This Is War
On October 7 there was a bomb scare in Madrid, where from time to time the police closes off sections of the city because of a possible terrorist attack. These impasses are increasingly common in European cities, where fear of a terrorist raid is not just something made up by television and online media, but a very real possibility. A decade ago London and Madrid suffered bombings leaving hundreds dead or wounded and the recent “Charlie Hebdo” shootings in Paris were an appalling reminder that nothing has been solved since then.
On October 7 there was a bomb scare in Madrid, where from time to time the police closes off sections of the city because of a possible terrorist attack. These impasses are increasingly common in European cities, where fear of a terrorist raid is not just something made up by television and online media, but a very real possibility. A decade ago London and Madrid suffered bombings leaving hundreds dead or wounded and the recent “Charlie Hebdo” shootings in Paris were an appalling reminder that nothing has been solved since then.
An undeclared war between the Western world and the Islamic nations was outlined by American historian Samuel Huntington in his now famous article “Clash of Civilizations”, published more than twenty years ago. Since then his conviction that people’s cultural and religious identities would be the primary cause of hostility in the post-Cold-War world has proved to be frightfully accurate.
In April this year Syrian President Bashar al-Assad warned the Western world that the Madrid, London and Paris attacks were just the tip of the iceberg, referring to the Islamist terror campaign in Europe. According to the controversial leader –responsible for the civil war that prompted the European refugee crisis– terrorism isn’t a regional problem that only affects the Middle East but a global emergency.
On Friday 13th the European press doggedly referred to the Paris bloodbath as an “attack” and a “shooting”, till finally on Saturday morning President François Hollande pointed squarely at Islamic State (ISIL) and called the Paris carnage an “act of war”. The Western World is in a gridlock situation because we refuse to acknowledge that we are at war with militant Islam. Accepting it, as President Hollande has done today, is the first crucial step towards a now very distant victory.
