Blasts in Britain

A few days ago I read about the bomb blasts in London the BBC website. The bombs exploded on Thursday 7th July during rush-hour at several locations, causing shock, carnage and destruction at 3 underground stations, and a bus (see map). The first blast occured on an underground train near Liverpool St station, the second and third near Kings Cross and at Edgware Road, and the fourth on a double decker bus. Seemingly timed with the Earth Summit meeting, these blasts killed around 50 people, and injured at least 700 others. People emerged from the underground, some able to walk but injured, some with broken bones, and many more were screaming and crying with shock and fury. By mid-morning the hospitals were flooded with the shocked and the injured, as Tony Blair flew back from the summit to London.

Tony Blair's comments from Gleneagles were:

The purpose of terrorism is not only to kill and maim the
innocent, it is to put despair and anger in people's hearts...It is by its
savagery designed to cover all conventional politics in darkness, to overwhelm
the dignity of democracy and proper process with the impact of bloodshed and of
terror...There is no hope in terrorism, nor any future in it worth living. And
it is hope that is the alternative to this hatred...The politics we represent
will win and will triumph over terrorism...These people who kill the innocent
and cause such bloodshed, they are responsible and they are solely
responsible...

While Tony Blair insists that the sole responsiblity of the bombing lies with the terrorists behind it, many point the finger directly at Blair. While acknowledging that primarily the responsibility lies with the terrorists, Galloway made his controversial opinion known at the House of Commons that day, deaf to jeers and haggles from fellow MPs.

Silence would be complicity. I am not prepared to be
complicit when people in Iraq and London are paying a blood price for Blair's
bizarre special relationship with Bush...rotten government with a rotten foreign
policy...If you go on bombing other people they will go on bombing us...(Blair
should) cease its obscene special relationship with the worst US president
ever...I don't believe Mr Blair or Mr Bush are capable of solving this problem -
I believe they are the cause of this problem...We will threaten the safety of
our citizens and our interests unless we change political course.

(Taken from BBC website)

When I read the news about the blasts I felt angry and powerless. I could not imagine the terror those people must have felt when the bomb went off, it broke my heart that so many were injred, some fatally. Moreover, this is my country; when I leave Korea, this is what I have to come back to. My generation in England has never experienced the horrors of war or terrorism first hand, yet it is my generation that has to clean up the mess that my parents' generation has created. Of course, this has always been true from one generation to the next, but in the advent of swift communication, clever technology and frighteningly destructive weaponary, we have a bigger challenge ahead of us than has ever been recorded in world history. Soon there will be no one alive to put pen to paper.

I remember when I turned on the TV on 9/11, and watched the first showing of the footage of the of the first World Trade Center building collapsing, I said immediately:

"This is US governments' punishment for its international policies. They cannot expect to swing its arrogant weight around and not get any form of backlash".

While I feel for the victims of all terrorist incidents (and their families), I cannot help but agree with Galloway. In a city were I am the only person from England, my sense of patrionism is sharpened. I jokingly applaude my students for wearing clothes displaying the British flag, and am impressed by Jiwang dutifully wearing his trousers that stretch the flag right across his buttocks. However when questioned upon my opinion of the British government, my answer to Koreans, Canadians, and Americans is always the same:

"I am deeply embarassed by my Prime Minister. I feel almost ashamed to be British".

I was shocked and dismayed when I heard the news in Korea that Blair won his small majority; I had kept my fingers crossed that he would not come to power again. It is not, in my opinion, what I call responsible voting. Perhaps 51% of the British public are satisfacted with his national policies, but the vast majority are deeply unhappy with his international ones. We have long feared blasts in London, but hoped that it would never happen. Now we are faced with the harrowing reality of the consequences of Blair's courtship of the American government, and it is the innocent who suffer. Perhaps next time, those who voted will think a little harder before slotting the ballot paper into the box. These photographs are caused not only by the terrorists, not only Tony Blair, but those who voted pro-Blair.

When I saw In-ja's baby for the first time, I felt sorry that she had to be brought into a world as terrible as this.

13/07/05

My mother sent me an email informing me that someone I know was permanently injured by one of the bombs. I am so unbelievably angry.