London's compunding tragedy.
Figuring out exactly what's happening in London leaves me blank. A week ago, the BBC profiled the four men who blew themeselves in the original July 7th bombing, from which the death toll has probably finally peaked at 56. One of the subway bombers, Mohammad Sidque Khan was a teaching assistent in Leeds:
During its last Ofsted inspection in 2002, the school's learning assistants had been singled out for special praise in dealing with a transient pupil population from a socially deprived area.
Mohammad Sidique Khan spoke about his work to the Times Educational Supplement at the time. "A lot of [the pupils] have said this is the best school they have been to," he said.
It's a pretty universal theme, trying to figure out why ordinary people do horrible things -- and in this case how al Qaeda's, or its affiliates' nihilism continues to appeal to people with the wherewithal, and the ability to conform to living middle class lives in the West. But the latest tragedy, following a failed copycat attack on Thursday (like the original attacks, it was three on the underground, one on a bus) in which nobody was seriously injured, came on Friday when five London police shot dead an innocent Brazilian man they thought was another suicide bomber in the metro.
The latter seems to have hit Londoners, and American liberals too, especially hard. As terrible as it is to see just how normal those who find suicide bombing appealing can be, in the end we expect terrorists, and the discontented, usually Muslem, youths who coopt and imitate al Qaeda tactics, to do terrible, antisocial things. It's awful, but it's awful because it's paradigm-affirming, not paradigm-shifting. It's our current reality.
But we expect more of the state, particularly the liberal state. And on top of that, it has to be said that the details of Mr. Menenzes's shooting are bad. The five cops in question were in plainclothes. They trailed Mr. Menenzes after he left a house they had under surviellance, allowing him to board a bus on route to the tube station. It's not entirely evident that they ever identified themselves as police to the victim as they chased him through a South London metro. And, perhaps worst of all, according to witnesses, they tackled him in a train he had entered, and had him pinned on the floor, before they shot him to death. In total, they fired eight shots, seven to the head and one to the shoulder (head shots are required policy to incapacitate a potential bomber with a trigger device).
Khan might spook us because he represented the sort of angst, and hate, that can lurk even in the most normal-seeming human circumstances. The cops who killed Menenzes, on the other hand, remind us of what can happen to societies on edge. The motives and perceptions of a dark-skinned foreign nationals being trailed for hours, then ordered to freeze by large white men in plainclothes naturally don't dovetail with the motives and perceptions of undercover cops fearing yet another suicide bomber setting himself off on a crowded train. Pluralistic society functions by harmonizing differing motives and perceptions with reason and common goals and applied, understood, codified law. But it's not inviolate or else pluralism wouldn't be controversial. Just look at Isreal, where a fundamentally liberal society has come to countenance terrible things (like Ariel Sharon and everything he represents) when faced with what must look like mindless and relentless acts of hostility from the Palestinians.
That's the whole point of terrorism. Terror isn't just about the bombing of situational innocents. It can also be creating the sort of national unease that pervaded the US after 911. (I remember my grandmother talking about a Jihadi plot to poison Lake Gaston in Virginia; I remember not being entirely confident in telling her she was being paranoid.) It can be making the state doubt itself and about making citizens, or any vulnerable subset of citizens, fear or doubt the goodwill of the state. However isolated an event the shooting of Mr. Menenzes might have been (this was, afterall, the first mistaken-identity shooting by Scotland Yard since 1999 and the BBC counts only four such crimes since 1980), and however much better off Londoners are for the presence and vigilance of Scotland Yard, the killing is still emblamatic of terror because it was so totally, horribly unnecessary: a bone-dumb abuse of authority resulting from a bone-dumb reaction to authority, and only possible because of the extremity of the time. Not that this stops London Mayor Ken Livingstone from sounding more than a little callous when he described Mr Menezes as another "victim of the terrorist attacks" on Sunday.
The irony, and perhaps the redeeming fact, of all this is that Britain is one of the world's most liberal, and tolerant, countries. A week after the first bombs went off killing thoses 56 Londoners on route, Pew published a survey of global attitudes toward religion and religious politics. Great Britain scored ahead of every European country, the United States and Canada for its citizens' favourable views of Muslems and among the top countries in the world for its favourable views of Christians and Jews. Maybe the most profound thing Britain can do now is to make sure they keep it that way.
