The London Bombings

The terrorist bombings in London today are a grim reminder of how everything can change in a instant. Only a day after celebrating the awarding of the 2012 Summer Olympics to their city, Londoners are now in deep sorrow for the 37 reported dead in the three subway attacks and the bus bombing that occurred this morning.

Terror experts have speculated that the London attacks were carried out to take advantage of the global media's attention on Britain during the Group of Eight meeting in Scotland and to exploit the emphasis of anti-terror patrols far from the British capital. Others add that the U.K. is being punished for its involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Me, I'm inclined to think the awarding of the Olympics to London had something to do with it as well. This is only a guess - I don't claim to be an expert on these matters - but I'm presuming that al-Qaeda had transit attackers ready to go in whatever city got the Games to demonstrate their ability to wreak havoc on the Olympiad itself seven years hence. (Beijing, a city under perpetual martial law, hardly needs to worry about such a thing as it prepares for the 2008 Olympics.)

Terrorists have a history of using the Olympics to subvert the deepest wishes of the host country. Munich hoped to use the 1972 Olympics as a showcase for a new Germany free of anti-Semitism, only for Palestinian extremists to kidnap and kill eleven Israeli athletes on German soil. Likewise, Atlanta hoped to demonstrate at the 1996 Games how the old South of right-wing extremism and bigotry had been purged, but Eric Rudolph, noted for his racist and misogynistic ultraconservative world view, bombed Centennial Olympic Park and re-affirmed the American South's reputation for random violence and intolerant nuts.

Maybe the attack in London wasn't coordinated with the Olympic bids in mind, but it certainly cast a pall on the 2012 host city's desire to unite the world in peace and harmony through sport. And Tony Blair's G-8 agenda for combating Third World poverty hardly helped the United Kingdom's image among radical Muslims, who live in the very poverty Blair wants to reverse, if not eliminate. With everything that's been going on in London alone these days (Live 8, for example, plus the Scotland summit), it was too clearly tempting a target for those who want to instill fear in Westerners.