Don’t analyse this
It’s too early to say, but I’ll say it anyway. I hope and I believe that the attacks on London yesterday will be remembered not for how much they changed Londoners and the world but for how much they didn’t.
Firstly, where 9/11 changed everything, we have already changed, in large part because of 9/11. We’ve seen this coming, and we’ve had the arguments over war and terrorism. Secondly, I don’t think this will give Blair a mandate to turn around and bomb someone else like Bush did – for one thing there’s nobody identifiable to bomb, and even if Blair wanted to it’s unlikely he could muster the trust and support required.
So far – and I haven’t read the papers or spoken to a lot of people about this – the general mood does not seem to be one of vengefulness per se, but of anger and sadness. I think Ken Livingstone may have swiftly and decisively set the tone with his remarks yesterday. It may be that as the shock wears off, some people turn to violence against Muslims or anyone else they identify as culpable by association. Maybe, but this is London, and I’d be surprised if it’s more than a few.
After 9/11, the Bush government was able to enact various curtailments and in some cases serious abuses of civil liberties. In our case, you could argue that Blair is already doing his best to follow suit. Maybe one effect will be to increase support for ID cards, but I hope most people realise that they would probably have had zero effect in this case.
I suppose what I’m saying with this chin-stroking think-piece is that I hope to see very few chin-stroking think-pieces about the attacks, because they’ll be unnecessary and irrelevant. We have not “lost our innocence” or anything like that, but we have lost a lot of Londoners, and a lot more are injured or distressed. Let’s remember the dead and live for those left behind.
(PS, I know it might sound like I’m trying to have the first and last word, but I’m really not. Better analysts will have better analysis, so comments are as welcome as always.)
Fortunately Charles Clarke has had the sense to admit that ID Cards wouldn’t have stopped the attacks yesterday.
I’m just impressed with the way everyone coped with yesterday’s incident and the complete and utter lack of hysteria and panic. Makes me proud to be British for once.
I too was caught up in the chaos in London yesterday and how nice it was to see Londoners getting on with things. There was no sense of panic and the “real person” came out from the normally austere personae of the average commuter.
I entirely agree about Ken Livingstone’s comments. I ‘m not sure any amount of analysis will be able to improve on those words. And I imagine you’ll be entirely out of luck with your wish to see few chin-stroking thinkpieces. There are some very nervous rainforests out there…..
I agree James. People say 9/11 changed everything. I hope yesterday will be remembered for changing nothing.
Oh haha – nothing changed yesterday. Well what changed was the fact that I have no trust in any estabglished authority that is meant to keep me safe during times of a London emergency.
Even 45-50 mins after the first bomb had gone off the tube lot were still denying anything other than a power failure had occured despite the huge police presence. So people pushed on and tried to get to work causing further overcrowding and major confusion. I was fortunate enough to hear what was going on shortly after the first bus bomb as I was on a bus in Zone one at the time and overheard ont he drivers radio. The amount of emergency services flying round London was quiet astounding (one positive I suppose). My anger that no-one was informed of what was going on so they could make the rational choice to turn round and try to go home rather than push on as if it was rushhour as per norm could have been extremely dangerous had the attacks been more severe. Having busses evacuated while peopel are still trying to push their way on to get to work on time was foolish. People remained calm through their ignorance. The whitewash over tru event coverage has helped to contribute to this.
chin stroking made the Times today, page 20.
I hear Tony Blair wants UK Muslim community leaders to condemn all forms of terrorism… His friend Tom Friedman just wrote an article in the New York Times suggesting “solutions to this Muslim problem†such as having Arab teenagers wear T-shirts with anti-terrorist statements on them!
“Terrorism†is certainly a despicable activity…but masochistic self-incrimination isn’t much higher on the moral scale.
After 1944, a certain lobby literally harassed the Vatican and the French government (using guilt by association and other Pharisaic scare tactics) for nearly four decades until they finally got what they wanted: sheepish “repentance†for crimes neither the Catholic Church nor the French government ever committed.
