The American Spectator

p> UNFLINCHING br> Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s Alive in London : /p> p>For the most part all observations are correct. London at large carried on well. Almost everyone is back to work. You find alternate ways to get to work. The attitude in the street seems to be one of derision. I have heard more than one person say that while the deaths are awful — the sad truth is that about three million people commute into and around London everyday. Not much an attack, Mustapha! The real problem is the BBC and the like. I heard more hand wringing and moral equivalency twits than I cared to stomach last night. All the usual suspects were trotted out — Tony “wedgie” Benn was wheeled out to spill his vintage bile. It’s all our fault, we caused it, if only we would “get out” we wouldn’t have these attacks. Of course thinking people know this is all so much tripe. Thinking people know that the Islamic terrorists have no desire to be “understood” by the west, they have one non-negotiable demand: that we die. Simple. They can’t be bought off. Won’t be reasoned with. To that I quote General McAuliffe to the Germans at Bastogne: “Nuts.” br> — Ron Pettengill br> London, United Kingdom /p>

As I read Bob Tyrrell’s comments about being in London yesterday when the me-go-boom faction raised its ugly head again, I was struck by the same calm, stoic view of the British on the TV channels.

Later, as I rode a shuttle bus back to where I park my car after fighting the commuter wars here in the U.S., the radio station the driver was listening to started playing Toby Keith’s “The Angry American.” When it came to the part so offensive to Peter Jennings and the MSM — “You’ll be sorry that you messed with the US of A/For we’ll put a boot in your a**, it’s the American way” — I started thinking about the historical reactions of the British. Over the years, one would have to cite cold, deliberate fury as one way they have taken care of this in the past. 7-7 will join 9-11 in the pantheon of infamy, no doubt about it.

p>P.S. My wife bet me that it will be less than a week before the first “progressive” cites this as an example (along with Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, WMD, Zarqawi, OBL, beheadings, kidnappings, car bombings, canceling Beany and Cecil, or any other lame excuse for indignant pseudo-righteous behavior) of why we need a timetable to pull out of Iraq. I didn’t take her up on that. br> —