“It has long been clear that Europeans, especially Britons, could be attacked at any time. The attacks in Istanbul in November 2003 (57 dead) and the train bombings in the Madrid suburbs on March 11, 2004 (191 dead) were only the beginning. ‘No country,’ says EU counterterrorism coordinator Gijs de Vries, ‘can nurture false hopes of being safe.’ German Interior Minister Otto Schily, who flew to London on Friday to meet with his British counterpart, warns that ‘radical Islamists have also explicitly named Germany as an enemy.’

The Old Continent, once a place for Muslim extremists to withdraw and recuperate, has turned into a battlefield. Gilles Kepel, a French expert on Islam, is already referring to the current situation as a ‘fight for Europe.'”

I had a conversation with an Austrian student just before the beginning of the Iraq War. He argued that Europe could never support the US in its actions in Iraq because “we are surrounded on every side here”. I didn’t know how to respond. I don’t know that we did the right thing either – but making accommodation to people who harbor within them a group that explicitly wants to kill you doesn’t seem like a good plan either.