Peoii’s Place

Sorry for the melodramatic intro, but I couldn’t think of a more fitting title to what I’m going to talk about today. As many of you have probably heard by now, there was a bombing in London. I’ve been reading up on it as I get the chance, visiting sites like News.Com’s Coverage and Times Online for multiple viewpoints into this catastrophe, and in the end, the only feeling going thru my head is one of sickness. Let me explain.

I keep asking myself one very basic question (that is the bane of every parent ever on the planet)… “Why?” Why would an organization do something like this? Why would someone want to bomb innocent people? Why choose London of all places? Why Why Why Why Why? And then I started needing to fill in the answers to those questions which were driving me mad… And I came to a quick, and decisive reality. Yes, the group responsible had a reason for it. Will we ever truly understand it the way they do? No. But let here’s what I realized that might help out others with these many “why” questions…

A) London is a central hub for a great many things on the world wide stage. And in the eyes of some organization who would be out to cause panic, what better location in Europe than probably one of its most flaunted cities. This comes as no real surprise to me that it would have been chosen as the target, especially seeing how other attacks (namely the a certain one on September 11th) were targeted not at the most strategic places, but at the most boasted locations.

B) For many many years, Britain effectively controlled a great many countries around the world as part of their empire. So what do we have as a result of this? Odds are very good there are many small groups out there who hold a deep seeded hatred towards the Isle for this. I mean lets not beat around the bush here people… The queen of England was the empress of India! She never even went there… This can’t be expected to sit very well with people of a region. Sure, over time feelings would have been suppressed, but things like that are not simply forgotten. Hell, there are still religious wars going on over things that happened over 2000 years ago. It’s amazing how long the memory of a culture is.

C) When it comes to allies, Britain makes no question in anyones mind that they’ve got close ties with the United States, and for all intensive purposes, the USA is probably one of the most loathed countries on the face of the planet by many fundamentalist groups. But they couldn’t attack the USA again directly, that’d just be summed up to a “copy-cat” group, or some other trivial thing. So they chose to target one of the countries the USA calls friend. Am I saying that they this attack was indirectly aimed at the USA, and that they had no reason for attacking Britain on its own? No. I’m simply pointing out the relationship that does indeed exist, and crossed my mind… Believe me when I say, I don’t think this attack had anything to do with the USA, I’m just attempting to cover all bases.

So now you’ve heard my mind attempting to figure it out. These statements are still being worked thru in my head, and in the end, I doubt I’ll ever fully understand the reasoning behind it. However, I can say this with the utmost of certainty:

“To all those out there who were affected by this tragedy, I pass on my deepest thoughts and hopes for the safety of your friends, family, and loved ones. May you and yours make it out with as little of loss as possible, and whatever loss you do suffer, know that there are people out in the world who are mourning with you. You are not alone.“