If you look at how Europeans have coped with terrorism the last 40 years, they didn't try to lock their societies up tight and make normal life impossible.
But I don't see that Europe has faced the same level of terrorism that we have. Their terrorist groups tend to be Western grouns -- the Red Brigade, Bader-Mendehof (sp) -- or nationalist -- Algerians in France -- not religious fanatics. As the lengthy article posted above pointed out, Westerners generally have more love of life than love of cause. You don't find many, if any, suicide bombers in Westersn terror groups. I doubt you could find twenty IRA members willing to die flying planes into London landmarks.
In addition, European terror groups are easier to infiltrate with Western agents than are Islamic terror groups. These groups speak the local language, so you don't need to recruit or train agents in a foreign languagge using a whole different alphabet in order to understand what they are talking about. Western terrorists are themselves Westerenized, and recruit from Western citizens, so it is easier to place Western agents in the groups.
Even in WW II it was easier to place allied agents among the population in France than it is to place US or British agents among the population in Saudia Arabia, Iraq, or Iran.
Really, the Europeans faced a quite different form of terror, which can't be compared with fundamentalist Islamic terror. |
