The Obscurer

The Stockwell shooting was a tragic event, and people are understandably discussing where this leaves the “Shoot to Kill” policy for dealing with suicide bombers. The problem with much of the comment I have read and heard on this matter is that many seem to have jumped to their conclusions the moment they heard the words “police officers have shot…” on the news. Some people’s instant reaction was “Ha! Got a terrorist,” while others thought “Ah! Another bloke with a table leg”, before any further details had emerged.

That it subsequently transpired that the dead man was an innocent Brazilian electrician doesn’t really seem to have shifted many (I don’t know of any) from their original stance. It has of course emboldened those who originally criticised the police, prompting further points arguing that if the police “knew” Jean Charles de Menezes was a suicide bomber, why didn’t they tackle him earlier, the moment he left his flat? Further, if they thought he was packed with volatile chemicals then why did they jump on him to detain him prior to shooting him in the head? Those who initially cheered the shooting have tended to reply that this is a war and accidents will inevitably happen, that in the rough and tumble world of global terrorism some innocent people are going to get shot, and anyway, what was the idiot running away for, and why was he wearing that coat?

What seems to be lacking from either of these positions (and I am not suggesting that these are the only opinions out there) is any sense of empathy for or understanding of the situation, a lack of any attempt to put oneself into the position of either de Menezes or the police.

I can honestly say that I don’t know what I would do if people in plain clothes carrying firearms confronted me, but I suspect I may well panic and make a run for it. Similarly, even if I was aware that the people approaching me were police officers, and yet I knew my visa had run out (as has been suggested), then I may well act in exactly the same way, not for one moment considering that I could be shot as a consequence.

At the same time, how would I have handled the situation if I were a police officer? Perhaps I could have approached de Menezes as he left his flat, but all that may have achieved is to have brought his fatal dash for freedom forward by a few minutes. More likely, the police didn’t know he was a suicide bomber, but he was a suspect, and on following him they became more suspicious and concerned until eventually they felt the need to act (there is also the suggestion that the officers on surveillance weren’t armed, which could have prevented them intervening in the first instance). Now, as to later jumping on a man you believe to be strapped with explosives; this may well seem a foolish act, sat as I am in the calm atmosphere of this room typing away on my PC, but if I thought I was following a suicide bomber as he headed onto a tube train laden with passengers – and if I were far braver than is actually the case – then I can imagine I would take my chances by trying to bring him down rather than just letting him do his worst on the train carriage.

What seems absent from much criticism is an understanding of people’s fallibilities, an intolerance of human error under the most extreme situations. Hence suggestions that by making that fatal error in running away from armed police during the current tense climate, de Menezes was therefore “asking for it”. In some criticisms of the police’s actions (such as by questioning “if the police officers thought he was a suicide bomber, why did they…”) the logical conclusion of the line of reasoning seems to be an implicit suggestion that the police knew de Menezes was an electrician, not a terrorist, but killed him anyway. This is not impossible, but seems a somewhat improbable explanation.

But of course we know that people are fallible; we know that, surely, from our own actions in life, but also from the accounts of the eye witnesses at the incident; one of whom mentioned the infamous “unseasonal” coat, another who stated he saw wires popping out of de Menezes’ jacket, a third who said he heard the detonators of the terrorist’s bomb exploding as he entered the train.

I am left to reflect that, unfortunately, I don’t know how else the police are meant to stop someone they are certain is a suicide bomber other than to use potentially fatal force as a last resort. In accepting this fact, then I also have to accept that mistakes will be made, as the only time you will know for certain that a suspect is a suicide bomber is when he detonates his explosives; in the meantime the officers have to work on reasonable suspicion. Perhaps on further investigation it may well turn out that in this specific case a reasonable suspicion was absent, and it is of course right that this incident is fully looked into, that the police’s actions are scrutinised and questioned, that lessons are learnt and perhaps that procedures are tightened up to try as best as possible to prevent such an event from happening again. That said, I can well imagine that in a future incident, if there are new, more rigorous procedures, and if police officers do act with more caution and discretion (or simply freeze and fail to act decisively) and a suicide bomber subsequently does blow up himself and others, then again the police will be criticised. Human error can work at both ends of the spectrum.

We can speculate all day about what actually happened, informed, as I have said, by our instant responses the initial news story; but until the IPCC have concluded their report I will have to put this all down to a tragic accident, a terrible incident for all parties involved. I am glad I am not a police officer charged with making such decisions; but I am also glad that I was not put in Jean Charles de Menezes position, whose last moments must have been filled with uncomprehending horror.

PostScript: So, are you not afraid, or are you fucking terrified? Six out of my last eight post have been in some way connected to the London terrorist attacks and their aftermath, and I hope that I can move on a bit now and talk about a few different issues. I don’t particularly want to sound like a broken record, although I probably do most of the time anyway. While I am at it, can I suggest some sort of moratorium on “liveblogging” for a while? It has its place, and NoseMonkey’s was very good on the 7th of July for example, but some now seem to be being done more for the sake of it, mixing speculation on the basis of rumours with updates on what Sky News is saying (a service I believe is already ably provided for by, er, Sky).

