Res Publica 2005

Aldaynet has covered a story about the BBC trying to deconstruct and minimalize the War on Terror. He quotes:

Much of the currently perceived threat from international terrorism, the series argues, “is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media.” The series’ explanation for this is even bolder: “In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power.”

As he says: Fantasies and distortions didn’t knock down the World Trade Center, they also didn’t punch a hole in the Pentagon or bomb embassies in Nairobi and Kenya and they sure as hell didn’t try to sink a US battleship off the coast of Oman. No sir, fantasy and distortion didn’t do those things blood thirsty lunatics did them and the gall of the BBC2 to say otherwise is like spitting in the face of all those they’ve murdered. Boy the Brits are really pissing me off today.

I invite anyone who wants to whitewash away the reality of the terror war to go read the Belmont Club today.

Long before September 11, the Madrid train attack and the massacre of school children in Beslan they were forshadowed by Operation Bojinka, the LRT train attack and the mass abduction of schoolchildren in Basilan. Never heard of them? That's understandable.

Operation Bojinka was a series of planning exercises and dry runs in the Philippines in preparation for the September 11 attacks. Here's how Wikipedia describes it.

The term can refer to the "airline bombing plot" alone, or that combined with the "Pope assassination plot" and the "CIA plane crash plot". The first refers to a plot to destroy 11 airliners on January 21 and 22, 1995, the second refers to a plan to kill John Paul II on January 15, 1995, and the third refers a plan to crash a plane into the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia and other buildings. Operation Bojinka was prevented on January 6 and 7, 1995, but some lessons learned were apparently used by the planners of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

I can still see the Dona Josefa apartments, where these outrages were planned, in my mind's eye. It's along FB Harrison near a dusty children's playground not far from the city zoo.

On January 30, 2000 a Light Rail Transit (LRT) commuter train packed with children was blown up by Al Qaeda-affiliated Fathur Rohman Alghozi, with the assistance of Isamudin Riduan Hambali, killing 12 and mutilating 19 others. The Blumentritt station, where the blast occurred, is above an intersection so crowded the street below has been turned into a permanent wet market where hawkers sell vegetables and fish on plaited mats. The wreckage of the train was covered with bloody children's clothes and Christmas toys.

The kidnapping and murder of schoolchildren was common fare on the Island of Basilan, with which I am thoroughly familiar. In May, 2001 a Filipino journalist wrote:

It seems almost a lifetime ago since it happened. Even in the jungles of Mount Punoh Mahadji, there are hardly any signs left of the 44-day ordeal suffered by 53 kidnap victims at the hands of the Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf. Indeed, the outcry over the bandits' abduction of 53 school children and teachers in Basilan on March 20 last year died down almost immediately after their rescue by a civilian paramilitary group 1 months later, on May 3. For the kidnap victims, however, the gruesome drama refuses to sink into oblivion. Memories of their sleepless nights in a cramped 12 by 38 ft. windowless wooden cell refuse to fade even in their sleep.

The victims may retain their impressions, but the world is innocent of forgetfulness; because first you have to remember before you forget. But it was not the first time Islamic rebels had kidnapped schoolboys. Just a year before a group of schoolchildren were being held for ransom by the Abu Sayyaf. A little later the Abu Sayyaf demonstrated their eclectic tastes by attacking two high schools. "They kidnapped 30 people after attacks on two high schools in March -- of them 15 have been rescued while six were killed by the guerrillas, including two adult males who were beheaded."

The Terror War, no matter what you want to think of it exists. Predominantly, it is a dream of certain Islamic activists to bring the dream of a golden age of Islamic dominance back to the world. You may think it's a way of politicians to manipulate the weak, but take away the vigilance, and you are left with scenes like the bombing of the Trade Towers.

And that is a high cost to pay to stick your head in the sand.