Stay Calm and Carry On

The Piccadilly foiled bomb attack sure looks like a Jihadist plot to me. The attempt to kill those out for the night in the heart of London's theater district (Jihadists hate nightlife) is a clear sign. Less puritanical maniacs would be bombing shoppers in daylight. And the timing of Blair's handover to Brown is  obviously significant. This is the most worrying aspect, though:

Whitehall sources said that the police and security services were looking at possible international links - including similarities to car bombs used by insurgents in Iraq.

"It is entirely possible. There are various things - it is outside a nightclub, it is a vehicle-borne device, it is close to the anniversary of the July 7 attacks," one source said.

There's no point in speculating further till we get more data. But this should surely be part of our current debate about Iraq. It may well be that this attempted attack is a consequence of the Iraq war and occupation, which has fueled anti-Western sentiment and given al Qaeda a new base. But this leads to the harder question: would redeploying out of Iraq sooner rather than later make such attacks more or less likely? I'm not sure we can truly know the final answer to that. My own fear is that redeployment will indeed make us more vulnerable in the short term, if it emboldens the enemy - but that staying indefinitely will make us more vulnerable in the long term and make such attacks a permanent feature of our lives.

But that is surely the deeper point. What happened in Piccadilly is part of the future, whatever we do. They will come at us in some form regardless of our actions in the Middle East. If we are unable to withstand and endure such violence, the Jihadists will only become more self-confident in rocking our nerve. The good news is that this was detected by vigilant police. It failed. But it will succeed one day soon. In this, the Brits do have experience. They have long dealt with Irish terrorism. I recall growing up to the news of bombings quite regularly. But we endured and eventually won peace.

There's a lesson in this, and it isn't just the need for vigilance. Stay calm and carry on.