JANET DALEY
It was probably bound to happen â if not now, then eventually. There is an all-out war on the streets and almost inevitably somebody was going to be killed by the authorities who was believed to be implicated but then turned out not to be. Given the peculiarly ruthless tactic of suicide bombing, who could take the risk of allowing someone who seemed to be a plausible suspect to ignite himself in a public place?
| Next time the police may hesitate, or give the benefit of the doubt. You can count the casualties then. |
Given that we are up against an enemy who states categorically that he âloves deathâ as opposed to the weak and decadent West which so pathetically clings to life, how could anyone dare to assume that the likely man who chooses to run to the London Underground rather than stop on order is blameless? The Metropolitan police say this shooting of an apparently innocent man in Stockwell is a âtragedyâ, as indeed it is. But what would the scale of the tragedy have been if they had given him the benefit of the doubt and got it wrong? How many nanoseconds do you have in which to make the choice? And what, as a law enforcement officer, is the inescapable priority?
| The public's the priority. Period. |
The Muslim extremists have produced something of a genuine martyr: a victim of what â if he proves to have been Muslim â may be described as the Westâs Islamophobia, when he was a victim of the terrorist campaign itself. We must not equivocate about this. The outrage of the Muslim community will be genuine.
| Except that he doesn't appear to have been a Muslim. There's probably a lot of gnashing to teeth going on down at the old Islamic center right now, wondering how they can sign him up posthumously. |
The protests of the civil liberties lobby have so far been commendably muted, but the anti-war brigade, who will find yet more grounds for condemning our foreign policy, will be more vociferous than ever. But we are not to blame â that is, we as a society, we as a democracy, we as a population. We must not lose our grip on the truth: that Britain is a free, tolerant and generous country that has bent over backwards to accommodate its culturally diverse migrants.
| Britain should render sincere regrets — not apologies — and do all it can for the man's family. Britain should also be just as ruthless with the next guy in the same situation. |
The killing of this man is a small victory for Islamic terrorism which, like all movements that attempt to undermine societies from within, has always hoped to provoke the authorities into what could be described as persecution. (Old-fashioned communist agitation had a similar logic: cause the police to display the true ârepressive nature of the capitalist stateâ and you will win converts.) It has thrown everything â including the lives of its own young â into the battle for the minds of the Muslim population who must be made to believe that their own country is the enemy.
And it found the perfect strategy with which to do it. Not just mass murder, but self-destructive nihilism. How do you fight an enemy who is not only prepared to sacrifice his own life, but who positively wants to die? One who explicitly begs you for the opportunity to destroy himself? This is a small victory for a hatred that goes beyond politics, or nationalism, or tribal grievance, or any of the quasi-rational things that are subject to negotiation and reasonable argument. There is no debate to be had here. We are in the territory of outright madness. Those who pretend that there could be some accommodation with the aims of this movement â who see it as a new power balance in the world that must be addressed in foreign policy terms â are criminally irresponsible. There is nothing short of the extinction of democratic, secular society that would appease this enemy. |