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It Doesn't Take Much
Rich Galen Friday July 8, 2005
In the wake of the terrorist attacks on London yesterday, all of the horrors of 9/11 came roaring back. How can this happen? How was it allowed to happen? What went wrong?
At almost every speech, during the question and answer segment, I am asked some variant of the following:
How can a relative handful of insurgents (read terrorists) in Iraq do so much damage in the face of 135,000 US troops?
My answer is always the same: The veneer of civilization is very, very thin.
About three years ago, two murderers spent several weeks randomly shooting people out of the trunk of their car in the Washington, DC area. Ten people. Three weeks. Three jurisdictions - Maryland, the District, Virginia - from near Baltimore to just north of Richmond, Virginia.
An entire region was paralyzed.
People in offices had very serious discussions about the safest way - no, the least dangerous way - to purchase gasoline because two people were shot buying gas; one in Maryland and one in Virginia.
The theory was to park with the gas cap facing the oil company's building; the vehicle between you and the street. You then started the pump and went into the building to wait until the pump stopped. It was generally accepted that paying with a credit card was faster than paying with cash, so that was the preferred method.
Think I'm kidding? The gas station I use in Alexandria, Virginia actually rented two mini-vans and parked them along the curb so you couldn't see the pumps from the street.
Two guys. One rifle.
People were afraid to go to shopping because a woman was shot in the parking lot of a Home Depot in Virginia and a man was shot in the parking lot of a Michael's in Maryland, another person was shot in front of a grocery store.
Children were driven to school, because a child was shot waiting for a school bus in Bowie, Maryland.
People stopped walking on the streets at night because a man was shot along Georgia Avenue in the District of Columbia.
The thin veneer of civilization had been pierced.
When the two men were caught there was a palpable sigh of relief. I wrote a column about the day they were caught titled, They Got the Guys.
In London, yesterday, a well-trained and highly motivated security force - a force which dealt with Irish Republican Army terror attacks for decades - saw the just how thin the veneer of civilization can be, and just how quickly the fabric of society can be torn.
No matter how many individuals are ultimately determined to have taken part in the attacks in London, it will hardly be more than a handful. But a determined handful is sometimes, unfortunately, enough.
The British, like their American cousins, will have to go through a wrenching examination of what was done which should not have been done; what was not done which should have been done; what clues might have been missed; what structural changes must be made.
Just as their American cousins have done, there will be changes, but the British people will adjust.
The London subway system will be re-opened maybe today, certainly by Monday. People will ride the subways and again the double-decker busses again. The theaters will reopen and the people of London will go back to doing ordinary things in ordinary ways.
The veneer of civilization is thin, but anarchy is an unstable, and therefore, unacceptable state of human affairs. From the earliest days proto-humans have banded together as clans or tribes in caves, in villages on manors, in city-states, or in nations.
The thin veneer of civilization is always repaired and civil society always triumphs.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A summary of the three-week murder spree; a lighter moment with yet another Mullfoto from Fayetteville, North Carolina last week, and an amusing Catchy Caption of the Day.
--END --
Copyright © 2005 Richard A. Galen
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