A British perspective

[minto grubb]

Not so much about the events of 9/11, but the American response.
Like the author, I too know several Americans as personal freinds.
However, America's foriegn policy still sucks boulders.
My thanks to Lj user Brisingamen for her permission to post this here


This may sound like I'm being un-American but
you see, the trouble is, I'm not actually American ...

This morning's gem of logic comes from the man who acts as the spokesman for government affairs for the US travel industry.

He explained sweetly on Radio 4 that once visitors to the US understood that being photographed and fingerprinted was to ensure the safety of the American people as well as their own, they'd understand and cooperate. Oh, well, that's okay, now you put it like that. Silly me for not understanding.


But here, in a nutshell, Mr Government Affairs Spokesman, is my problem with this whole thing. Lots of people reading this journal are Americans; I know many of them on a personal basis, love some of them dearly, and certainly bear no malice towards anyone else. But you see, the way my life runs, the security of the American people, even those I know and love, is not a constant and present consideration. I don't get up in the morning and think 'gee, what can I personally do to improve the security of the American people today.' Yes, I think about it from time to time, and seriously, but honestly it figures fairly low on my daily agenda. Consequently, if I'm to be fingerprinted, photographed, iris-scanned, weighed, poked, prodded, stripped naked, denied access to sanitation, handcuffed if I so much as raise my voice to complain, and generally humiliated because of your government's Patriot Act, I do not anticipate that I will be comforting myself with the thought that, hey, it's okay because I'm doing my bit to ensure the security of the American people. No, really, I won't.

I realise this is very unAmerican of me but, you see, I'm not actually American. I'm British, and over here, on the whole, Blair notwithstanding, we mostly tend to work on the assumption that people are innocent until proven guilty. God knows, it's stupid of us to do this, but it does mostly work.The onus is on the prosecuting authority to prove that a person is guilty, rather than on the person to prove that he or she is innocent. It's fine and dandy to say 'if you're innocent, you've nothing to fear' but that doesn't go as far as you might think. What I fear are the people who, for whatever reason, have decided I'm guilty and are looking for me to prove that I'm not, without giving me any hint as to what it is I'm supposed to be refuting, because that would be giving me clues and encouraging me to lie. I don't actually think innocent people work too well when they know they're innocent but are confronted with someone who is determined to regard them as guilty and to treat any response on their part as evidence of guilt, hostility or whatever.

Put it this way, if you were hustled away at an English airport, fingerprinted, photographed, interrogated, bullied, harassed, and slapped in handcuffs for complaining, then told that you shouldn't mind because it's for the safety of your allies, the English people, because one of you Americans might conceivably be a bomber, you wouldn't like it, would you? No, so I'm not quite clear why you think doing this to people coming into your country is not going to damage your tourist and travel industry at all. Oh, of course, silly me, because we're protecting the American people, aren't we?

How can I put this to you, to the Department of Homeland Security, the White House, the Pentagon, et al. Rather as the Sun does not revolve around the Earth, neither does the rest of the world revolve around the USA, or place its welfare first, however much you might like to believe that. Yeah, I know it's a bit of a shock, but hey, hang on in there and you'll get over it. The sun set on the British Empire and we've pretty much managed to deal with it. You'll cope. And you'll cope a lot better if you start remembering that all those people coming into your country are mostly your guests rather than your enemies, and that they've come to visit the Land of the Free, a beacon of fairness and democracy in this benighted world.

And if all else fails, think Disneyland. We've actually got one of those in Europe, you know. It's even possible to get there by road and train. And, you know, in Europe the borders are so permeable, and yet we get along pretty well. Technically, I don't even need a passport to go over there, even though it's Abroad.

But to get serious again for a moment. Yes, vigilance is a good thing – thirty years of IRA bombing campaigns on the mainland has made us Brits very vigilant, but you'll notice that life went on during that time – but vigilance is very different from the measures your administration is currently putting in place. Vigilance is an ongoing low-key kind of thing that involves people quietly observing and doing what needs to be done, not this arm-waving 'we're all going to die if we don't stop every brown-skinned person coming into our country' hysteria. Your country boasts continually about its intelligence gathering, yet from here I can't help thinking that your intelligence gathering isn't very effective if you can't actually find the people you're looking for – the ones who you claim to know about – without harrassing everyone else along the way.

You could, for example, start getting to grips with the fact that most names are not unique,and that there's a good chance that the little old Chinese lady with the same name as the person you're looking for is maybe not the actual person you're looking for. And how many times do you need to stop a flight to deter the person you're after from catching it. Do you not think they might, you know, figure that trying to catch the same flight the next day is foolish? And why, having interrogated each person minutely before letting them board a plane, do you need to interrogate them minutely when they get off – terrorism isn't a virus. You can't catch it from the air conditioning. On the other hand, shoddy procedure seems to be endemic. You guys need to be flexible, use common sense more often, rather than sticking rigorously to a set of rules that are not actually working.

Yours used to be a fine country, Mr Government Affairs Spokesman; I liked the straightforward way most people went about their business, and the 'how can we make things work for you' attitude. It was invigorating and I got a real buzz out of visiting. Now I'm not so sure I want to come and visit. I can stay at home and experience administrative paranoia; I don't need to see that your country can do it bigger and better than anyone else. I feel uncomfortable trying to deal with an administration that feels so threatened, without being able to define what that threat really is, that it has to tell itself bigger, ever more bizarre stories about perceived threats in order to justify its reactions to what are now effectively pieces of fluff moving in the breeze. This is not healthy. The USA is no longer a healthy country, and this is clearly demonstrated in the way it deals with the rest of the world. 9/11 was a terrible thing, in and of itself, but so was bombing Afghanistan and Iraq because your administration thought the perpetrators might be hiding there, even though it had few grounds for thinking so, and even fewer now that weapons of mass destruction are providing elusive.

