Menace in Europe Why the Continent's Crisis Is America's, too

Chapter 1 Europe on Five Dollars a Day and a Flamethrower I keep a spiral-bound notebook on my desk filled with miscellaneous notesthe usual collection of ideas that seem insightful at three in the morning but substantially less so at daybreak, ideas that may well have been insightful but have been lost to posterity because my handwriting is indecipherable, scraps of overheard dialogue, observations made from the windows of trains. One scrawled passage in particular stands out now. The date was July 3, 2005. "Within six months," I wrote, "there will be another major terrorist attack or political assassination in Europe." I am embarrassed to admit that my next thought, apparently, was that this would be inconvenient for me, since it would necessitate making major revisions to this book. Three days later, Trafalgar Square erupted in celebration at the announcement that London would host the 2012 Olympics. The next morning, as the rush hour drew to a close, four suicide bombers detonated themselves in central London, killing 52 people and injur- ing 700 more. Papers with headlines from the previous evening had not yet been pushed off the newsstands: "Blimey! It's London's turn!" said one, and I can only imagine how those jolly words must have appeared to commuters staggering off the smoke-blackened London Tube. Four more bombings were attempted on the London transport system two weeks later. This time, the bombs failed to detonate and the bombers survived, leaving behind forensic evidence that permitted police to ascertain their identities. Both the living and the dead bombers were British, born and raisedhomegrown monsters who had not yet been apprised of the news that democracies don't breed terrorists. Some were from comfortably affluent families. Some had been living handsomely for years on state benefits. It now appears that al Qaeda, which took credit for the attacks, recruited some of the bombers at a Muslim community center in Leedsone funded by the British government and the European Union.1 It was revealed in the weeks following the attacks that quite a number of British Muslims do not much care for their fellow Britons. According to a poll conducted shortly after the bombing, a full 32 percent of British Muslims agreed that "Western society is decadent and immoral and Muslims should seek to bring it to an end." Toward that goal, 1 percenta seemingly small proportion until one considers that this comprises some 16,000 British Muslimsdescribed themselves as willing, even eager, to embrace violence to destroy that society. According to the same poll, 6 percent of British Muslims saw the bombings as justified, 56 percent "understood why some people behave in that way," and 16 percent felt "not loyal towards Britain."2 This is not, of course, a problem limited to Britain: Every European country is now home to large populations of alienated, unassimilated Muslims who despise the West. As the portrait of the bombers became clearer, sharply illustrating these fissures in Europe's social fabric, a large cohort of the professional commentariat proclaimed themselves shocked. I believe I heard the same people, several months later, proclaiming themselves shocked by the news that Kate Moss uses cocaine. Those of us who had been paying attention were not shocked at all. This protest, for example, outside the U.S. embassy in London on May 20, 2005, was the kind of clue some of us had been noticing: Shouting, "Down, down USA; down, down USA," the protesters called for the killing of Americans, the death of the U.S. president, the death of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the bombing of Britain, andBerlinski, Claire is the author of 'Menace in Europe Why the Continent's Crisis Is America's, too', published 2006 under ISBN 9781400097685 and ISBN 1400097681.