During its last Ofsted inspection in 2002, the school's learning assistants had been singled out for special praise in dealing with a transient pupil population from a socially deprived area.
Mohammad Sidique Khan spoke about his work to the Times Educational Supplement at the time. "A lot of [the pupils] have said this is the best school they have been to," he said.
It's a pretty universal theme, trying to figure out why ordinary people do horrible things -- and in this case how al Qaeda's, or its affiliates' nihilism continues to appeal to people with the wherewithal, and the ability to conform to living middle class lives in the West. But the latest tragedy, following a failed copycat attack on Thursday (like the original attacks, it was three on the underground, one on a bus) in which nobody was seriously injured, came on Friday when five London police shot dead an innocent Brazilian man they thought was another suicide bomber in the metro.
The latter seems to have hit Londoners, and American liberals too, especially hard. As terrible as it is to see just how normal those who find suicide bombing appealing can be, in the end we expect terrorists, and the discontented, usually Muslem, youths who coopt and imitate al Qaeda tactics, to do terrible, antisocial things. It's awful, but it's awful because it's paradigm-affirming, not paradigm-shifting. It's our current reality.
But we expect more of the state, particularly the liberal state. And on top of that, it has to be said that the details of Mr. Menenzes's shooting are bad. The five cops in question were in plainclothes. They trailed Mr. Menenzes after he left a house they had under surviellance, allowing him to board a bus on route to the tube station. It's not entirely evident that they ever identified themselves as police to the victim as they chased him through a South London metro. And, perhaps worst of all, according to witnesses, they tackled him in a train he had entered, and had him pinned on the floor, before they shot him to death. In total, they fired eight shots, seven to the head and one to the shoulder (head shots are required policy to incapacitate a potential bomber with a trigger device).
Khan might spook us because he represented the sort of angst, and hate, that can lurk even in the most normal-seeming human circumstances. The cops who killed Menenzes, on the other hand, remind us of what can happen to societies on edge. The motives and perceptions of a dark-skinned foreign nationals being trailed for hours, then ordered to freeze by large white men in plainclothes naturally don't dovetail with the motives and perceptions of undercover cops fearing yet another suicide bomber setting himself off on a crowded train. Pluralistic society functions by harmonizing differing motives and perceptions with reason and common goals and applied, understood, codified law. But it's not inviolate or else pluralism wouldn't be controversial. Just look at Isreal, where a fundamentally liberal society has come to countenance terrible things (like Ariel Sharon and everything he represents) when faced with what must look like mindless and relentless acts of hostility from the Palestinians.
That's the whole point of terrorism. Terror isn't just about the bombing of situational innocents. It can also be creating the sort of national unease that pervaded the US after 911. (I remember my grandmother talking about a Jihadi plot to poison Lake Gaston in Virginia; I remember not being entirely confident in telling her she was being paranoid.) It can be making the state doubt itself and about making citizens, or any vulnerable subset of citizens, fear or doubt the goodwill of the state. However isolated an event the shooting of Mr. Menenzes might have been (this was, afterall, the first mistaken-identity shooting by Scotland Yard since 1999 and the BBC counts only four such crimes since 1980), and however much better off Londoners are for the presence and vigilance of Scotland Yard, the killing is still emblamatic of terror because it was so totally, horribly unnecessary: a bone-dumb abuse of authority resulting from a bone-dumb reaction to authority, and only possible because of the extremity of the time. Not that this stops London Mayor Ken Livingstone from sounding more than a little callous when he described Mr Menezes as another "victim of the terrorist attacks" on Sunday.
The irony, and perhaps the redeeming fact, of all this is that Britain is one of the world's most liberal, and tolerant, countries. A week after the first bombs went off killing thoses 56 Londoners on route, Pew published a survey of global attitudes toward religion and religious politics. Great Britain scored ahead of every European country, the United States and Canada for its citizens' favourable views of Muslems and among the top countries in the world for its favourable views of Christians and Jews. Maybe the most profound thing Britain can do now is to make sure they keep it that way.
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