Average Londoners are reeling with shock at the bloody attack on Westminster Bridge and the attempt to get into Parliament. The gruesome rampage with the vehicle across the bridge left four people dead and more than 50 injured on the structure and in the waters of the Thames.
One of the dead is Kurt Cochran, an American who was in London celebrating his 25th wedding anniversary. His wife, Melissa, is hospitalized with multiple serious injuries.
After crossing the bridge, the driver of the vehicle then attempted to get into the Parliament building, but he was stopped by police – one of whom he killed.
The driver was shot and killed by police. He was identified as Khalid Masood – a British-born convert to Islam.
What a surprise.
And it’s no surprise that “average Londoners” are incensed by the attack while many of the political/media elite are downplaying the Islamic connection, all in the name of tolerance. Some have even suggested that it wasn’t terrorism at all.
The Muslim mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has said threats of terrorist attacks are “part and parcel of living in a big city.” After the Westminster attack, he said, “London is the safest global city.”
Given how things are today, that isn’t saying much.
A day after the attack on Westminster Bridge, police in Antwerp, Belgium, arrested a man who drove his car at high speed through the shopping district. Fortunately, no one was injured or killed, and the driver, a Tunisian national who lived in France, was arrested. Police found a shotgun, a collection of knives and a canister containing an unknown substance in the vehicle’s trunk.
The driver, 39-year-old Mohamed R., has been charged with “attempted terrorist murder.”
As I write, the French city of Lille is under lockdown, the result of shootings of three people, including a teenager, outside a metro station. Police say a car drove up, and shooters opened fire. There’s a suspicion it was a targeted shooting; the hooded shooter is still at large.
At about the same time, in a small town in southern Italy, a North African man has been arrested after failing to stop at a checkpoint, then driving his car at police, running over the foot of one officer and then jumping out of his car and attacking police with a knife.
It was a scene one might expect in a movie, but it was real – all of these are real – and it’s likely such situations will occur again.
ISIS and jihadists have urged such vehicle attacks, suggesting their followers use trucks to run over enemies.
Apparently, they’re following that advice.
Last July 14, in Nice, France, 86 people were killed and more than 200 injured when a Tunisian named Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drove his truck at high speed into a crowd of shoppers.
Then in December, a Tunisian man drove his truck into a crowd of people at a German Christmas market. Twelve people were killed and 48 injured.
Also in December, in what is believed to have been an ISIS-inspired attack, a man used his car and a knife to injure 11 at Ohio State University.
In February of this year, in Heidelberg Germany, a man rammed his truck through a crowd of pedestrians – the driver was shot and captured by police after he tried to attack them with a knife.
Do you see the pattern in this?
A speeding vehicle, driven by a solo driver armed with a knife, ramming into crowds, police are knifed when they try to subdue the driver and, frequently, the vehicle has weapons and ammunition in the trunk.
Oh, and the driver is Muslim – often from Tunisia.
No, no pattern. It’s all part of the risks of being in cities.
Thanks, Mayor Khan.
In reality, no thanks!
I, for one – and I doubt I’m alone – am sick and tired of being told we must be open and tolerant.
If I hear that “Islam is a religion of peace” one more time, I’ll scream.
I’ll believe it when I see all those “peaceful” Muslims standing up and being outraged by the horrors perpetuated on innocents across the world.
They don’t do it, so we can only conclude that the so-called peacefulness is a sham.
Count the bodies, the heads, the dead Christians, the kidnapped and raped young girls and boys, the churches desecrated and demolished, the museums, libraries and schools razed, the historic archaeological treasures destroyed, and whole towns and countries ravaged.
The news headlines we see – when media report truthfully – look like something from the Middle Ages or earlier. The violence and brutality are things civilized people thought belonged in the past.
And they do belong there. But, unfortunately, they’re here, and we face an enemy that believes and acts in the past and wants to kill us.
Yet we’re urged to accept these brutalities and reason our way out of them
That doesn’t work!
I remember right after 9/11, President Bush spoke of the “religion of peace” and urged Americans to go shopping and get back to normal!
I thought he was crazy then, and I feel the same today about anyone who says things like that.
Those “peaceful Muslims” have changed our lives radically. Look at the latest warnings about not carrying electronics into airline cabins because they could contain explosives.
Really?
I recall that Pan Am 105, a 747 en route from London to New York, was downed over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec. 21, 1988.
All 259 on board were killed, along with 11 people on the ground.
Two Libyans were charged with murder. One, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was found guilty and jailed, although a few years later he was released because he had cancer. He returned to Libya to a hero’s welcome.
The explosive? An IED in a cassette player in a suitcase in the cargo hold.
So much for packing electronics in checked luggage.
Until we clearly identify the enemy and take decisive steps to destroy them before they destroy us – the battle will be lost before we start to fight
How many more innocents on the streets of our cities will have to die before we really do something?
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