Me identifico bastante con la opinión de Simon Jenkins en The Guardian sobre el peligro de exagerar el daño que terrorismo islámico puede causar en Occidente. Según Jenkins la mayor amenaza a nuestro estilo de vida no proviene de cuatro fanáticos religiosos dispuestos a inmolarse sino de políticos que abusan del lenguaje del miedo para implantar su agenda orwelliana. Probablemente eso es lo que ambicionan también los terroristas: que cambiemos nuestro modo de vida, cedamos parte de nuestra libertad en beneficio de una falsa seguridad, y nos convirtamos en una sociedad con un pulso más débil y permanentemente asustada.
The danger in exaggerating terrorism is that there is an industry waiting to pounce. Murmur "war" or "state security" or "threat to civilisation" and the horsemen of the apocalypse will descend in cavalry formation. This week Lord West, the unelected security minister, indicated his total capture by the horsemen when he gave an interview to announce plans "to step up the fight against al-Qaida by unveiling a plan to protect every public building in Britain".
He says he wants to reinforce every shopping centre, sports ground, school, hospital and restaurant – even every church – against suicide bombers. With billion-pound budgets flashing, he is courted by cohorts of security consultants, defence lobbyists, building contractors, electronic warfare pundits, and health and safety fear merchants. He will not stop until he has allowed al-Qaida (which we are constantly told is "on its last legs") to drain the exchequer dry and reduce British citizens to gibbering wrecks of fear.
The British state, British tolerance and the British way of life are far more threatened by Lord West and his like than by any nutcase in a Pakistan madrasa. This abuse of the language of terror for political and commercial self-aggrandisement is disgraceful. It is precisely the cast of mind that Obama hoped to end. It strips the word security of all sense of proportion, and ends in the torture chambers of Guantánamo.
