Wrong one down
Jul. 24th, 2005 12:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
webofevilYou don't need me to tell you that the death—the execution—of an innocent man on the Underground is a disaster. Still, here I am anyway.
One thing I have to stand by, though, however hard it is to swallow, is the decision to fire. Jean Charles de Menezes was, at that moment, a suspected bomber, and the second he ran on to that train the officers’ range of options dwindled to a single point. It’s not the man who pulled the trigger who should bear the brunt of the shitstorm that’s about to fall—although he's almost certainly the one who'll be charged—but the people who provided the “intelligence” and “leadership” that led straight down to Stockwell’s northbound platform.
Incidentally, that’s how you get to my station from Stockwell. Oval is the next station north. That's the route New York Boy took on Thursday, when he tried to blow himself up next to a mother and child, at the station next door to where I live. This is a big part of the reason my initial reaction on hearing of the shooting was relief. Like many people—including, apparently, every single news editor—I assumed this had to be one of the suspects. Stockwell, for God’s sake, it had to be, too much of a coincidence. But then clearly the police were also operating on assumptions.
They say he emerged from a house they were surveilling in Tulse Hill. They followed him to the Tube, where they challenged him. He panicked and vaulted the barrier, and the rest, we know the rest. Was it a shared house? Had he, as he was an electrician, been working there? Were there any other conceivable reasons for his presence? If they thought he was that much of a potential threat, why didn't they intercept him before he got to a crowded Tube station? Why didn’t they surround him, then or before? How did it get so out of control so fast? I don't want to be too much of an armchair general, but these questions have to be asked. And some answers wouldn't go amiss.
If, as the Daily Mail salivated, these officers are “SAS-trained”, is that potentially more of a problem than a benefit? Possibly so, if, the first time the police’s unpublished guidelines on how to react to a suspected suicide bomber in a public place are put into action, an innocent man is shot in the head. The SAS pride themselves on playing by “big boys’ rules”—you want to carry weapons and play soldiers, you accept the risks. De Menezes was doing neither, which perhaps the training should take into account.
Even before today I was worried that, for all the talk of London “standing united", the ultimate objective of splitting our society along its faultlines and pitting people of different faiths against each other might well be reached. Just in case foreign capitalists don’t depart en masse from the Middle East, Israel isn’t suddenly destroyed, Britain doesn’t convert to Islam and no-one reinstates the 1924 Turkish Caliphate, a permanent religious war would make an acceptable Plan B. British Muslims discovering that the state has given its footsoldiers the nod to gun down any of them looking like they might get a bit tasty could just nudge us all that bit closer.
The Brazilian foreign minister is flying to Britain to hear an explanation for de Menezes’ death direct from Jack Straw. On my list of “meetings I really wouldn’t like to have to attend”, that’s straight in at number fucking one.
You’ve got to admit, he looks a bit like an Arab
EDIT: De Menezes’ brother has apparently compared the killing of his brother to the killing of “25,000 innocent people in Iraq”. The silly sausage. US and allied troops have of course only killed around 9,500 people in Iraq, though fans will be pleased to note that this still roundly trounces the approximately 2,500 people killed by actual insurgents—almost four times as many. That’s good shootin’, soldier!
One thing I have to stand by, though, however hard it is to swallow, is the decision to fire. Jean Charles de Menezes was, at that moment, a suspected bomber, and the second he ran on to that train the officers’ range of options dwindled to a single point. It’s not the man who pulled the trigger who should bear the brunt of the shitstorm that’s about to fall—although he's almost certainly the one who'll be charged—but the people who provided the “intelligence” and “leadership” that led straight down to Stockwell’s northbound platform.
Incidentally, that’s how you get to my station from Stockwell. Oval is the next station north. That's the route New York Boy took on Thursday, when he tried to blow himself up next to a mother and child, at the station next door to where I live. This is a big part of the reason my initial reaction on hearing of the shooting was relief. Like many people—including, apparently, every single news editor—I assumed this had to be one of the suspects. Stockwell, for God’s sake, it had to be, too much of a coincidence. But then clearly the police were also operating on assumptions.
They say he emerged from a house they were surveilling in Tulse Hill. They followed him to the Tube, where they challenged him. He panicked and vaulted the barrier, and the rest, we know the rest. Was it a shared house? Had he, as he was an electrician, been working there? Were there any other conceivable reasons for his presence? If they thought he was that much of a potential threat, why didn't they intercept him before he got to a crowded Tube station? Why didn’t they surround him, then or before? How did it get so out of control so fast? I don't want to be too much of an armchair general, but these questions have to be asked. And some answers wouldn't go amiss.
If, as the Daily Mail salivated, these officers are “SAS-trained”, is that potentially more of a problem than a benefit? Possibly so, if, the first time the police’s unpublished guidelines on how to react to a suspected suicide bomber in a public place are put into action, an innocent man is shot in the head. The SAS pride themselves on playing by “big boys’ rules”—you want to carry weapons and play soldiers, you accept the risks. De Menezes was doing neither, which perhaps the training should take into account.
