I generally like Applebaum's writing, but this article is completely thoughtless. These recent bombings failed because of dumb luck and the perpetrators' incompetence, and any attempt to draw larger lessons about Western society is fraught with moral consequences that Applebaum surely did not intend.

As a threshold matter, Applebaum's argument partly fails on its own terms. She says that the airport attack "by any measure ... failed." Well, yes, any measure except the burning jeep in the doorway that closed the airport and was still unapproachably dangerous hours later. The baggage handler who fought with the burning man was unquestionably a heroic fellow, but there's no indication that his intervention had anything to do with the jeep's failure to produce a larger explosion.

More generally, though, if the fact that the bombs to go off is a tribute to Western civil society, what does that say about the occasions when a bomb DOES go off? The 7/7 bombs killed over 50 people -- by Applebaum's argument that represented a failure of British society (but I'm confident that she doesn't actually believe that). The Oklahoma City bombing would constittue a failure of that city's parking enforcement. And how would Applebaum's thesis, comparing car bombs in London to car bombs in Iraq, explain the fact that terrorists have seized airplanes as weapons in the US but NOT in Iraq? It's much too facile to take the good without the bad, to argue that when a bomb doesn't go off it's a tribute to our skill but when it does go off it's just bad luck.

Again, the people who risked their lives in London to stop these incidents were heroes, without question. But the fact that they were in a position to do so was just luck -- luck that the terrorists were so unskilled that they allowed smoke and gasoline odors to build up in the nightclub cars, or so addled that they didn't detonate their additional explosives in the airport car. To suggest otherwise demeans the people who have lost their lives to terrorism in the West.

I don't think she was going all that deep, Tom. She was making a simple point about how nice it is that free people aren't always as soft and defenseless against terrorists as we might sometime make ourselves out to be.

terror attacks (failed or successful) are not going to cause British society to collapse.

Following the July 2005 attacks doom merchants were predicting that there would be a backlash against british muslims. An outraged population, ignoring the fact that many of the victims were muslim, would rise up and attack these "traitors" in our midst.

It didn't happen.

British foreign policy carried on unchanged and everybody who still needed to use the tube did so.

For those not directly effected, life very quickly reverted back to normal.

The only rational response that the public can make to counter terrorism is to carry on as normal whilst remianing alert to suspect packages/cars or whatever.

It saw us through the worst of the IRA and it will see us through this bunch.

We were lucky this time but the law of averages says that people will die sooner or later.

Pretty shitty for those directly involved but the good ship Great Britain will keep sailing on regardless.

If we pullout of Iraq it will be because the new prime minister thinks it is a waste of time, effort, men and money.

If we stay in Afghanistan it will be because the new PM thinks it is worth the time, effort men & money.

And vice versa.

It will have bugger all to do with the actions of terrorists.