Today belongs to those who hang between life and death. But tomorrow it belongs to we the living to begin to come to terms with this event. After 911 America rallied around the executive, after M11, the Spanish people rejected their leadership. The reaction of grief, in both cases, overwhelmed all else, but it then crystalized. In America we cannot build the tower that we imagined after 911, simply because it exists in an emotional realm west of the sun and east of the moon, unreachable through sunlit lands.

London has been the target of bombs before - the United Kingdom has born up against long terrorist struggles before. Over 1000 British service personnel and police died in the troubles beginning in 1963. There is no question of turning back. However, turning back from what? Iraq is not likely to be more popular now than it was yesterday.

The cruel paradox of this moment is that it highlights how George Bush has put America, and indeed the west, in a region beyond victory and defeat. We do not have the ability to win Iraq on terms that are favorable. Fantasies about a participatory Democracy in Iraq are just that, fantasies. But at the same time it is not possible to simply declare defeat and go home: Bush has created an alliance between the virulent totalitarianism of post-Saddam Baathism, and the vicious aggression of Al-Qaeda's militant theo-archical vision. The result, let loose in a "vast apocolyptic playground" will breed terorr and revolution as swamps breed malaria.

The reality comes to this: the decision of what J7 means will not be from commentary, or news reports, or talking points - it will be formulated on telephone calls and in pubs, in living rooms and in whispered church conversations. That reaction - for better or worse - will become the idee fixe. It will not be fear and panic. It will not be cowering. Indeed, nothing urges people to fight for their way of life more than it being threatened but not destroyed. Particularly not when the threat is encased in flesh. Economic and social woes often lead to despair and resignation, because there is no target for them. But a design from the hand of man is met with a fist.

There is no London Requiem to sing, but instead a racuous and noisy scherzo for a London Symphony, one that hears the blare of sirens as the horn call. When the noise passes however, there will be accountability. For the British, more than most any other people "Justice must be seen to be done."