It is no secret that there are large numbers of angry Muslims in Britain and Europe. Many are antagonized by Western liberties that threaten their puritanical village-Muslim norms; and some get into trouble by killing daughters guilty of such crimes as going to the cinema with boys who are not their brothers. Many are especially offended by the humiliating gap between Islam's promise of power and glory and the reality of weak Muslim states, two of which are now occupied by British and U.S. troops. Both resentments are often combined.
But while many are angry, very few reach the stage of joining the extremist groups that speak of using violence, and only a handful actually act, as in Madrid last year and now in London. One reason for that is simply that it is not so easy to assemble and detonate bombs. True, instructions can be found on the Internet, but it is much easier to talk of bombs than to make them. Nor can prospective terrorists receive help from al-Qaeda, for the very good reason that al-Qaeda no longer exists as an organization -- and since it was only that, it no longer exists at all.
Its surviving leaders from Osama bin Laden down have tried but failed to replace the training camps, logistics and command structure they lost in Afghanistan. All that remains is the brand name, which retains its appeal for angry Muslims everywhere largely because of the inexcusable failure to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, itself the result of the Central Intelligence Agency's incompetence.
So how do mere amateurs succeed in executing world-class terrorist attacks? By achieving minimum levels of competence -- more than good enough, given the infinite number of vulnerable targets in advanced Western societies.
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The first level of competence in terrorist actions is the successful detonation of explosive devices. By that standard, the group that carried out the attack was half competent or perhaps one-quarter competent: It is known that some bombs they placed did not explode, but it is not known how many unexploded bombs may remain to be found.
The second level of competence is the co-ordination of multiple explosions. A single explosion is indeterminate -- it could be an accident or a merely criminal act. But four bombs are certainly terrorism. By that standard, the group was quite successful: Less than 60 minutes passed between the first explosion at 8:51 a.m. and the last at 9:47.
The third level of competence is the selection of the right targets. In this, the Muslim group did not do well. Its four bombs that did explode did not hit prime targets in "official" London on the Westminster-Whitehall axis, or in "tourist" London on the Oxford Circus-Piccadilly axis, or in the " financial" London of the City. Instead, the bombs that did detonate hit targets without a coherence that would magnify their significance -- although perhaps there was more coherence in the total number of bombs, including the ones that did not explode.
As it was, the attacks were not concentrated to maximize political and psychological effects, and did not maximize casualties either: Anyone acquainted with London transport in the rush hour knows that the terrorists could have killed many more people if they had placed the bombs in certain other locations.
But what did happen was enough to create havoc disrupting a major world capital -- largely because the authorities reacted by shutting down their entire transport network, as they never did when London was being heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe. There is no immediate remedy for Muslim disaffection, nor can the tiny minority of activists be intercepted before they set off bombs. But we can and must learn to underreact, to reduce the incentives to further attacks.
Edward Luttwak is a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
