Not Funny At All News

As you know, a terrorist attack in London killed over 30 people (current estimate) on Thursday morning (local time). Four or more bombs were detonated on various public transportation vehicles during the morning commute period.

In one sense there's pretty much nothing to say about this. It's horrible, evil, end of story. I don't expect a lot of bloggers to comment on it, which may just end up showing how little I know about bloggers. But I'm gonna share a couple things.

First, Prime Minister Tony Blair's statement in its entirety:

I'm just going to make a short statement to you on the terrible events that have happened in London earlier today. And I hope you understand that at the present time we're still trying to establish what has happened. There's a limit to what information I can give you. And I'll simply try and tell you the information as best I can at the moment.

It's reasonably clear there have been a series of terrorist attacks in London. There are, obviously, casualties, both people that have died and people seriously injured. And our thoughts and prayers, of course, are with the victims and their families.

It's my intention to leave the G-8 within the next couple of hours and go down to London and get a report face to face with the police and the emergency services and the ministers that have been dealing with this, and then to return later this evening.

It is the will of all the leaders at the G-8, however, that the meeting should continue in my absence, that we should continue to discuss the issues that we were going to discuss and reach the conclusions which we were going to reach.

Each of the countries around that table has some experience of the effects of terrorism. And all the leaders, as they will indicate a little bit later, share our complete resolution to defeat this terrorism.

It's particularly barbaric that this has happened on a day when people are meeting to try to help the problems of poverty in Africa and the long-term problems of climate change in the environment.

Just as it is reasonably clear that this is a terrorist attack, or a series of terrorist attacks, it's also reasonably clear that it is designed and aimed to coincide with the opening of the G-8.

There will be time to talk later about this.

It's important, however, that those engaged in terrorism realize that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world.

Whatever they do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilized nations throughout the world.

Thank you.

Stirring words. Granted, any third year English major could likely have written it better, but hearing him deliver it on the radio during my commute that morning I was moved by the sorrow, the resolve, and the conspicuous abscence of the phrase "hunt them down." For a fleeting, unworthy moment, I wished our president could sound that profound when reading better written stuff.

But politicians' speeches are inconsequential at these, as at all other, times. My other immediate response was to a comment made by a radio DJ. I happened to hear him remark that the people who had done this "could not even be considered human beings." It pricked something, and I dashed off this email to him. I'll share it here as well, for what little it's worth.

While I totally understand and agree with the sentiment you're trying to express, I think saying that terrorists aren't even human beings might be a device we use to distance ourselves a little bit from the catastrophe, as if it was another tsunami or something. It's a little harder, but maybe worth trying, to recognize that human beings really did do this. Obviously they have sunk much deeper into heartlessness and evil than any human being you and I have ever come into contact with, but you and I are not of a different species than they. Maybe recognizing this fact could be a first step towards finding a more lasting solution to the problem than war, maybe not. Just a thought I wanted to share.