I know that London's subways and buses were effectively attacked by "serious" terrorists in July 2005. I know Madrid's subway was horrifically attacked in March 2004. I'm not going to argue that there is no legitimate terrorist threat or that we don't need to worry or take preemptive action.
But these latest "attacks" in London and Glasgow were incredibly amateurish and posed little real threat of significant harm or destruction. Hell, the morons who tried to attack the Glasgow airport couldn't even get their vehicle through the doors, couldn't get it to explode, and couldn't even kill themselves after dousing themselves with gasoline and setting themselves on fire. Granted, we should try to prevent people from driving flaming vehicles into airport terminal doors, but these people were barely able to harm themselves, let alone anyone else. We need some perspective.
The "car bombs" in London: Two Mercedes, at least one of which allegedly contained about 50 sixteen gallons [60 liters] of gasoline, a few "patio tanks" of propane, and some nails. These morons were unable to even ignite them. But if they had? A few fireballs, a lot of black smoke, and maybe some "bangs." The cars contained no high explosives, and no source of oxygen. There would have been no significant blast wave, little or no shrapnel, and little destruction (other than to the cars themselves).
If you want to load up another "test" Mercedes with the identical contents and actually successfully set it on fire, I will volunteer to sit fifty feet away from it in a lawn chair, wearing nothing but shorts and a T-shirt, and safely watch you destroy your car by fire. That's about all that would have happened. Watch this:
Again, I won't argue that we don't face a real terrorist threat. But these people were not it. If this is the best that al-Qaeda can lob at us, I would feel relieved. Unfortunately, it probably isn't. The perpetrators of these "attacks" are apparently a bunch of would-be weekend terrorists, neither willing nor even able to die for their own cause. Let's keep these "attacks" in the perspective they deserve, and not start freaking out at the further expense of our civil liberties.