Al Qaeda and their apologists, like Omar Bakri, hope the attacks will continue in England. In fact, Bakri, a high profile extremist imam in Britain, wants the UK to become an Islamic state.
We can expect, then, that the terror networks will attempt to keep an operations tempo going, to demonstrate their capacity for further attacks at any time. And today they did not disappoint, as London police killed a man whose appearance and actions classically fit the profile of a suicide bomber:
I heard a load of noise, people saying, 'Get out, get down'. "I saw an Asian guy. He ran on to the train, he was hotly pursued by three plain clothes officers, one of them was wielding a black handgun. "He half tripped... they pushed him to the floor and basically unloaded five shots into him"
The suspect - who was thick around the middle and wearing a heavy winter coat buttonted shut - had eluded police chasing him, vaulted a turnstile and ran onto the train. UK police now have orders to shoot apparent suicide bombers in the head in order to prevent them from detonating themselves.
Subsequent reports are confused: some authorities say the man did not turn to out be wearing a bomb belt. However, as with the 7/7 operations, it appears that this news is being managed to reduce panic.
More police action continues today, as armed police clear streets and apparently carry out operations on a building in west London, perhaps as a result of the goldmine of forensic evidence left behind by yesterday's attempted bombings, while amateurish, are now confirmed to have used home-cooked explosives of the same type as the 7/7 bombs.
Eyewitness accounts suggest once again that yesterday's bombers either wanted to die or were very surprised by detonations that occurred while they were still with the knapsacks:
Police will be hoping that numerous apparent sightings of the suspects will also help boost the investigation. Each of the failed bombings were witnessed by passengers. Several of them described the attackers as "scared" or "surprised" as their bombs failed to cause a proper explosion. Kate Reid, who was involved in the Oval accident, said she was on the train when she heard a "pop" as if a big balloon had burst before seeing a young-looking, dark-skinned man with a bag at his feet who looked "really scared".
And this is a hopeful sign that the British public are beginning to respond to the threat among them:
Witnesses also described how the suspects were chased by other passengers as they made their way to the exits. One passenger told BBC News that he put his foot out to try to trip one of them up but failed. Another, Hugo Palit, who was walking into Warren Street Tube station, said he saw "a guy coming out and people chasing him".
A pack, not a herd?
UPDATE: The Brits have arrested two men in conjunction with the failed attacks of yesterday. One of the arrests was made close by to Stockwell tube station, site of the earlier killing of a suspected suicide bomber.
I was about to ask if anyone knew the British usage of the word Asian, but I found this Wikipedia entry if anyone else was curious:
Seems like the Brits are truly waking up. Kind of astonishing considering theyve been taught not to resist assaults and that self-defense is illegal. Takes about 3 seconds face to face with pure evil to realize all that socialist statist bullshit about the government protecting you to go out the window.
Let's be very, very careful here. I can forsee a situation where the dark-skinned person being chased is not a terrorist, with tragic results.
In this case, I think the right thing seems to have happened. I'm completely in favor of citizens taking control of their situation - if the dude's bag pops, and he tries to bolt, take him down before he gets away. But I don't think it's a good idea to assume that somebody being chased down the street is automatically a terrorist. A simple case of mistaken identity could be catastrophic.
For the record, I'd trip a white-skinned person being chased by the police. Anyone remember what happened to Uncle Ben when his nephew didn't help stop a fugitive?
I am glad they apparently got the Suicide Dudder. But I am likewise concerned that they have to resort to these tactics. Hopefully they will get better tools. This seems like it is out of a Hollywood script, or "24" episode.
"Let's be very, very careful here. I can forsee a situation where the dark-skinned person being chased is not a terrorist, with tragic results."
Yeh, its plausible, but it seems like such a red herring. Some of the Muslim communities in America and Britain have been crying so much wolf its ridiculous. You just dont hear about Muslims being beaten in the streets. I'd feel a whole lot more worried as an American in the streets of Damascus of Riyadh than a Muslim in any Western city you can name.
Personally I dont have much sympathy for those communities at this point. If moderate Muslims had been actively out shouting down the extremists in their communities, i'd probably feel different, but the truth is the Western-Islamic mainstream have been largely sitting this battle out. Perhaps this will serve as a wakeup call, but i really dont see any circumstances where people are harrassed because of their religion on anything like a large scale. Muslims would do well to recognize that and recognize the difference between 'us' and 'them', and pick a side accordingly.
