The Lessons of London
Details about last week’s disrupted plane-bombing plot are still emerging, but two points already seem clear: American intelligence and police agencies remain far behind their British counterparts in their capacity to crack down on terrorists before they act, and the “legal left” and its media amplifiers deserve much of the blame.
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Not the least trivial advantage afforded British law enforcement officers is clarity about the nature of the enemy. Read through Britain’s police codes and you will see intermittent concessions to political correctness, as when police officers conducting a search are cautioned “not to discriminate against members of minority groups in the exercise of their powers.” More noteworthy, however, is the acknowledgement that “there are times when it is appropriate for officers to take account of the person’s ethnic origin,” especially since “some international terrorist groups are associated with particular identities.” In focusing their investigation on British Muslims, many of them of Pakistani ancestry, British intelligence services plainly chose the latter approach.
Indeed, they went further than that. British intelligence used an agent to infiltrate the terrorist suspects’ circle in December of last year–a step that proved critical in uncovering the plot. In addition, both Britain’s center-left government and its security agencies have long maintained that Muslim communities and mosques need to be monitored carefully for any connections to terrorism. American politicians, on the other hand, generally avoid raising the issue. Their reticence, though unfortunate, is understandable: Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney was pilloried by self-styled civil liberties and Muslim groups last September after daring to suggest that using wiretaps to monitor mosques and their attendees might be a reasonable way of tracking terrorism plots in the planning stages. (Romney, to his credit, did not back down.)
Read the full story by Jacob Laksin in FrontPageMag.com.
August 16th, 2006 at 10:17 am
in fairness opinion in britian is far more Left. (remember Tony Blair is leader of the Labour Party) They don’t agree with Gitmo. And the left wing press in Britian makes the NY times look positivly right wing.
especially since “some international terrorist groups are associated with particular identities.”
That comes from the days of tracking the IRA and keeping tabs on the Irish.
Really I think you have to admit that the US intelligence agencies are simply not used to dealing with terrorism neither is the American government. You are repeating the mistakes Britian made in 1970s Northern Ireland. Learn from History.
August 16th, 2006 at 10:35 am
US intelligence agencies are simply not used to dealing with terrorism neither is the American government. You are repeating the mistakes Britian made in 1970s Northern Ireland. Learn from History.
Fair enough, Simon. But since you referenced tracking the IRA, that’s a good comparison: In those instances, law enforcement certainly wasn’t looking for, let’s say, immigrants of Italian descent. They were keeping an eye on the Irish. Why? Because *that’s the identity* of the suspects.
By comparison, if 100% of airplane terrorism has been committed by Middle Easterners (read: Muslim), would you be looking out for Swedish activists?
That’s the core argument of this story. How do you fall on the issue of so-called “racial profiling”? (We call it: Learning from history)
August 16th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
Actually, I think Simon’s conclusion is more correct. There’s probably even more ‘left’ thinking and ‘political correctness’ thinking in Britain than in the US and yet your conclusion is at variance with that. It’s an easy game to play ‘blame the left’, but a foolish one if it leads to what I think are false conclusions. If you are specifically targeting al-Qaeda, no one is under any illusion that you are likely to be investigating people of Middle Eastern origin. We target people all the time for a variety of different things. If, and I say *if*, there is a problem with our agencies, it’s likely to be more structural as simon suggests. Really, that seems a lot more intelligent than ‘Blame the ACLU’. People who dislike ‘profiling’ dislike the idea of anyone being pulled out of a line and interrogated based on their ethnic origin without just cause. You really ought not to be pulling people out of line simply because you have the thought ‘Oooh, hey!, brown dude! Must be al-Qaeda’. There’s a difference between ‘investigating a Middle Eastern man because intelligence has brought him to our attention’ versus ‘Grab that Middle Eastern guy there and let’s investigate him’. If law enforcement in this country has found itself hamstrung by the ACLU, they ought to look closer to home for the reason.
August 16th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
The problem with racial profiling is how you do it. You have to remember not to radicalise the moderates.
Back to northern Ireland. When the British army first came into Northern Ireland in the 1970 they were greated by the nationalist community with open arms. Because the Unionist mobs were burning down nationalist homes. And the army stopped them. The IRA was a tiny organisation then that had been in the doldrums for almost 35 years. The big movement on the Nationalist side was the civil rights movement modeled on Martin Luther King which was looking for equal rights and one man one vote.
The IRA started fighting the British. The British then in responce. Brought in interment without trial and imprisoned thousands of nationalists the majority with no alignance with the IRA. Also on Bloody Sunday (Song by U2) the British paratroop regiment opened fire on peaceful civil rights protesters killing about 13.
This killed of the civil rights movement because people believed that the British were going to totally indescriminate in killing people. That they were going to say all nationalists were terrorists. So what did the people do. They supported the IRA the IRA’s numbers swelled and we got terrorist war for 30 years. The British put up watch towers in nationalist areas put soliders on peoples streets. And it didn’t stop the war at all. it made it worse. What stopped it was negociation, giving equal rights and in my opinion investment in education. (Northern Ireland has one of the best education systems in the world) Give people a chance to live and they wouldn’t want to lose it by fighting
That is why racial profiling is wrong it backfires spectacular.
Look at Lebannon the people drove Syria out. Now they will let them back in. Whatever of the morality of Israels actions strategically it has backfired.
Also if you spend to much time blaming the likes of the ASLU you miss the flaws in your own organisations.