“Nothing human is alien to me”
SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT BOMBING
A lot has been said over the past few days, in print and over the airwaves, about the 7/7 attacks. Commentators right across the spectrum, from Iqbal Sacranie of the MAB, to Melanie Phillips of the Mail, have been at pains to distance themselves from the attack. Sacranie refuses to accept that the fact that these men were Muslim is at all relevant. And from the right, not just the usual condemnations - “this is barbaric, this is intolerable, this is wicked and evil”; the response goes further: It is inexplicable, inhuman; these are the actions of a death-cult.
There is an absolute refusal by commentators I have heard to empathise with the bombers. It is as if to admit that were human is in some way to admit some common ground with them: these people are too evil to share our humanity.
Those who have been trying to understand tend to see the actions in terms of political cause and effect. George Galloway made the rather glib claim on The Moral Maze the other night that the attacks were a direct result of the war on Iraq, and that if the “swamp of Islamic grievance” was drained dry - i.e. in Palestine, Chechnya, etc. - attacks would stop. Jason Burke writes in today’s Observer:
“The mindset of the Leeds suicide bombers is clear. They saw themselves not as British citizens but as defenders of a global Muslim community threatened by an aggressive and brutal foe. They felt themselves to be at war.”
But why did they feel themselves to be at war? These young men had little in common with Muslims actually under occupation in Palestine, Chechnya and Iraq. They lived in a boring, peaceful suburb in Leeds. Imagine: they are given an opportunity to see themselves as part of a great story of liberation: they are given an opportunity to become ‘heroic Mujahideen’, who can set the world alight, who can make Britain ‘burn with fear in its northern, eastern, southern and western quarters’. Like poets in the thirties who went off to Spain to fight the fascists, they are suddenly given an exhilarating cause. I can understand this.
I was once travelling on a train from Bristol to Sheffield, and some children managed to bring the train to a halt by throwing stones at it. I remember think at the time that they must have felt elated at their power to stop hundreds of tonnes of rocketing metal dead on its tracks. These young men, once obscure and insignificant, are now being discussed at every dinner table, on every stock exchange, on every channel. Like the Columbine killers, they been plucked from a grey suburb and exalted: lifted up for the whole world to see. They have become tomorrow’s history.
To empathise is to condone, to understand is not to forgive. We all, with our morals and delusions of grandeur, have it in us to become terrorists.
British newspapers could not, would not, publish a piece like this and so the merry march of delusion goes on. It’s conveniant now for the press to blame it all on a ficticious evil that supposedly exists… the downside being that no rational discussions are held and no solutions borne.
Wouldn’t you love to see the front page of The Sun, bold black and red on white, screaming “MAYBE WE’RE PARTLY TO BLAME!!!”
Still, terror sells media - peace on earth doesn’t.
I don’t know that no discussions are being done- a cleric asked recently ‘why are our young men suicidal and willing to do this?’; you’re just unlikely to hear about them in the Sun. Try the Economist, I think it might be more thoughtful.
Do you think we’re partly to blame Gary? Sorry, that should read, do you really think we’re partly to blame, Gary? Otherwise it implies something else.
“a ficticious evil that supposedly exists”?
- please explain
I still haven’t quite caught on to why they did it, anyone actually heard anything?
Oh, and can we find a better shorthand than 7/7, so derivative.
I think we’re always partly to blame Gary… if we’re not wholly blaming him.
I don’t think ‘evil’ exists - its too medieval an idea - but rather, that people become what they become through a random series of meetings, moments and musings… add a bit of nature to that nurture, of course… but not something as distilled and ridiculous as pure evil!
More understanding for our brothers and sisters (rather than splaying the word ‘evil’ across their accompanying pictures in tabloid newspapers) is surely a better way to bridge the gap. Should me make definitive statements or ask difficult questions?
Dichotomising ourselves into “good” and “evil” adds fuel to the fire of the aggressors that the supposedly “good” call the supposedly “evil”. It wouldn’t be hard, if you were an Islamic extremist spreading the seeds of your belief into the ears of angry and impressionable young men, to point the finger at the tabloids and say, “look, this is how they see us… evil!”
It’s a self-perpetuating circle of hatred. On both sides. Human beings are too complicated to slot into such descriptions. As Towers says, we all have it in us to become terrorists. In a way, denying that fact is more offensive than admitting it… though there are more subtle, reasonable, humane and healing ways of doing it than stealing innocent lives… including your own.
There was a really good article by Tariq Panja yesterday in the Observer: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1530268,00.html
Second wave of bombings? What news?
There was a legendary moment in the first Gulf war where CNN went live to their reporter for the hot news straight from the ground in Iraq , only to find that he was watching CNN to find out what was going on.
I work in central London about 5 minutes walk from Kings Cross. All I can say is that people seem to regard the yesterday’s bombs as a bit of a nuisance … there’s none of the frantic unease that accompanied the 7/7 attacks (sorry TSFR - I can’t think of a better label!).
The traffic is really bad.
I got a seat on the tube!
I got evacuated twice. It was alright though.
I still got on this morning. Lots of coppers everywhere.