When was the last time a Muslim was beheaded in the streets of Los Angeles? Or London?
A bit of lukewarm water on this:
It would appear, from the somewhat confused reports so far available, that this story might lend itself to an Amadou-Diallou-style spin. Not to say that the cases are parallel. But if the guy didn't actually have any explosives on him, it's tailor made for a predictable outcry.
That said, it's a fair matter for inquiry. A reasonable person could be convinced the cops acted appropriately, depending on just how noncompliant this guy was. And how hincty---sudden moves, etc.
Too soon to tell.
/s/
Nortius
For the record, I'd trip a white-skinned person being chased by the police.
Then carry your lawyer's business card with you at all times, you're gonna get sued.
Agreed the accounts are confused - and possibly more than usual due to potential news management by British authorities.
That said, the man in question did fit the classic suicide bomber profile to a T: he was thick around the middle, wearing a heavy winter coat, kept closed, during summer, also wearing on his back a large rucksack, and determinedly fleeing police into a transit car full of passengers. The latter is important because he fled into a dead-end location, not a place he could hide in or elude police from.
I've heard reports the authorities were tailing him as well, this isnt necessarilly some guy off the street.
For the record, I'd trip a white-skinned person being chased by the police
So would I, and I would hope most people would. I'd also chase down a guy whose backpack just went 'pop'. In both those cases, you've got a pretty good reason for taking action.
All I'm saying is we should be careful. Mistakes happen. I remember a case in NYC about ten years ago when an off-duty transit cop was shot and killed by uniformed NYPD. I believe the shooter was cleared - it looked like an honest mistake - but that's rather small comfort to the family of the dead officer. An involved public is a good thing, but we should nevertheless remain cautious.
A Muslim man in his 40s was beaten to death here about a week ago, up north. His attackers were calling him 'Taliban'.
I told a Muslim colleague about the news today, and - without forethought - phrased it thus: They shot and killed a man at a London Underground station. He was running away, and wouldn't stop. That was all I'd heard.
She interpreted my 'they' to mean racists shooting an innocent man (she immediately asked if the man was Asian). I told other people I work with, using virtually the same phrasing - 'they' rather than 'police' - and they all came to the conclusion that the police had shot a terror suspect.
Robin, one witness named Anthony Larkin, said:
Also, there are armed police units tailing known terror suspects. Witness accounts are confused, but it sounds like three plain clothes officers were the first on the scene, followed by as many as a dozen - all with handguns. The units tailing the known terrorists had been given orders to kill them if they looked to be about to carry out an attack.
There are worse things than getting sued. Like giving a guy enough time to detonate a bomb belt.
If the fellow taken down turns out not to have had a 'splodeybelt on, it occurs to me to wonder if he might have been "probing"---dry-running a bombing.
If so, perhaps he then committed "suicide by cop", either just because he wigged out when spotted, or because he didn't want to be captured alive and, if released, face associates who might have a policy of assuming anyone caught has been turned.
He might also have just been a schizo in his own little world. I've seen "street people" wearing winter coats in mid-summer. Not that that's the way to bet.
Just thinking out loud here.
#15 Nortius Maximus
London doesn't have enough armed police officers to station 3-10 of them at every underground station. Their presence there was not a coincidence.
My thoughts are congratulations to Blair and Red Ken. Decades of appeasement and pandering to Islamists have turned Britain into Israel. Daily/weekly suicide bombings? Sounds like it.
Already Bakri and others are demanding that the UK transform itself into an Islamic Republic ruled by Muslims over a subservient infidel population, like Iran or Saudi Arabia. Hanging of gays, stoning of women to death, that's what he has in mind. Meanwhile the "moderate" Mohammedans demand that Blair withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq. Turning over Afghanistan to bin Laden and Iraq to well, bin Laden.
Moderate Mohammedan? No such animal. Doesn't exist. Can't exist. Closer and closer to the three conjectures.
All I can say is THANK GOD for the Patriot Act here. Including the Library provision (9/11 hijacker used Public Library computers for instant messaging to Waziristan in Pakistan) and material support for terrorist organizations. Far better to arrest and try people agressively than wake up in some comic-book villain's world ala 9/11 or much worse.
