Is This The Way The World Ends?

Following dramatic early morning raids in Leeds, the English police are revealing the results of their investigations into the bombs of last week. The bits of information I heard are that four men travelled to London from Leeds, met at King's Cross station, and were supposed to board different trains--going east, west, north and south. The three train blasts happened nearly simultaneously--the fourth bomb, on the double decker bus, detonated about an hour later.

The world reacted to these blasts as a confirmation that the Islamic hardliners continue to seek to disrupt the Western world. Terror alerts were raised and the world reacted with anger, fear, sorrow, etc. The continued viability of Al Queda was assumed and discussed.

But perhaps the story is more pathetic than we (or at least I) assumed. One of the four men connected with the bombings was found dead at the site of the bus bombing. While his age wasn't reported in the news I heard, he had been reported missing the day before the bombings by his family in Leeds. The reporter I heard said that "he had gone to London with some mates" and hadn't been heard from. A family liason officer was called in to interview the family in an attempt to locate the missing lad.

This is somehow even more chilling to me. These were not international operatives, who were planted in England and given some sort of cover in order to create a coordinated attack as part of an on going campaign of terror. These were four Yorkshire lads, carrying haversacks with their mates, young enough that one's mum becomes worried about his whereabouts.

According to reports from London, there was an interruption of service on the northbound line from King's Cross, and that may have led the fourth man to take a bus instead. Or perhaps he got lost, as he wasn't a Londoner. As a result, what was supposed to be a simultaneous series of explosions didn't happen as planned.

I find this disturbing for the same reasons that Timothy McVeigh was disturbing. This was not necessarily a threat from "others," but from one of our own. Someone who may have been born and bred down the street. Four "laddies" with the means to kill dozens of innocent people, and a disassociation from their own community, so that they do kill. There is no reason for what they did, no specific goal to be achieved--just destruction.

The disaffected are always with us--this is a sobering realization.