I have to say that I really do admire Philip Johnston's way with words. In one single piece today he has managed to sum up my feelings exactly when I turned on the news last night and saw the protests in Forest Gate. It really does seem that there is a trend toward a myopic perception of current affairs.
The assiduous use of 20/20 hindsight by those on the critical Left has become so prevalent in influencing "mainstream" thinking, that we find ourselves being continuously sleepwalked into fallicious historical revisionism.
As Philip Johnston points out, yesterdays protest in Forest Gate about a raid by anti-terrorist police occurs without mention of why we're living in a time where mistakes like this can, might and will happen. The Left never mentions that less than 12 months ago, four young men - who beleived they were fighting for Muslims worldwide - blew themselves up on the London Underground and killed over 50 people. That's why police raids happen in places like Forest Gate.
As The Times reported today, back in 2003 the CIA had a mole inside al-Qaeda who made them aware the group had built a device to release cyanide gas on the New York Subway. However, the attack did not occur at the order of al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman Zawahiri. It is believed this was because he wanted the death toll to eclipse that of 9/11 and the gas would not. That fact was surely something MI5 and the highest echelons of the Metropolitan Police would've been aware of when they received intelligence that a cyanide bomb device was being built in Forest Gate. The contextual reality of the Forest Gate raid is entirely understandable in those circumstances.
What's more, the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, tragic as it was, occured a week after the July 7th attacks and a day after a failed bomb attack on the Tube. That fact is rarely pointed out when the critical Left attacks the Police using hindsight as it's basis. Ask them though what should have been done, and they'll always avoid giving an answer.
6 comments:
I concur with Dizzy. But we should bear in mind that this is not stupidity on the part of the British government, but cupidity. The intention is to undermine and destroy the identity and fabric of Britain and if they have to make use of militant Islam to do it, so be it.
Re that handy gift to the left, Jean Charles de Menezes, it's too bad that he got killed, but he had overstayed his permission to remain in Britain by two years. If he'd left when he was legally obliged to do so, he would be smoothing on the suntan oil on Copacabana Beach even as we blog.
That he was not visited by Immigration when his permission to stay was up, and given a deadline for getting out, means that his death lies at the door of Tony Blair's hard left government, not the police.
I'm copying this post over on Dizzy's blog.
- Anonymousette
I know that facts are only occasionally welcome in blogs but the Brazilian was killed 15 days after the 52 innocent people were. Otherwise (and spelling aside), not a bad rehash of what one can read in the papers. However, before answering "What should the police have done?", it might be best to wait for the unleaked versions of the IPCC reports.
You're two [sic] kind. I do my best with spelling, but I have fat fingers.
Of course, the question "what should the police have done?" was a general one rather than just specific to Forest Gate.
I disagree. Criticising the police for their cavalier actions in Forest Gate, which damaged community relations irreparably, does not commit the fallacy of being "soft on terrorism".
Also, criticism of the police is not the exclusive preserve of the left.
As I write here, for the mistakes he has made in leadership, and the lack of credibility within the force he now has, Blair should go.
Well to be fair I didn't say that criticism of the Police was the preserve of the Left, I said that the Left criticises with a myopic view of the past.
I note incidentally that you are critical of the Police but don't say what they should've done in Forest Gate instead.
SPL - "Community relations", by which I assume you mean radical Islamic nitwits, are not high up on my list of concerns. Crime, the economy, illegal immigrants, the parlous state of education in state schools ... these are important to the nation.
As is the right of every Briton to feel safe and protected on his own soil.
It is too bad the Brazilian got killed, but he was in the country illegally. That makes him a criminal. Obviously, I'm not saying he deserved a death sentence, but if he had obeyed the law, he would have been a long way away from London on that day.
Fifty-five innocent people died for no reason last July. Hundreds more were maimed. That means they were blinded or they had their arms and/or legs blown off. That is hundreds of families grieving for their loved ones.
The police did the correct thing at Forest Gate and the Islamics are just going to have to get used to it. Or "the vast majority who are just as appalled as we are" need to get some control over the lawless fundamentalists in "their communities".
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