The terror attack on the London Bridge was not just an “incident”

By Jonathon Van Maren

It’s happened again—this time on the London Bridge, an English icon. Terrorists smashed a white van into a crowd of people, and then emerged with 12-inch long hunting knives and began to stab people. There were also stabbings near Borough Market, and three suspects are still at large. This is all barely a week after twenty-two people, mostly young girls, were murdered outside a pop concert in Manchester by a terrorist with a nail bomb.

One word jumped out at me when I noticed the story beginning to flood Twitter and Facebook a couple of hours ago: “Incident.” Nearly every media outlet was reporting an “incident” on the London Bridge, with some also mentioning an “additional incident” near Borough Market, which was incidentally characterized by men with knives intent on butchering British citizens. It was an odd word to be using, I thought. “Incident” sounds more like a fender-bender at a stop light, or a minor car accident that everyone walks away from. A second and third terrorist attack in only two weeks on English soil strikes me as an invitation to war.

The West is already at war, as we all know, but is ignoring that fact as best they can. These attacks are not normal, but they have become common. Millions of Westerners, myself included, have visited London Bridge. Imagine, for a moment, those pleasantly eating dinner and enjoying a summer walk when a weaponized vehicle begins crashing into bodies and crushing them into the cobblestones, only for the butchers to jump out and pursue the survivors. Can you imagine how the great European leaders of another time might have responded to the unprovoked killings of civilian men, women, and children?

England is no longer protected by the Channel. The tentacles of radical Islam reach into the mosques and the minds of young men who seem increasingly susceptible to radicalization in a godless and secular society, reaching for a robust ideology that promises to sacrifice them to the gods of war at great cost to the enemy. It is obvious to anyone with eyes to see that the so-called lone wolves are actually an enormous pack, and that a fifth column has been forming for sometime–a 2016 poll revealed that two thirds of British Muslims wouldn’t tell the government about an impending terrorist attack if they knew. Brexit cannot keep England safe. Not anymore.

British leaders will have decisions to make. What is the best response to the incessant attacks on innocent non-combatants in a war England has no desire to fight or even recognize? The one thing we know for sure is that inaction is no longer an option, and that radical Islam will continue to reap corpses uninterrupted unless they are stopped. Politicians will have to become leaders, and perhaps channel the spirit of that great cigar-smoking warrior, Winston Churchill. His defiant words the last time England was under attack by barbarians may echo again through the London fog: “If this long Island story of ours is to end at last, let it only end when each of us lies choking in his own blood on the ground.”