Reactions and Thoughts

Why is it that we feel the need to watch disasters unfold in front of us? Why do people rubberneck when passing car crashes? Why were we all glued to the web or the tv yesterday as the events in London began to unfold? The lovely boy posed a question similar to this as I flicked to the news channel as soon as I walked in the door last night. I told him after I had thought about the question that I just wanted to be prepared should I ever be involved in something like that. I would prefer to have some idea of what to expect than to be caught unawares. This is an honest answer from me but its not a complete one.

The other other side of watching images like those that emerged from London yesterday and from New York in September 2001 is that we have a connection with people in London and New York which many of us on here don't have with people in Iraq or India or Africa. Many of us have friends, relatives and history we can draw on when we see those places and it hits us harder and brings it closer to home. We also feed into the drama and the worry and the confusion, if it can happen there it can happen here. We get afraid.

I guess thats what the people who plan and execute these attacks want. They want people in Berlin, Paris, Toronto, Sidney to be afraid. That's the real power they have over all of us. Thats the lasting effect of what happened yesterday.

Of course the first thing GWB had to say was that the war on terror would continue. The attack in another vindication in his eyes for the terror that his war unleashes every day in the Middle East. The logic (if there ever was any) of that argument must surely be wearing thin even in the most conservative of minds. We forget that while upwards of 40 people died in London yesterday in Iraq at around the same time there were 2 suicide bombs which killed 13. The people there face this sort of terror every day. How must they feel? We certainly don't feel the same sort of fear and worry when we hear about the attacks they suffer every day.