So the next post from me is likely to be just a picture of my son in his new City away kit; either that or a liveblog of the 2nd test match at Edgbaston. You have been warned.

Yesterday’s leader in the Telegraph was full of righteous indignation about “the ‘buts’”; people who were “lining up to suggest that the (London) bombers had been forced into their terrible actions by the policies pursued by our own government”. It continues

The idea that Iraq – or even Palestine, a cause notoriously ignored by Arab and Muslim leaders until the 1990s – explains the campaign of death now waged against the West is so false as to be contemptible.

I think this is part of what I was talking about in my previous post when I said “although I don’t want to try to pin the blame on Blair for the London bombs, I am not that happy about letting him of the hook either”. Anxious as I am not to spread the blame where it is not deserved, I also don’t want a flat out rejection of the possibility that Iraq may in part explain the motivations of the London bombers. To say “Iraq has nothing to do with this”, as certain government ministers have been doing, seems to me like a dangerous denial, just as similarly saying “this is all Blair’s fault” is plainly stupid. The Telegraph does say that “It is surely undeniable that Iraq and Afghanistan have contributed to the radicalisation of Muslims across the world” but then pretty much tries to ignore this fact by saying “those conflicts have stimulated an attitude which existed quite independently of them”, continuing with this tired mantra that “the West first felt (al Qaeda’s) force with the bombing of the World Trade Centre in 1993”. So, is the Telegragh really suggesting that because al Qaeda existed before the Iraq war, then Iraq cannot have any bearing on events that have occurred since? This is just nonsense.

I have long thought that terrorism is just criminality with a cause. Criminology of course studies what causes people to become criminals, and in the case of the London bombs a good place to start could be to look at what it was that drew those particular bombers towards their twisted ideology. It seems likely that Iraq played a part in this, and to deny this is to potentially lose a valuable understanding of the terrorists’ reasoning. Of course there will be many other factors involved, otherwise everyone who opposed the war would become a terrorist, but if we choose to ignore the possibility that the war can have at least partly influenced some individuals in their journey towards terror, just because it may be embarrassing to those who have supported the war, then we may wilfully lose a part of the understanding regarding what makes some terrorists tick, and so fail to learn some vital lessons. At the same time, to characterise “The real project” of the Islamists as “the extension of the Islamic territory across the globe, and the establishment of a worldwide “caliphate” founded on Sharia law and the temporal reign of ayatollahs and imams” appears to me to be an over simplification. That may indeed be the aim of the generals, but not necessarily the foot soldiers who may have been drawn to radical Islam for all manner of reasons – peer pressure, disaffection, brain washing – and may not have signed up for everything in the al Qaeda handbook. Of course we have to fight the generals, but we also have to deal with the foot soldiers, and hopefully act to ensure that as few people as possible join their ranks.

To try to understand the bombers is not to empathise or condone, it does not mean you are trying to justify their actions, it is not an attempt to shift responsibility or culpability from the terrorist to elsewhere; it is, as it says, an attempt to understand what is going on, and to see how we can prevent such acts in the future.

You can see why those who supported the war would want to deny any role for Iraq, but I think that if I were in the pro-war camp then I would not act this way. If I thought the war was the right thing to do then I would stand by that belief, and say that even if the war may have influenced some into commiting terrorist acts then it was still for the greater good. Surely the people who supported the war must have known there was a possibility that it would provoke a backlash; to now seek to deny any link between Iraq and the bombs means we may not learn anything from those tragic events.

Meanwhile, Telegraph columnist Mark Steyn continues to spread himself ever more thinly by writing for a host of other publication. His website lists about 13 titles he currently writes for. With so many commissions he must have to dash them off on the hoof, and so it is little wonder that as a result he usually talks a right load of old shite.

This article for The New York Sun features many trade mark Steyn-isms. There is the hyperbolic title (“Islam’s Anschluss”), the nod that anyone who disagrees with him is an anti-Semite (by quoting some dick who has written to him saying “ bet you Jewish supremacists think it is Christmas come early don’t you?”) and a fair dash of Islamophobic bollocks (“When France began contemplating its headscarf ban in schools, it dispatched government ministers to seek the advice of Egyptian imams, implicitly accepting the view of Islamic scholars that the Fifth Republic is now an outlying province of the dar al-Islam”).

But then, surprise of all surprises he actually makes a point I had not considered before, namely that

when one contrasts the vast number of British, European and Canadian jihadists who’ve turned up in the thick of it in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Iraq, Israel, Bosnia, Chechnya and beyond with the relatively insignificant number of American Muslims so embroiled, one begins to appreciate that the Great Satan is indeed a relatively effective seducer — at least to the extent that America seems to be doing a better job at assimilating Muslims than Europe or Canada

Now this is an interesting point, and again something we could do with understanding and learning from. If Steyn’s assertion is correct then there may still be a simple explanation, that more Muslims in the States are African Americans and followers of the Nation of Islam, and so perhaps do not feel the same link with the Middle East and Arab regions compared with those Muslims who live in Europe; but I don’t really know and I am not sure how to find out. Whatever, I still think it is still an interesting observation.