So, Mr Government Affairs Spokesman, you'll excuse me if I don't get all excited about your conviction that knowing I'm ensuring the security of your people will somehow make everything better, because, actually, it won't.

[RH]

1. So what should the British do then?

Accuse the USA of possessing weapons of mass destruction as a pretext to reclaiming the colony?

:nuke:

[minto grubb]

4. What should we do, you ask...

well, we need to get rid of Blair right after you guys dump Bush - but until then, I hope we keep our heads.
Look at it this way, right after the WTC collapsed, the mayor of new York was there on the spot. He did not have emergeny powers, nor did he ask for them. instead he showed firm moral leadership while Bush ran for cover.
Leadership. That is what America wants to see from it's President, and what we in the rest of the world want to se from America right now.
We in England have live with bombs exploding in our streets for the last 30 years. And yet British people went about their business as usual. Even though a large Irish community was there in our midst and some Americans (they called themselves 'Noraid', as I recall) were raising funds for the terrorists who were murdering women and children by leaving bombs in shopping centres. We did not ship every Irish bricklayer in Kilburn back to the Irish Republic, or break off diplomatic relations with America. Both options were within our power, but we chose not to use them. The struggle was fought out on the diplomatic and intelligence front, mostly. The situation in Ulster impacted heavily on the mainland, but in spite of two attempts to assasinate the entire British Cabinet, there was no State of Emergency declared, no call for mass internment or any suspension of the usual rules of law and government. We just let it be known that we would not give in and continued as normal.
Now, though, we are being dragged into a situation where the Bush/ Blair axis is threatening to turn the west into an armed camp under martial law in an attempt to thwart a shadowy enemy called 'terorism'.
Although I am not eligible to vote, I am pleased to see that Wesley Clarke displays a sound grip on the realities of the situation and considers that the Patriot Act was rushed through, is open to abuse, and needs to come under review.
America neds leadership and vision, not knee jerk reactions. I wish Mr. Clarke and his campaign team well.

[RH]

6. Who ya kidding?

"there was no call for mass internment or any suspension of the usual rules of law and government"??

:eyes:

Are you too young to remember Long Kesh in 1981.

Bobby Sands and 10 others dead from hunger strikes.

The murder of Billy "King Rat" Wright.

Trial without jury.

No call?

Usual rules of law?

[minto grubb]

9. Usual rules of law

Let me qualify that, if I have not done so already.
In the province of Ulster, thing were very different from the British mainland.
In Ulster, a Catholic majority was effectively marginalised by a Protestant minority. Mainland Britain was very different.
Long Kesh? Not on the mainland. No-one on mainland Britain was ever sent there. Bobby Sands? Never took his seat in Westminster.
Although Protestant rule in Ulster had provoked a civil rights movement that lead to rioting, that lead to troops on the streets, which led to a vicious campaign against the occupation , which led to internment, Long Kesh, Bobby Sands , etc.
None of that happened on mainland Britain, it happened in Ulster.
It is worth bearing in mind that Ulster was run directly from Stormont, and was run very badly. Ulster's Protestant minority had never successfully integrated it's Catholic population, and was denying them basic civil rights. England was different, more secular and more open.
The whole point of the bombings carried out by the IRA- the Harrods Christmas bomb, the murder of a party of school children visiting the Tower of London, the Birmingham pub bomb, and every other attack on a purely civilian target was to change all this. They wanted open warfare. Instead, what we had in England was a Catholic population that had the vote, and was well intergrated into society. The bombing campaign made people vigilant, but never opened up a civil war on English soil.
There was no internment of England's Catholic population, no suspension of trial by jury, no declaration of Martial law... In England. Ulster was different, but I was not referring to Ulster ( In Britain, most know the differences between England, Ulster, Scotland & Wales, some Americans may not.)

[teryang]

2. Tourists should be DNA typed and have

...tracking chips embedded in their armpits! Then we'll be safe!

[RH]

3. Safe?

How come?

Even if it were perhaps affordable to employ hundreds of thousands of agents to individually track the tourists, what then?

For the sake of the argument, if the nineteen 9/11 suspects had each been followed closely (which is not to suggest that they were not followed closely) what did they ever overtly do to give the game away?

[minto grubb]

5. I think that the Isaelis have the right idea...

Passengers are profiled. Supposing you are English, travelling on El Al Airways to Israel from London, and you are making your 3rd or 4th trip. You will be checked out, of course.
If you happen to be American, flying from a middle eastern country to Jerusalem for the first time, well - the check will take a little longer. They will want to know some details on why you are coming.
If you are an Iraqi flying in from Libya, you can expect to be interviewed several times, by several different people, who will all be trying to shake you down to see what rattles. It is simply good intelligence work - skilled interogators and extensive note taking and checking up on people worth checking. the Israelis do not go for DNA sampling and retinal scans, it seems. It does seem to work, so perhaps we should see what they do and follow their lead.

[teryang]

7. Err, I was kidding

Sorry, next time I'll flag it as (sarcasm).

[RH]

8. I'd thought so

but how many would not be kidding?

Take care.

:donut: