« And the high heels would not trouble me in the slightest | Main | Lajos Polgar »
August 23, 2005
Fear
While many can name the man mistakenly killed by the police services following the second recent attacks on the London Underground there are few who could name even one of the victims of the jihadis. I expect more people could name one or more of the murderers than even one of the people they murdered. There are good reasons for this distinction to be found beyond the inevitable deformation of blame levied by the BBC or overt jihadi sympathizers. Quite simply, the police services, acting on behalf of the sovereign power, must be held to account for their actions even and especially when they are carried out in defense of the public in time of great peril.
The death of a Brazillian commuter does count for more than any one death of the scores slaughtered by the jihadis. Not in a human sense but in so far as our reaction to that death illustrates the difference between the rule of law and rule by the sword. But that is the limit of the difference. The death of this one man cannot be allowed to count for more in forming policy than the deaths of scores of his fellow commuters or the countless dead should the jihadis secure the weapons they seek. Nor should it be allowed to form one more weapon in the grostesque arsenal of rhetoric deployed by those who would impede the defense of the realm.
The Times of London speculates as to whether this one commuter met his fate at the hands of UK special forces rather than the Metropolitan Police. Frankly, only someone completely uninformed about counter-terrorist operations in the UK would not have entertained the same thought as a possibility. Assuming this proves to be the case, and for those who imagine it to be problematical, I ask what alternative the government is meant to pursue. The SAS and its allied units are trained to address precisely the situation that has arisen. It is only in retrospect, and knowing what we now know about the identity of this particular dead commuter, that it would have been better to have a ticket agent approach him than an armed peace officer.
And there is the catch. Those who would pass judgement on the security services with perfect hind-sight and in advance of an independent inquiry into the shooting are welcome to entrust their safety from the jihadis to the ticket inspectors. Or rather, they would be if their reckless disregard for their own safety did not also endanger me and mine. Whether the officers involved in the shooting were deployed by SO19 or the SAS is beside the point. Either they were special forces or, if from SO19, they were trained by special forces. Either way, the same mistakes were made.
A generally well informed observer of life and politics, Zacht Ei overlooks something important in his statement on public safety by way of Battlestar Galactica: the security services have managed to take a number of people safely into custody since the first and second round of bomb attacks including all four of those alleged to have carried out the second abortive strike. If he imagines the SAS were present at the scene of the mistake and not in every other successful instance, or indeed of those instances not revealed to the public, then he is engaged in the same policy making by piñata as all too much of the press.
It is convenient to pick and choose government failures for the purpose of argument by way of analogy. People who are not paying attention, even those normally sensible, critical people of the blogosphere, may fall for the rhetoric. But deciding to take some unstated, unproven alternative course of action because a mistake was made is no way to set policy. Truly an expectation of the perfect is the enemy of the good. We should, of course, consider alternative strategy and tactics in taking on the jihadis. It is with this precise goal in mind, and not only the establishment of responsibility, that an independent inquiry into the shooting death is underway. In the meantime, I invite people to consider the SAS' own reported rationale for their direct approach to gunmen.
"It is vital to strike fear into the minds of the terrorists," one former SAS officer said. “In an ongoing situation such as we have now the fear must be directed to the fact that we are watching them and will eventually (get) them. They need to know that they cannot escape. We know they are happy to kill themselves but that doesn’t mean they are happy to be killed by others. As long as they evade the police they will think they are in control but the minute they are intercepted they lose control."
To which I can only add, "I am scared, how do I know you won't shoot me?" I quote. People who wish for an extended consideration of these issues by someone with SAS training and police experience should read Michael Asher's "Shoot to Kill". It would be a step up from taking Commander Adama's little homilies out of context.
Update: Arjan bemoans our rapid consensus of opinion. So say we all.
Posted by Ghost of a flea at August 23, 2005 08:27 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.ghostofaflea.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/4494
Comments
You're reading way too much into what I wrote and perhaps even a few things I didn’t write at all, thus engaging in the kind of piñata whacking you accuse me off. Fortunately, I am a sturdy fellow, although less so since my rather successful slimming regime ;-).
To make things clear, I agree with you on a great many points. Arm the police all you must (virtually all officers in the Netherlands are armed, by the way). Have SAS people train them. Let them maintain the shoot to kill policy. And one death on our part doesn’t make us worse than the jihadists.
But all this notwithstanding, I don't want to see any kind of soldier policing my city. Nor the other way around, for that matter. Even when their tactics are the same, their tasks (and therefore judgment, organizational culture, outlook on life) are different.
Americans have acknowledged this fact early on in the Posse Comitatus act. The Spanish Guardia Civil police force is still considered to be part of the military, and is notorious even 30 years after Franco is gone. Even now, European travel guides warn for them. Something 'happens' when you let a soldier do a policeman's job. Something that I tried to capture by quoting BSG.
The SAS versus the IRA is a very different matter. That's one army unit against a paramilitary unit. Likewise, there is a huge difference between storming a building during a siege at the request of the police to take out verified suspects; and incognito soldiers patrolling around London in busses, following someone who walks into a subway and shooting him because they think is a terrorist (it that is indeed what has happened, because the investigation is still pending).
I think it is important to make a distinction between the military being employed by the police, and the military doing the actual policing.
In the first case, the storming of the building, the military are 'tools' of the police. I am comfortable with that. We had the army on the roofs of The Hague last year when they arrested Jason Walters. Fine with me. The police doesn't have a lot of snipers nor a huge amount of tactical expertise in this area, so it makes sense to get what you need where it is obtainable. That is, as long as it is the police that makes the call, both literally and figuratively.
In the second case, the military are ‘policing’. That’s what the BSG quote was about. In such a scenario, soldiers are not relying on the assessments of police officers who are directing them. Instead, they are making all their calls on their own. I feel that such responsibilities should be left to specialist units of the police and would pick SO19 over the SAS any day. (In very much the same way that I wouldn’t want Ian Blair to conduct Operation Iraqi Freedom.)
Now, it may turn out that (a) this was an SAS soldier who shot the guy because (b) a police officer told him this was a terrorist. This would mean that I was incorrect in having used this particular example for what I meant to say. But a potentially flawed example does not mean that my point is invalid. On the contrary.
Jeez, at my blog I try to be pithy ;-)
Posted by: Arjan Dasselaar ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.ghostofaflea.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at August 23, 2005 10:41 AM
And I agree with everything you just said... so there!
I quite agree soldiers should not be doing the work of the police. Please do take a look at Michael Asher's book for an extended discussion around this subject as I would be curious to learn what you make of it. My objection was not to your point about policing vs soldiering, or your admirable recourse to the wisdom of Galactica, but to your "potentially flawed example".
We do not yet know what lead to the death of that commuter though, frankly, I would be astonished if it turned out to be a special forces operation independent of the police services. As your point about soldiers doing the work of police was framed in light of new rumours about SAS involvement I do not believe my cautionary response was inappropriate (though I have certainly whacked more than a few piñatas in my writing here).
Thanks too for your writing about your slimming regimen. It has been an inspiration in sticking to my Paris Hilton Diet.
Posted by: Ghost of a flea at August 23, 2005 11:12 AM
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in. Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)