It would be wrong to say that this is the first time Mark Steyn has ever made me think; however, usually all he makes me think is “What a knob!”. These are strange days indeed.

Now a week has passed, is it okay to use the London bombs to make a political point? I would say not, that it is never appropriate to use such a tragedy to advance your political opinion, but we do, all the time. We comment on events to illustrate why our view of the world is correct, and often such events are by themselves tragic. People of all political persuasions will point to incidents in Iraq, for example, to justify their own opinion on the war on terror, so why not use the London bombs? Do we hesitate to use the killings as a political football just because they occurred in Britain, just over a week ago, and so feelings are still raw? If so, is that a good reason?

Some people are less concerned about grandstanding. George Galloway, of course, was quick off the blocks on the day of the bombings to say that he had argued “the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the government ignoring such warnings”. On Newsnight he defended his words by saying that Bush and Blair had already used the bombs to justify their war on terror. He was right to say that Bush in particular had stated that the bombs vindicated his foreign policy, but I am not sure that saying “he started it” has ever been a very good justification of ones own actions (the interview, with Gavin Esler, was amusing for the charge from Galloway that Esler lived in a “bubble”, whereas “almost everyone” else agrees with Galloway. What an irony).

My instinct is to say that we shouldn’t be using these events to bolster our own arguments. We don’t know, for example, if it was the Iraq war that angered the bombers so much that they decided to kill themselves and others (although the fact that they were British suggests to me that it is likely to have been an important factor in their reasoning, since the rights and wrongs of the war have featured so heavily in domestic discussions). However, one of the reasons I opposed the Iraq war was because it could make terrorism more likely, not specifically in Britain but certainly in the world. If it could be found that there was a direct link between the war and these murders in London why shouldn’t I make this point? If the bombs can be proved to be in part a consequence of the war, should Blair be held in anyway responsible, even slightly? Wouldn’t he happily claim responsibility if it could be proven that the war had reduced terrorism overall? Didn’t he stress when he argued the case for war in Iraq that he would be responsible if we did nothing and Saddam did link up with terrorists to attack the UK?

This discussion of “responsibility” reminds me of a post by Norman Geras a few months ago where he basically absolved the coalition forces of any blame for action perpetrated by the insurgents in Iraq. As an analogy he said

Were the Japanese themselves responsible for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Adolf Hitler was responsible for many terrible crimes during the Second World War. But the fire bombing of Dresden?

In response I said

But can actions really be so separated from their consequences? Sure, Hitler and the Luftwaffe did not drop the bombs themselves on Dresden, and Bomber Harris and the RAF must take ultimate responsibility for this action, but did Hitler bear no responsibility at all? Were the seeds for Dresden not sown in the decision in September 1940 to launch the Blitz, and deliberately target the civilian population of London. Or do the roots not lie further back, in the invasions of Poland and Czechoslovakia, the anschluss with Austria, the desire for lebensraum.

Reading my words again feel I still have a point, but do I? Is it just perhaps very easy to burden Hitler with further responsibility for the actions of the RAF, when in fact that is not deserved. Similarly while I am unhappy about Islam being blamed in the aftermath of the London bombs, I am more comfortable with people criticising the BNP; but just because it is easy to shove more blame the way of the racist scumbags, it doesn’t mean they are at fault on this one.

The thing is that although I don’t want to try to pin the blame on Blair for the London bombs, I am not that happy about letting him of the hook either. Just because I don’t particularly want to hold Blair responsible, is that any reason not to, if the bombs were in some way a consequence of the war? Is it just politeness not to criticise him in the aftermath of horror? And if Blair cannot be held responsible, does that free him (and anyone) from the consequences of his (or their) actions?

Or perhaps the problem is that whole word “responsibility”. It just seems wrong to say that anyone else, other than those with twisted minds who constructed and detonated those bombs, is responsible. Yet if Blair is not responsible, even to some tiny degree, but his actions can be associated with the motivations of the killers, then is arguing about whether “responsibility” is the correct word to use just an argument over semantics?

Perhaps I am fighting shy of allocating blame elsewhere because it is still all so recent and raw. Perhaps in five years time I will blithely share responsibility far and wide. But will that be because I have been able to take a step back and view events more clearly, or will it be because the senses have been numbed and cynicism set in? Perhaps the way I feel now is the clearer, more honest and human reaction?

I have talked in circles here I know, and if you have stuck with me to the end then well done. More questions than answers in this post – I think the “?” button on the keyboard is about to go – and my head hurts now with all my cod philosophising. In the end, perhaps the reason I am not blaming Blair is just because I don’t want to. For now it just seems right to say that full responsibility for these appalling killings rests with the bombers and possible associates, that nothing anybody else can have said or done could possibly be considered responsible, even in part, for such an act; and that is the end of it.

I think.