Editorial: Attacks must strengthen our resolve

Friday, July 8, 2005 | 9:08 a.m.

Americans woke up to the news Thursday morning that, once again, this time in London, innocent people had been killed or injured in a coordinated terrorist attack. TV images of the rush-hour attack showed rescuers loading horribly injured people onto stretchers. Interviews with authorities confirmed a mounting death toll. Later, newspapers carried stories of doctors and nurses who worked out of makeshift medical centers, providing initial treatment to burned and bleeding victims. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the attacks had the "hallmarks of an al-Qaida-related attack."

The words and images could not help but bring forth a flood of memories about past terrorist attacks, including 9/11. And they raised the questions: Will there be follow-up attacks, and where? These were natural responses, quite intended by the terrorists who conducted the attacks -- without warning -- on a double-decker bus and three subway stations. Coinciding with those initial responses, however, was an emotion that can be summed up in one word: Resolve.

It was evident that free people around the world felt resolve within moments of learning about the attacks, a determination to never allow defeatism to take hold when thinking of the ongoing war on terrorism. President Bush and other responsible world leaders are right when they say that the terrorists need to be tracked down and brought to justice, wherever they may be living their contemptible, cowardly lives.

Thursday's attacks on innocent civilians occurred as the G-8 summit meeting was under way in Gleneagles, Scotland, where leaders of the member countries were discussing how best to cooperate on such issues as hunger in Africa and global climate changes. Their beneficial objectives stand in stark contrast to the goals of terrorists, who really have no agenda other than killing and maiming and spreading fear and hate. British Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke for the Group of 8 and for the whole civilized world when he said, "We shall prevail, and they shall not."

It is this kind of resolve that will one day win the war on terrorism.