As the third year since the catastrophic attacks of September 11, 2001, in USA approaches completion, withmuch of the world sliding, once again, slowly but steadily into a torpor of denial, terrorism has once againissued multiple reminders over the past weeks that liberal democracies everywhere are under siege.
The worst of shocks were reserved for Russia, where Chechen terrorists, apparently aided by a number of Arabnationals, took over 1,200 persons hostage -- a majority of them children -- in a school in Beslan. The bloodydénouement of this operation left 338 dead, including at least 155 children. But this was only the worst ofwhat Russia had already been subjected to in the preceding week: two Russian passenger planes were blown up,apparently by Chechen women suicide bombers, killing 89 persons on August 24. Then, on August 31, anothersuspected woman suicide bomber blew herself up, along with 10 commuters, at a Moscow subway.
In Iraq, on August 31, terrorists of the Ansar-al-Sunna slaughtered 12 Nepali hostages in cold blood, becausethey were "working for Jews and the Christians". A number of other hostages of various nationalitiescontinue to be under threat in the custody of a variety of Iraqi groups, including two French journalists, whothey have threatened to execute if the French government fails to lift its ban on headscarves for Muslimschoolgirls.
And so it has been over the past three years, with some tactical and operational variations. Americans,Spaniards, the French, Italians, Russians, Indians, Iraqis, Philippinos, Afghans, even Pakistanis and Saudis --the terrorists' now-ambivalent allies and supporters -- along with others of various nationalities, haverepeatedly been targeted over the past three years by Islamist extremists hell-bent on imposing theirfantastical vision of a 'cleansed' and 'Islamised' world order.
The liberal democratic response, however, has been, at best, tentative and inconsistent. Indeed, the patternof Islamist terrorist attacks is itself at least partially responsible for this. While targets have beenattacked across the world, there has been no attempt to engineer simultaneous attacks in a wide range ofcountries.