The Obscurer

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.

I have just been watching the Breakfast programme on BBC1, and they have a reporter in Leeds, where it appears three of the four London bombers originated. During the course of his report(which you can watch here) Graham Satchell says he has been speaking to neighbours in the streets surrounding the houses raided by police yesterday; as a result he reveals the names of three men who lived in the houses in question with the obvious implication that these are the terrorists responsible for the murders in London. Satchell stresses, however, that these names have not been confirmed by the police.

Is it just me, or is that a disgraceful and irresponsible piece of journalism? At this stage this information is just speculation, and should we really be speculating about the identity of the murderers? What if the information is inaccurate, that the names provided are incorrect due to mischief or vindictiveness on the part of those interviewed by Satchell? Innocent men could have been maligned by association with Thursday’s horror.

More likely the information is correct, but still, before the police have released these details into the public domain the families of the men concerned are seeing their sons’ names splashed across national television. Like the other people who have lost family or friends in the London bombings they are just coming to terms with the fact that their loved ones are dead; except in this case they are also having to accept that their sons or brothers are suicide bombers, and murderers.

It seems a pretty appalling way to act to me, unless you think that the sins of the son should be visited on the father; and I don’t.

UPDATE: The Guardian, The Independent and The Daily Telegraph also name the suspects, as I now suppose the rest of the media must have done. Perhaps the release of this information has been sanctioned, but it does appear to have come from neighbours rather than from official sources, and as such the whole thing still seems a bit dodgy to me.

Via The Sharpener

WE DEFY TERRORISM

We pledge to assemble in London in a public demonstration of respect to the victims of the July 7 atrocity, defiance of the murderers who carried it out
and solidarity with the people of London.

This pledge was started by the Sharpener group blog, and is being hosted on Pledgebank.

To sign it, go here.

I won’t be signing the pledge, but only because there are all manner of practical reasons why I may be unable to get to London on any given day. I don’t want to make a promise that I feel there is a good chance I won’t be able to keep. However, suffice it to say that whenever the demonstration is held I will be either

• there in London
• stuck at work
• showing my solidarity at Exchange Square, Manchester (which was constructed out of the debris of the 1996 IRA bomb)

If I cannot make it to London, then I will be there in spirit, and I hope the pledge is as successful as it deserves to be.

For the second day running, London is the main story across the world’s headlines; so congratulations to the terrorists for that.
Congratulations also for leaving some husbands without wives, some children without mothers, and perhaps some parents childless. Some of the mourning may even be from the bombers’ own families. Well done.

What else have they achieved? They have reduced a bus to scrap and damaged some of the underground’s rolling stock and infrastructure. This will be repaired and replaced in time.

And they will have made the flame of islamophobia burn a little brighter in the hearts of certain morons. There are some blogs to be avoided over the next few days.

But beyond that, the achievement of the bombers ranks somewhere between nothing and fuck all. Whatever the killers aims, nothing will change; this is the lesson of history, of London and of the United Kingdom. We have been through this sort of thing before. And whatever the deluded may believe this is not a war, and planting bombs on rush hour public transport does not constitute a battle.

No, this was just a crime, an act of murder. Pure and simple.

The BBC is screening one of its adverts at the moment promoting their current affairs documentaries, Panorama and Whistleblower. I haven’t seen Whistleblower before, but the clip they are showing makes it pretty obvious what it will be about. We see a BBC journalist on board a plane, explaining how easily she has managed to get past security; the clear implication being that if she was so minded she could simply plant a bomb and hey presto, another terrorist outrage.

We regularly hear of such security breaches and how disturbing they are; Fathers4Justice getting through security at Parliament or Buckingham Palace, or Aaron Barshak gate crashing the royal party at Windsor. Now, clearly, these are serious lapses of security and should be dealt with, lessons should be learned; but occasionally I do wonder why so much time is spent worrying about such events when there are a plethora of soft targets all over the place which we can do nothing about?

Returning to that BBC reporter on board the plane; if she has a bomb then she will indeed be a risk to passengers due to fly on that aircraft; but presumably, if she has a bomb she will be a danger wherever she is. The problem is the bomb and the terrorist, not so much where they are.

Imagine that same reporter being in any number of different situations; imagine yourself being in any number of situations where you are surrounded by a large crowd of people. You are at a football match, in the Trafford centre during the January sales, at a level crossing with two inter-city trains approaching, in a traffic jam beneath a flyover at spaghetti junction while sitting next to a petrol tanker. Now, think what you could do if you were a suicide bomber packed with explosives, think of the havoc, the chaos, the death and destruction you could cause; and all without the merest breach of security, with no slip up required.

I think we have to be realistic about what we can and cannot do in a free society. I am not suggesting that we wave a white flag, that because there are millions of soft targets we should give up and not bother about security measures. We should maintain security, and tighten any loopholes we become aware of. More importantly we should concentrate on intelligence in order to prevent terrorist attacks – I personally am happy to make use of intercept intelligence (as are Liberty) – and when we identify those who are planning an atrocity we should of course swiftly arrest, charge and (if found guilty) gaol them.

Alongside this, however, I personally think it is sensible not to engage in the sort of activities that I believe will only encourage terrorism; you know the sort of thing, unjust wars of dubious legality, draconian security measures reminiscent of internment. Apart from anything else, nothing short of complete totalitarianism, a sort of The Prisoner meets 1984, can prevent terrorists from murdering people if they are determined to, and if the intelligence just isn’t available.

But I also think we really have to put the “war on terror” in perspective. I want to cry whenever I hear a high-ranking politician talking about defeating terrorism; such people shouldn’t be in positions of responsibility, they should be sectioned. Unless human beings evolve beyond all recognition some people will always want to kill others; if people are determined to commit a terrorist attack then they will, and there is little we can do about it. Terrorist are often just criminals with a cause; if you can erase both of these things then you can defeat terrorism, but we are talking about a Utopia now; and Utopia, of course, means “noplace”. Winning the war on terror will just never happen. In any event, we can spend all our time and energies trying to prevent terrorism, but that doesn’t prevent natural disasters like the tsunami causing more deaths than any terrorist could ever imagine.

And perhaps there is a lesson in the tsunami. Perhaps we should treat terrorist attacks as we treat natural disasters; we accept that they are going to occur. Of course we do whatever we can to prevent them, and to forewarn people about them, we do what is humanely possible; but in the end we just have to accept the way things are. Bad things are going to happen, and to think anything else means we are just deluding ourselves.