Even before today I was worried that, for all the talk of London “standing united", the ultimate objective of splitting our society along its faultlines and pitting people of different faiths against each other might well be reached. Just in case foreign capitalists don’t depart en masse from the Middle East, Israel isn’t suddenly destroyed, Britain doesn’t convert to Islam and no-one reinstates the 1924 Turkish Caliphate, a permanent religious war would make an acceptable Plan B. British Muslims discovering that the state has given its footsoldiers the nod to gun down any of them looking like they might get a bit tasty could just nudge us all that bit closer.
The Brazilian foreign minister is flying to Britain to hear an explanation for de Menezes’ death direct from Jack Straw. On my list of “meetings I really wouldn’t like to have to attend”, that’s straight in at number fucking one.
You’ve got to admit, he looks a bit like an Arab
EDIT: De Menezes’ brother has apparently compared the killing of his brother to the killing of “25,000 innocent people in Iraq”. The silly sausage. US and allied troops have of course only killed around 9,500 people in Iraq, though fans will be pleased to note that this still roundly trounces the approximately 2,500 people killed by actual insurgents—almost four times as many. That’s good shootin’, soldier!
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Hmmm
Date: 2005-07-24 09:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-24 10:27 am (UTC)What's perhaps most impressive about this figure is that despite having no access to cluster bombs, uranium-tipped shells, night-sights, Warrior APCs, Challenger tanks, stealth bombers, helicopter gunships - or anything else other than automatic rifles and explosive - the insurgents have managed to finish off a third the number killed by the coalition forces. That's good shootin' "freedom fighters!"
no subject
Date: 2005-07-24 10:49 am (UTC)Re: Hmmm
Date: 2005-07-24 11:14 am (UTC)But they have killed many, many thousands of Iraqis from bombing, shooting at suspicious vehicles that turned out not to be a threat and so on. They may try to avoid killing civilians, but civilian deaths are unavoidable in the kind of war they're fighting. One of the early accounts of the actual invasion of the country, a book called "Thunder Run", describes how American tanks, driving along the Iraqi equivalent of the North Circular, mingled with confused civilian cars who, perhaps not realising that they were driving thorough an invasion, would try to drive past and overtake, and get shelled.
Also, read the accounts of Marines in "Generation Kill" - once an ambush starts, they will shoot at anything that moves or might be an enemy position, for their own survival.
I agree that adding up death tolls isn't the only judge of who's in the right - in the example above, the Americans had to act that way for their own safety because they were also encountering suicide cars full of Syrian jihadist fighters - but if you ignore the fact that the Coalition has killed far more Iraqis than the insurgents, then your "moral calculus" is terribly skewed.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-24 01:25 pm (UTC)The 25,000-ish estimate is of all civilian deaths; within that, 9% were killed by insurgents, while 37% were killed by the good guys.
Given that the Americans aren't detonating explosive-laden cars in crowded civilian areas every day, their hefty percentage is still pretty impressive. Good shootin', boys!
I've fixed that link to the Iraq Body Count site, but here's some of the pertinent figures anyway.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-24 01:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-26 12:40 am (UTC)Did I imagine it, or did the news that an innocent man - or at least someone with no connection with the failed bombs - flash across the ticker on the BBC early on Friday evening?
Did Blair go to the House immediately after the first attacks? If not, why not? Did anyone think he should have done?
What's the range of estimates for the number of active terrorists in the UK? How many are foreign and how many domestic?
Who should I punch?
no subject
Date: 2005-07-26 02:47 am (UTC)He came to London from the Gleneagles summit, met with security services, spoke to the press, buggered off back. To be fair, he - and we - didn't have a great deal to gain from his popping in to the House, not with several world leaders waiting for him back in Scotland. In fact I'd rather have heard the news from Charles Clarke, as I find him an easier man to despise, and so could, entirely irrationally, blame him personally for carrying out the attacks.
> What's the range of estimates for the number of active terrorists in the UK? How many are foreign and how many domestic?
Sir John Stevens (the former Met Commissioner) tells us that "As you read this there are at least 100 Osama Bin Laden-trained terrorists walking Britain's streets. The number is probably nearer 200... the cunning of al Qaeda means we can't be exact."
However, this is put firmly into context here (http://www.spy.org.uk/spyblog/archives/2005/03/sir_john_steven_1.html), although their scepticism about UK suicide bombers attacking Britain obviously looks a little unsatisfactory in hindsight. The writer clearly knows something about the Qur'an, though, which is more than any of the bombers do/did.
> Who should I punch?
Anyone you like, really, as long as you're 100% sure they're guilty and you feel you're ready to punch them seven times in the head.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-26 10:57 am (UTC)However, this is a minor sore and certainly not a cue to defrost the Iraq arguments. Cool heads, stiff uppers lips and all that. I'll get punching.