Would-be Bombers in Britain

Well, this is just what you want to read 48 hours before touching down at Heathrow, eh?

A suspected Islamic plot to launch a huge bomb attack in Britain was disrupted yesterday in one of the country's biggest anti-terrorist operations involving 700 police officers from five forces.

More than half a ton of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, a basic ingredient of home-made explosives, was discovered at dawn in a self-storage depot in the west London suburb of Hanwell.

At the same time eight men aged between 17 and 32 were arrested in a series of raids in London, Sussex, Surrey, Luton and the Thames Valley. All are British-born citizens of Pakistani descent.
[...]
Hanwell is close to Heathrow airport and one of the suspects was said to work for LSG Sky Chefs, a Gatwick-based company supplying airline food. But there was believed to be no evidence that airports were the intended targets.

(The terrorism arrest in Ottawa yesterday may have been connected to the London raids. And guess where I'm spending a day before I fly to London?)

The terror plot, if any, was only in the planning stages; British police don't even have any evidence of a target. And the odds of finding myself in the middle of a major terrorist attack, even in London, are pretty low. I've been planning this trip for a long time, and it's going to take a lot more than this to keep me from going.

Everyone on the 767 will certainly be thinking about it as we begin our final approach, though.

The arrests - not to mention 9/11, Bali, Madrid and all the other major attacks in recent years - do illustrate the sheer dishonesty of the "chickenhawk" argument. You know that one - we're not actually members of the military, so we have no right to support military action, anywhere. (This argument is usually made by people who think actual soldiers are evil bloodthirsty baby-killers, but intellectual consistency is as foreign to these people as simple intelligence.) It's true that I'm in no danger of losing my life in Iraq or Afghanistan, and I'm hardly worthy of the people putting their lives on the line to keep us safe. (I'm sure a certain troll is already preparing his comment about "deluded right-whingers actually comparing themselves to soldiers". Right, Sir Robert?)

But any of us are in danger of losing our lives on the streets of London or New York. Terrorism is directed at civilians. That's the freaking point.

Posted by damian at March 31, 2004 07:34 AM