We mourn with the citizens of London.

We pledge to help track down and kill the perpetrators, the planners, and their helpers.

We note that it is 46 months after September 11, 2001, and that Osama bin Laden is still alive and at liberty. That somebody can plan September 11, 2001 and remain alive and at liberty provides powerful encouragement to those who think of following in his footsteps--including those who planned, aided, and carried out today's atrocity in London.

More attention to Osama bin Laden and his ilk, please. And less attention to using Osama bin Laden as a pretext for launching hair-brained neoconservative schemes, please.

First, getting at the underlying conditions supporting terrorism does not exclude dealing with individual terrorist leaders. That's an entirely false dichotomy. The fact that the group claiming blame for the London bombings has attached itself, if only in name, to al-Qaeda, is evidence of the power of that name in the aftermath of al-Qaeda sponsored attacks on the US. Five years ago, there groups were working under their own names. Now, they use the al-Qaeda name for effect. A-Qaeda and bin Laden are far from irrelevant.

Saddam provided cash to terrorists? Yeah, but so did lots of governments around the world, including the governments of Israel and the US. We just call them freedom fighters or phalangists or Christian militias or whatever. Going after nations that support terrorism makes for a long list. The problem is that terrorist attacks have increased worldwide since the US invaded Iraq. Even excluding attacks inside Iraq, the count is up. If the point to invading Iraq was to reduce the risk of terrorism, it doesn't seem to be working. Feel-good wars just don't cut it.