Today, the likes of B-LIAR, Friedman, Wolfowitz, Perl, Cheneybusharielsharon & Co. want Arabs and Moslems to “atone†for sins committed by others! That’s…how shall I say? … err…kind of grotesque to use a polite word!
We should all condemn the tragic events that took place in London yesterday, but Arabs and Moslems shouldn’t forget to put things into perspective: in the past 14 years, British and American pilots flew thousands of illegal “sorties†over Mosul, Baghdad, and Tickrit, bombarding methodically Iraq’s civilian and military infrastructure: hundreds of schools, hospitals, factories were burned.
More than 90% of the country’s water treatment plants and sewage trunk lines were destroyed by Tony Blair and his “brave†Tornado top guns: according to official UN figures, more than 500,000 Iraqi children died of malaria and dysentery as a direct consequence of US and British air strikes cum illegal invasion and occupation of a country that posed no threat to the West (whether “imminent†or otherwise): that’s 10,000 times more than the number of commuters who died in London yesterday…yet these innocent Arab boys and girls got 10,000 times less media coverage in the Times, the Telegraph, the BBC, and other “civilized†news outlets.
You see I’d rather wait for the Brits to do a little introspective atonement first. Then, I would expect them to write blood-lettered excuses on their chest: all of the UK’s T-shirt factories will have to work at full capacity for years before Maryam and other murdered Iraqi baby girls can finally rest in peace.
AK you and your Muslim friends should really just leave the UK and go somewhere else because your not really welcome here outside of your ghettos and the PC BBC and Labour party
Anyone with half a brain knows the reason you won’t condemm this is because your ridiculous religion and Koran book despises the Christian faith and quite frankly that suits me because I couldn’t give a rats a** if we killed millions in your countries.
Nice one Jack someone needs to put them in their place.
I’m going to leave AK and Jack’s comments up here as shining examples of how two apparently opposing perspectives can display precisely the same kinds of blinkered and self-destructive intolerance. But I will not let this thread descend into a flame-war, and any more comments in this vein will be deleted.
See, the great irony here is that I am not afraid of the terrorists. Not at all, and I say that as a born Londoner living in New York, taking the subway every day. But I am terrified by the sickening bigotry of Jack and Roger, and appalled that I have to share my national identity with them. You can tell by the way that they write that, well, first of all they are pretty simple [Jack mate, that standard of self-expression wouldn’t make the sports pages of the Daily Star], but more worryingly they are utterly convinced by the drivel that they write. These are the kind of people who talk a lot about ‘common sense’, and think it gives them license to replace careful thought with knee-jerk, blinkered intolerance. But you see Jack, the thing is, the answers aren’t obvious. This is a really difficult problem. And the only thing that’s certain is that all your bile and racism will hand victory to these assholes. Things will get very, very ugly. And all the time we’ll be turning our back on one of the greatest achievements of human civilization – that we are able to live side by side in peace and friendship with people who don’t look like us, eat different food, and have different views on how things turn out when we die. I expect you are too stupid to understand why that is so great. But you may have noticed the unity of sentiment and purpose in the House of Commons over the last few days. Far from being confined to the lunatic fringes of political correctness, this is something that all the people who represent us believe across the political spectrum. Of course, AK, your not helping things. We didn’t ask for this, we didn’t invite it, and nor did our politicians. To suggest that we did is a gross insult to the people who died, and the people who’ve lost them.
I have been reading this and finally have to comment. A lot of the immigrants in the last 30 years or so have come from what I consider undesirable countries. What I mean by that are ones that have a history of extremism and terrorism. When I grew up in London we didn’t have to worry about Asian gangs, Jamacian yardies, East European Gangsters, Muslims Extremists etc killing each other. We have imported all these problems and London is worse for it. As for the news saying the bombers were British that is a joke, by passport maybe but they are really Pakistanis.
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