London Terror: Bush vs Bin Laden speeches

Mr Bush stood solemnly behind his close ally in the war on terrorism Mr Bush, looking severe, as Mr Blair pledged to defeat the terrorists. "We shall prevail and they shall not." (FT) Bush's speeches always begin by frightening the audience to death with terrorism and finishes triumphantly by rousing them to patriotic confidence in their country's future victory - his June 28 speech use the words terror and terrorism 33 times! (see Fisk's commentary)

As long as we sanction arrogant and presumptuous attitudes from our leaders, rather than expecting them to address the root causes of terrorism, we can expect more violence. Ironically, it is true that the G8 agenda this time is one of the most humanitarian seen in a long time: African debt and global warming. But selling freedom with one hand and enslaving for petrol with the other will continue generating violence.

Solution: listen and address Bin Laden's concerns, which are not so unrealistic: "..neither America nor the people who live in it will dream of security before we live it in Palestine, and not before all the infidel armies leave the land of Muhammad". Make Palestine a reality; stop supporting authoritarian regimes of the Middle East for petrol. (full text) He concludes "Your security is in your own hands. And every state that doesn't play with our security has automatically guaranteed its own security." (full text)

On this, Denmark had its warning..