[Farren]

The victims have my sympathy, but I can't helping thinking "This is going on every day in Iraq". We are shocked by the bombings in London because they happened in a place where people are normally safe, far from the daily threats of a low intensity war.

But it strikes me as wrong to feel and express greater sympathy for Londoners than people across the length and breadth of Iraq - even moreso because that strong sympathetic reaction is a result of Londoners relative safety.

So the outpouring of outrage and sympathy that's come from all quarters makes me a little queasy, without similar sentiment being expressed on a daily basis over Iraq.

Fairminded people reading this might think "But there has been a great amount of horror and sympathy expressed over the invasion of Iraq and its consequences". Fair enough, but Iraqs had the equivalent amount of violence as the London bombings almost every day and the level of public emotion hasn't reflected that.

I know that emotional fatigue sets in. Even the most horrific ongoing events become mundane and lose their commentworthiness when they drag on so long that a pall of futility settles over them, whereas the London bombings seem like a fresh outrage.

But somehow for me they are not a fresh outrage but a continuation of the ongoing outrage in Iraq. And because that emotional fatigue has set in, my feelings are more of intellectual than emotional outrage.

I'm appalled at the bombings for the same reason I'm appalled about Iraq. And I'm appalled at the same people, not just the Islamic fundamentalists who see violence as the only means of communicating their extreme ideology, but the dangerously misguided and cynical Western leaders that are driving new recruits into the arms of those extremists with every tick of the clock, informed as they are by another kind of extremism that has risen in Western politcial culture.