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As expected, yesterday's Tim Horton's "suicide bomber" is turning out to be more suicide, less bomber. The man was found with a gas can beside him. That's odd enough - why didn't someone stop or question a guy walking into the washroom with a gas can? - but a far cry from a terrorist. There's a sad comment in the fact that terrorism was most people's first thought and fear. I guess Al Qaeda and company have done their job well; the western world is hearing "Allah Ackbar" in every car backfiring. One wonders if that alone, short of substantial political gain, is the real goal of terrorism. Of course terrorists want to make people afraid, but we usually assume that they're using fear for some other end. What if fear is their only goal? Obviously they say and probably believe that they're working toward liberation or whatever...but only a great fool would look at the last 50 years of history and think that terrorism works. Living, as most terror groups do, in a dangerous and uncertain world, maybe they just want the comfortable west to feel like they do - afraid. It seems to have worked, to an extent, but people are marvellously adaptable. We might be easily startled, but we soon recover. In London, where the British ability to balance a teacup in a tempest survives, the Tube is still crowded and the tourist attractions still packed. In New York, even at the frayed edges of the scar of 9/11, life continues in the non-stop pulse of a city that never sleeps. The trains still run in Spain and the cafes are still open in Jerusalem. Bali is still beautiful and German discotheques are still jumping. We don't forget, but we do move on. Toronto, for a moment, tasted a bit of that fear. For an hour or two we imagined ourselves in that fearful world, cheek by jowl with the phantom terrorist who put us there. We imagined living with that kind of uncertain fear and (every Canadian's dream) seeing our city on CNN. Fortunately that was just our imaginations. Today we're back at Timmy's, drinking double-doubles and scarfing up TimBits. God bless the human ability to move on. |
