in the weeks that followed my friend's death. I raged with hate and railed against the entire Irish nation including my distant relatives there. I wasn't full of resolve to "carry on" and "go back to normal". I wanted revenge upon anyone . I was even filled with suspicion about Queenie, the lovable diminutive Irish lady from Cork who lived opposite and cleaned my flat twice a week. I knew my feelings of hate and distress weren't rational but emotional. Of course I bloody well knew they wouldn't 'defeat' us. How could they possibly kill all 8 million Londoners ? All they could do was kill a few at a time.
The rest is history. For all their fine worlds the politicians did negotiate with terrorists and the IRA ,and a type of peace was achieved with the 1998 Good Friday Accord and followed by a continuing cease fire agreement in 2004.
And that's what I thought when I saw the horrific events unfold in London over the past few days. Now we face an enemy probably far more sophisticated and better financed than the IRA ever dreamed of.
If Al Quaeda could bring down the World Trade Centre in 2001 with a handful of men and a few box cutters these type of attacks in London, meticulously planned, are a snip. As soon as the talk dies down and western life gets back to normal as it always does, somewhere someone will pay a horrible price and our politicians will again line up to say "We will not be defeated". But it won't be them paying the price. They are well protected. They don't catch tube trains or the No 30 bus. It's us civilians who usually die and become the forgotten victims with only families and friends left to grieve.
Eventually a time will come when we have to negotiate with terrorist groups like Al Quaeda.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(490 posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
