November was – together with the US Presidential Election – the month of the Van Gogh killing and many argued that the Dutch had now experienced their 9/11. I was skeptical about that notion from day one, knowing very well that Dutch emotions can be short-lived after which stoicism and pragmatism take over. And I don’t mean that in a complimentary way as it comes pretty close to looking the other way and believing that disruptive events like Islamist terror will disappear and not make a return visit to the lowlands. This transcript from the Rush Limbaugh show has a Dutch caller arguing just that: reform of social security brought out some 200,000 people on the streets while the night Van Gogh was murdered some 10,000 turned out. Still a sizeable number but it puts it all in perspective, doesn’t it? That also goes for this unusual spectacle that dominated Dutch headlines for the better part of November, it helped refocus Dutch attention very quickly.

This also explains why there has been no instinctive link to Bush and the War on Terror. For the majority of the Dutch it remains hard to say al-Zarqawi, Margaret Hassan and Theo Van Gogh in one sentence. Uncertainty on how to deal with radical Islam in their midst, the inclination to act as if it will go away as well as the belief that old concepts will somehow yield a solution, that’s the net result of the Dutch trying to move on, four weeks after Van Gogh’s death. It will be up to the brave, Ayaan Hirsi Ali to name one, to carry on his work and to keep pointing to the threat that one day indeed may lead to a Dutch 9/11.