Britons' Response to Arrests: ConfusionDouglas Davis
NationalPost.com
Published: Friday, August 11, 2006(excerpt)
LONDON - British reactions to yesterday's foiled terrorist plot were curiously muted and strangely ambiguous. In other circumstances one might have expected fear, shock, even anger toward the suspected perpetrators. But in London -- at the airports, on the streets and in media interviews -- the reaction was confused.
There were, after all, good reasons for fear, shock and anger. According to reports, the plot had been hatched by a group of British-born Muslims who, if they resembled last year's crop of train-and-bus suicide bombers, are not impoverished desperadoes but the middle-class, university-educated products of hard-working immigrant families.
How could they have reached the point of planning the mass destruction of their fellow citizens? How could they have devoted themselves to the horrifying task of creating liquid explosives in soft-drink bottles that would bring down passenger airliners -- three at a time -- over the Atlantic? In the carefully calibrated words of one senior police officer, the effects of such a plot would have been "mass murder on an unimaginable scale."
As the 24 suspects were held in maximum-security facilities last night, the public was left to calculate the cost of their aborted attack.
There were, mercifully, no bodies to count, but there were scores of cancelled flights, which translated into thousands of lost holidays, business meetings and visits to families and friends.
The flights are expected to resume soon, but other consequences will be longer-lasting: Security will be massively increased (there is talk of a five-hour check-in procedure).
All hand luggage will be banned, with passengers permitted to carry only the barest essentials -- passports, wallets, keys and medication -- in clear plastic bags.
And the U.S. tourists, who were just returning to London after last July's suicide attacks on the city, are likely to cancel once again. There was cause for anger among Londoners, but it was strangely missing.
In London, the word that dared not speak its name throughout the day of drama was "Muslim." Mayor Ken Livingstone set the tone when he warned against any attempt to blame the Muslim community. "No community in London can or should be targeted or blamed because of the actions of people who are pure criminals."
Senior police officers quickly took up the refrain: It was, said one, outrageous to suggest that the fault lay with Islam, a peace-loving religion that utterly rejected wanton killing. The plot, he declared, was a crime, pure and simple, and the plotters were desperate criminals, pure and simple.
Language is fast becoming a barrier to dealing with reality. It is adding to the public confusion. Never mind that last year's London terrorists were unambiguous in their posthumous video messages: They perpetrated their missions as Muslims, were inspired by the Prophet, were justified by the Koran and acted in the name of Islam. No messing about.
In politically-correct Britain, however, the words "Muslim" and "Islam" cannot be used as adjectives of "terrorist" (which also, incidentally, may not be used because in a value-free, morally relative world he might be another man's "freedom fighter"). So we are left to face the militant acts of desperate criminals. But language is not alone in clouding the issue. British politicians are fighting a losing battle with a libertarian judicial system, a skeptical public and a Muslim community whose representatives are drawn from the radical, supposedly authentic, end of the spectrum.