Washington Hands Al-Qaeda Publicity Coup

This city is completely baffled. Can anyone on your side help? Five days after we had four bombs explode on the London Tube and with everyone saying, stay calm and stay normal, US Air Force officials ordered personnel in Britain to avoid London, whether or not in uniform and including their families. The order has since been rescinded, but the damage is done.

London must be one of the safest cities on Earth. The only conceivable purchase the terrorists can get is by sowing fear, a fear which is statitistically irrational - Americans are more at risk on the roads round their bases than in the capital. Yet Washington handed Al-Qaeda a free publicity coup on a plate. It incidentally had every front page and every pub bar ranting about cowardly Americans, jeering at the US Marines "We are not afraid" website, which adds "We stand with our British brothers and sisters." For those of us who chant constantly against the fear culture of counter-terrorism, the military order cast a very dark shadow. But why?