Connect: Those familiar London place names - Aldgate; Edgware Road; Hackney; King's Cross; Liverpool Street; Oval; Russell Square; Shepherd's Bush; Stockwell; Tavistock Square; Warren Street; Westbourne Park - sound sadder now. Like tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of other Irish people, I've lived in or near some of those places and been to all of them dozens of times.
The Edgware Road runs north from Marble Arch to the old Irish centres of Kilburn and Cricklewood. Until a generation or so ago, Shepherd's Bush was another Irish stronghold. Like Westbourne Park, it's in inner west London. King's Cross is along the Euston Road from Euston Station, formerly the first sight of London encountered by armies of bleary-eyed, boat-and-train Irish emigrants.
Russell Square, Tavistock Square and Warren Street, just south of Euston Road, are close to London University, the British Museum and what used to be Dillon's bookshop (now Waterstone's). Oval and Stockwell are in south London, between Brixton and the Elephant and Castle. It's always been tough there. Aldgate, Hackney and Liverpool Street begin the Cockney East End.
Collectively, these places form roughly a three-quarter arc around central London. Only the city's south-west - Chelsea, Fulham, Wimbledon, for instance - doesn't feature among the sadder places. Mind you, even the name London sounds grimmer now. The city will survive, of course. It's survived much worse. But attracting home-grown British suicide bombers seems so unnecessary.
Like most Irish people, I've never been to Baghdad. I don't know its equivalents of Aldgate, Edgware Road and King's Cross. I know, though, that with more than 50 people murdered by bombs in London, the Baghdad equivalents will have seen 500 - perhaps closer to 5,000 people - similarly butchered. Still, distance and unfamiliarity inevitably dulls these victims' humanity.
That may be unavoidable, although we know that a child or parent or sibling blown up or a limb blown off or an eye blown out transcends place and religion and culture. It's neither easier nor more difficult to endure appalling loss in Baghdad than in London. (If anything, London's vastly superior medical services make it a better place in which to suffer trauma - but you get the point.) It's illogical to suggest that the attack on Iraq has nothing to do with the attacks on London. Of course, there's a link. It's really the strength of that link that's at issue. Common sense tells you that, in supporting George Bush's attack on Iraq, against the wishes of the marching millions, Tony Blair increased the likelihood that Britain would become a target for Islamic bombs.
In fairness, that's not the whole story. There is a strain of Muslim fundamentalism or "Islamo-fascism" abroad. But the bombers and would-be bombers of London's tubes and buses are not, as the raving right insinuates, a suicidal paramilitary wing of the anti-war movement. Only clowns, thugs or extremely manipulative and ignorant politicians could possibly argue that.
It seems unreasonable to suggest that London would have been bombed had Blair not supported Bush over Iraq. That cannot be proved, of course, and all sorts of sophistry, delusion and wishful thinking can be employed to argue otherwise. It was, after all, Blair's and his cronies' sophistry, delusion and wishful thinking that led to Britain's part in the attack on Iraq in the first place.
It's clear that Blair supported Bush because British prime ministers invariably side with American presidents on foreign policy. The "white man's burden" of Kipling's time - 1899 and the height of the British empire - has never quite been renounced and, if truth be told, most people in the Christian (at least culturally Christian) world like it like that.
Why not enjoy the power, possessions and privileges this world has to offer? Why not indeed (even if Michael McDowell would presumably characterise it as "self-loathing" even to pose the question)? But, like the link between Iraq and London, it's a matter of degree, and most sensible people acknowledge that the wealthy, white, culturally Christian world has too much. Yet most white people would prefer to have the most materially, rather than, say, being poorer than the yellow races or Indians or Muslims or black people. Again, that seems to be human nature, for other peoples would presumably feel the same for themselves. As always, it's a question of degree, but a means of distributing the world's wealth more evenly must be found.
Indeed, even in a tiny, largely homogenous society like this State's, the imbalance between people with too much and those with not enough is too great. Until the issue of world resources is really addressed, expect more plunder of the world's energy-producing regions because the wealthy world is now ravenous. We can expect them then to hit back - as in New York, Madrid and London.
While the IRA renounced the gun this week, in London armed police are storming buildings and have already killed one innocent man. To go to the US you now have to be fingerprinted like a criminal. Great.
Aldgate, Edgware Road, Shepherd's Bush and the rest are linked by the Iraq underground line. Admitting it is the minimum respect Blair owes to the butchered of London.