On Thursday, British officials appeared to have foiled a plot that would have seen terrorists detonating liquid explosives in several airplanes headed from the United Kingdom to destinations in the United States. Using materials placed in the normal plastic packaging of soda bottles or haircare products, the terror cell had apparently hoped to kill thousands of people, thus rivalling the number of victims claimed by the Sept. 11, 2001 strikes on New York and Washington.

As with the July 7, 2005 bombings of London's public transportation system, the suspects this time also include the Britain-born children of immigrant Muslim families. German editorialists on Friday approach virtually every aspect of the foiled terror plot. Some blame US and British policies in Iraq and the Middle East. Others accuse Britain of having done too little to address the problem of extremism before Sept. 11, 2001. And others say that Britain's anti-terror laws are already discriminatory since they are mostly applied to ethnic minorities. The only thing all the papers seem to agree on is that the worst is yet to come.

"Five years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks this is just one of many new terrifying developments," writes the center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung. Increasingly, the paper argues, Islamic fundamentalists are dictating the agenda of international politics. All over the world, they're forcing the West to go in the direction where they want it to go. "In Lebanon," the paper writes, "the Hezbollah militia has entangled the Israeli army in a hopeless war. In Iran, a religious zealot is defying the United Nations with nuclear plans and dark threats. And the list of Islamic attacks in the Middle East, Europe and elsewhere just gets longer and longer." During the past five years, the battle between militant Islamists of all types and the West has become the biggest global conflict. "The most depressing aspect is that Western nations like the United States and Britain fanned the flames of this escalation wherever they could." The worst decision made by US President George Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was to wage war in Iraq. "By doing so, America mutated from the victim of Sept. 11 to a cold aggressor." The invasion, based on audacious lies, the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib and the lasting disdain for human rights at the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay has discredited the USA and in the Middle East and further abroad and it has eroded the country's moral and political credibility." This weakness emboldened Iran to threaten the West with a nuclear conflict. In the meantime, the approaching civil war in Iraq is threatening to destabilize the entire region. And terrorists were barely run out of Afghanistan before they had the chance to create a new base in Iraq.

The paper also claims that Britain did little to stop the problem of radical Islam at home until it was too late. The country still permitted Islamist "preachers of hate" to spread their message until the Sept. 11 attacks. "As long as they were just recruiting jihadist fighters for the Chechen war, the government just considered it to be a personal matter." But the moratorium in Britain on Muslims criticizing the government or vice versa ended for good with the outbreak of the Iraq war. Describing the July 7, 2005 London Underground and bus attacks as "almost inevitable," the paper says "the only surprising thing about them was that the culprits were integrated British citizens." The paper concludes: "The Jihadist call to arms has now reached people we once thought were harmless."

The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung also picks up this thread -- calling the foiled plot a serious wake-up call for British people. "As much as the news out of London appears to be a success in the war on terror, there will have to be many more to ensure public safety," it writes. The paper goes on to argue that it's getting harder for police to do their jobs than for terrorists to do theirs: "Police aren't allowed to make any mistakes, but the terrorists don't have to pay attention to anyone." Now the paper says, people in Britain have awoken to the reality that many of the suspects arrested in the terror sweep were born in their country. Unlike the Americans after the attacks in New York and Washington, the paper writes, the British can't take solace in the fact that enemies from abroad were trying to destroy them. The paper applauds British Home Secretary John Reid for prudently saying that all Brits, regardless of their origins, had been threatened by the terrorists.

German business daily Handelsblatt praises Scotland Yard for successfully averting a terrorist attack. "The British showed with their perfect police mission that we can fend off megalomaniac terrorist plots," the paper writes. However, the editorialist expresses concern that other countries are less prepared to ward off a potential terrorist attack, including Germany. Countries, that have been living with terror," such as Spain, the United States and Israel, already have constant heightened security and somewhat stringent entry requirements. In Spain, for example, a security check takes place before passengers can board international trains -- a procedure not practiced on most parts of the continent. The US, meanwhile, has introduced greater security measures and biometric passports. "Compared to those security standards, we in Germany are still living in a comfortable bubble," the paper warns. So far, no one here faces the kinds of restrictions on personal freedom that people in Israel face. The paper argues that people should think about that fact before going too far in criticizing Israel for its invasion of Lebanon. The paper concludes: "It is easy to complain about others' 'aggressiveness' as long as we are living unmolested."

The Financial Times Deutchland speaks of a "spectacular success" for security authorities in Britain, but believes that will do little to calm public nerves. The editorial warns that "the alarm in Heathrow again shows the dilemma free societies face when it comes to fighting terrorism." The threats are potentially lethal, but the danger is at the same time vague and incalculable," meaning it is easy for the government to make mistakes when responding to potential terrorist threats, prompting blame from the population. The question now, the paper asks, is: "Should security officials be given more power to address threats perceived as imminent?" It is natural and appropriate to distrust the government in any democratic society. But, it concludes: "Citizens need to understand that insisiting on their rights has a price in today's world. There are no innocent answers, and one must find the balance between the different risks."

Germany's most widely read newspaper, the tabloid Bild, puts it more bluntly. "No one in this world is safe from lunatics," the paper writes, "but the world can and must defend itself. It has the intelligence, the technology, the better ideas and the compassion. But we as mature adults must also accept that intelligence services, police and other state organs must be permitted to go to the absolute limits of their possibilities (in fighting terror). The right to privacy is good, but saving lives and containing terrorists is much more important."

Not so, argues the leftist Die Tageszeitung, which blames the tightening of anti-terrorism laws in Britain and the disproportionate and discriminatory impact they have had on ethnic minorities for an increase of tensions. "Irrespective of the Iraq war, which was based on lies, the British government set off a spiral with its anti-terror measures that doesn't appear to be anywhere close to ending." The paper takes Britain to task for the unlimited detentions the country implemented after the US attacks, which it says have mostly been used to detain foreign Muslims. After a British court ruled that such detainments were discriminatory, the government just started conducting house arrests of terror suspects -- "also using the measures against British citizens, namely British Muslims." It then continued to do so until a court ruled that that, too, was detention by another name. Now Britain's home secretary has threatened to change the laws that dictate the rulings made by judges -- a step that would "further diminish" civil liberties. "And, as in the past, these laws would primarily be used against ethnic minorities. In such policies of criminalization, intelligence agencies play no role. When it comes to searching, arresting or shooting, the only thing that matters is a person's skin color as evidenced by the police shooting death of the Brazilian man Charles de Menezes last year."

The conservative Die Welt calls Thursday's event a "success" -- for the terrorists. Once again, they have reminded Europeans of just how vulnerable we are. They have instilled "fear and horror" and they have literally interrupted the flight plan for half the world. "In addition, they appear to possess weapons now that will make mass murder even easier… Security experts have long warned that when it comes to issues of strategy and weapons use, terrorist groups are in a transition period and it is only a matter of time before they obtain weapons of mass destruction." The police and intelligence services may have prevented the worst this time, but the fear of the next attack remains. "Those feelings of insecurity are a factor that is destabilizing the West -- both societally and the economically," the paper laments. "Global airport security costs have soared into the three-figure billions since the Sept. 11 attacks. And after yesterday's events in London, that won't be nearly enough." The paper concludes that the West should use every means at its disposal to combat terrorism.