The saddest thing I actually saw yesterday was a note attached to a bunch of flowers for one of the dead from two weeks ago. It just said ‘Dear Gary, I’ll miss you round the office, take care mate, love Steve’.
Take care mate.
I think people are quite edgy and not travelling quite as much. And slightly stunned after that guy got shot this morning.
What I think is weird is the people directly involved know the least about what’s going on. I’ve been in or almost in the tube system for each incident and I’ve had no idea what’s happening, but yet been barraged with texts and phone calls from all the people at work playing on the internet as soon as I’ve re-emerged overground. I think they should have more TVs in the stations or at least big Tokyo style electronic scroll signs saying the basic news.
For example, I just got in from town and didn’t even know about the shootings yet, although everyone else did.
I assume Information is restricted to limit the amount of panic.
Nonsense, you really think huge Neon signs saying MURDER! are going to cause panic?
It would be far too strong a fix for the nation’s growing news addiction. I wouldn’t leave the station until watching an update.
But there are big BBC screens as Liverpool st, waterloo and Euston in the main concourse. I wasn’t near any of those stations yesterday or a fortnight before, but I’d guess those watching it were skittish. Especially as Euston is pretty close to kings cross, tavistock sq and warren st.
They should utilise the Doom Claxon. Or play Louis Armstrong’s ‘Wonderful World’.
apparently the guy who got shot wasn’t even connected in any way to the attacks.
this is apparently what happened according to the BBC website…
“1: Jean Charles de Menezes leaves a house under surveillance and arrives at Stockwell station
2: Witnesses say he vaults the automatic ticket barriers and heads for the platforms
3: He then ran down an escalator after being approached by up to 20 plain-clothed police officers and tried to board a train
4: He apparently refuses to obey police instructions and after running onto a northbound Northern line train, he is shot dead”
wouldn’t you run away if you were approached by an aggressive looking group of 20 or so men probably shouting or gesticulating at you?! As they were plain clothed officers how was he supposed to tell? What if his english wasn’t good? He wasn’t likely to stop and ask them to repeat themselves if he was being chased by what appeared to be a group of thugs.
As for jumping the ticket barriers - big deal, I’ve seen enough people do it.
It’ll be interesting to see what the inquiring brings up, but its a real tragedy that it happened and no inquest can change that fact.
One report I read actually said that he looked suspicious because he was wearing a heavy coat and it obviously isn’t coat weather, so they shot him.
Isn’t that so tragically English? Like, he asked for full fat milk in his earl grey so we tortured him for three days, or he didn’t wear a blazer to the country club so we cut his foot off. It would be funny if it was in Monty Python, and not central London.
Oliver, look at what you just wrote. It’s absurd. Obviously it’s fairly tragic but it is not especially English and it has nothing to do with Earl Grey tea and country clubs.
Oh it’s not interesting enough to argue about Oswald. I would rather spill soup down my leg. A big dirty soup made out of owls’ faces and special brew.
Although what is interesting given the title and theme of the article of this post, is that we should be willing and able to see the police as human and be wiling and able to empathise with them.
It’s quite interesting as well that some eye witnesses reported seeing wires protruding from him when he was shot. These reports have now stopped. Funny what the mind sees.
I walked from London Bridge to Euston. It was nice.
I read in the paper today that armed officers will be allowed to shoot to kill, without any kind of verbal warning, if they are “reasonably sure” that they have seen a suicide bomber.
I know that they can’t take the chance of 50 more people being murdered by a bomb, I know that they can’t risk trying to arrest someone with explosives strapped all round their body, I know that if the police “allow” another bomb attack they will be seen to have failed in their duty. But “reasonably sure?” Does anyone else find this choice of words rather worrying?
Aye. They’ve tacked on ‘to protect’ onto the ’shoot to kill’ policy… ’shot to kill to protect’. This makes it sound a lot friendlier. Has this policy worked in other countries? What are they doing in Madrid? Violence, by it’s very nature, escalates. An eye for an eye and the whole world really wants its eyes back.
I saw a cartoon in yesterday’s Telegraph (it was left on a train - no, i didn’t buy it) which was great. It was a gun being held to the head of a dove.
Number 1 thing not to be seen carrying on the tube by the “shoot to kill to protect squad’: A vampire slaying kit.
Just imagine if the suicide bombers were goths…
And then stop imagining making a film about it.
Everyone looked very edgy when I took my trumpet case on the tube. More so when I started humming welcome to the jungle.
In Madrid a bomber blew himself up as an officer was trying to arrest him, killing them both. I think they have a similar policy to us.
Israel, who we took our recent shoot to protect policy (should call it cuddly-wuddly and be done with it) from, use it as part of a much larger intelligence based plan that tries to get people before they’re carrying the bomb. In that context, shoot-to-kill can be more understandable as it’s the last resort as opposed to the main method. Hopefully that’s what we’re doing too as opposed to as scrutiny says where they have a pop if you look a bit dodgy. How do you spot a suicide bomber anyway?
Be Vigilant! How to spot a suicide bomber:
- They wear coats, or jackets.
- They may have a bag, or an object.
- They look mysterious and foreign, like a Brazilian.