This morning the media in London suggest to me that doves are starting to rise..
Most important of all, Blair's government appears to have persuaded the rabble-rousing mass circulation Sun, (owned by Murdoch) to carry a front page with him on it, calling for patience and calmness.
He has given an interview with CNN calling for - perhaps a significant new code word - dismantling the machinery of international terrorism, (but that when the targets are accurately identified Britain will be a full member of the US led retaliation - we know that already).
Bush is now calling on people to "Get back to work!" Despite his offensive and opportunistic appeal to narrow smug American prejudices (You are the best farmers, best workers in the world) there is something larger than America to consider. The global economy is now clearly seen as the most vulnerable. The WTC cannot fall any further, the world economy can.
Colin Powell, evident from this side of the Atlantic as the most progressive of the Bush government, emphasises the protracted nature of the war, and has another code phrase - that they must remove the incentive for anyone to support or foster terrorism in the world - yes a phrase entirely consistent with apocalyptic revenge, but also consistent with a longer programme of dialogue and justice.
We are teetering on a cusp in which the USA is realising that its arrogant insularity is not enough. Terrorism has become domestic. And the domestic is no longer just the USA. It is the world.
If the governments of the USA and Britain discuss these questions intensively, they have much to draw on in the sophisticated management of terrorism that is domestic - the terrorism of the IRA, involving the Irish, the English, and the Irish Americans, who were the biggest financiers of terrorism in the capitalist heartlands, in the last 10 years. That terrorism broke the ability of the City of London to resist by targeted attacks against a key financial institution like the Baltic Exchange, and against road and rail junctions. For months the City was barricaded off with special security arrangements.
And the lesson is that you talk to terrorists. Or certainly those close to them, who have reasons, sometimes all too understandable, to support them.
Meanwhile the International Herald Tribune carries an article from one of its columnists closest to the mood of Europe:
http://www.iht.com/articles/32719.htm
" Washington's Call for War Plays Into Terrorist Hands "
Today Wall Street may defy the laws of gravity, thanks to billions and billions of state organised support, to have a "patriotic rally" instead of opening with a fall of the order of at least 9-10% which is what has been registered in the rest of the world's stock exchanges in the last week.
But although "the electronis will be flowing" through the restored communication links, where will the spirit be? And as days turn into weeks sentiment will be extremely vulnerable to profit takers, and to those who, even in the heartland of capital, think there may be more important things in life than accumulation.
There is hope.
Please support the petition for Peace and Justice
http://www.thePetitionSite.com/takeaction/224622495
Chris Burford
London