I don't need to debunk the myth of the "library" provision of the PATRIOT Act again, do I?
This reminds me of some shots that were fired in Iraq for the very same reasons. It also (I sincerely hope) means the gloves are off.
That policeman spoke for all of us.
Lutz.
>>Moderate Mohammedan? No such animal. Doesn't exist. Can't exist. Closer and closer to the three conjectures.
Again, this statement is easy to disprove. Here's a better line of reasoning that gets you to the same place:
"The existence of moderate Muslims is irrelevant. What matters is that there are a high enough percentage of murderous Muslims, and the cost of distinguishing murderous Muslims from moderate Muslims is too high. The only way to be safe for sure is to eliminate them all."
It's interesting to note that the Nazis didn't use this reasoning in response to the "But my Jewish buddy is ok" objection. They could have said something like, "Yes, maybe he is, but it's too great a risk to National Security to let him live. His sacrifice for the good of the Reich will be duly noted."
The problem with this line of reasoning, as I've mentioned here before, is that the numbers don't add up. Assuming we only care about minimizing US civilian casualties, the "Nuke All Muslims" plan can be shown to kill more US citizens than the (also ill-advised) "Ignore all Nuclear Terrorism" plan.
T.J., there is no "nuke all muslims" plan.
TJ -- Moderate Muslims if they existed would show themselves, and would have shown themselves, long before.
The best analogy is the Civil Rights struggle against the Klan (roughly equivalent to Al Qaeda), segregation (roughly equivalent to anti-modern elements in Islam), and lynching (roughly equivalent to terrorism).
All three were stoutly opposed by intellectuals, entertainment people, various elites, and the media. Neither the Klan, Jim Crow, nor lynching were beaten easily, but they were beaten, by the consensus of White society that they needed to be beaten, that morally it was the right thing to do.
That consensus not only does not exist, there is not even the glimmerings of it, inside the Islamic world today. The reaction of the Muslim community in Britain to the terrorist bombings is ... to demand variously an end to "Islamaphobia," discrimination, change of foreign and domestic policy, and at the extreme an Islamic Republic. The uncle of one of the bombers was "proud" the "lad made a name for himself among Muslims."
There are no moderate Muslims in any appreciable amounts, and without that group acting as Northern Whites did in the Civil Rights struggle we get closer to the ultimate escalation in the Three Conjectures.
Wishing and hoping is not a sound strategy.
>>T.J., there is no "nuke all muslims" plan.
The "Nuke All Muslims" plan follows logically (and immediately) from Jim Rockford's "There are no Moderate Muslims" notion. He even invokes the Three Conjectures. If there are no moderate Muslims then Muslims are dangerous vermin who need to be exterminated to save our civilization.
That said, I'm don't buy into the assumptions and am not a part of this plan.
No, T.J., that's a complete strawman. If one concludes that there is no significant moderate muslim community, that does not mean that the person is therefore advocating the extremism you ascribe to them.
If one concluded that there was no significant moderate community, it could have many effects upon viable strategy including undermining the concept of spreading democracy in the Middle East.
But your comment is simply not appropriate. You are attempting to paint all who may hold that opinion with the tarbrush of genocidal racism.
>>If one concluded that there was no significant moderate community, it could have many effects upon viable strategy including undermining the concept of spreading democracy in the Middle East.
"There is no significant moderate community" is different from "There are no moderate Musilms."
In this case it doesn't matter, as both statements are quite demonstrably false.
Here's a thought experiment: Imagine I made the statement, "All Jews are radical Zionists who refuse to condemn the murder of innocents by Israeli forces." People around here would (justly) find me quite ridiculous. If I then referenced a work discussing scenarios in which all Jews would need to be killed with nuclear weapons, I'd probably get banned.
The difficulty in crafting a policy in response to Islamacist terror is that - unlike the Israeli state but more like the Klan - the terror networks exist with the tacit complicity - if only based on fear, but often based on support - of their communities.
Whether those communities exist in northwest London, Leeds or Waziristan, it is the community's support that enables effective terror planning and execution.
Given that fact, I'm less interested in a theoretical discussion about "all" Muslims than in the fact that very few Muslim communities have taken effective action to expose terror networks or to refuse them cover. That does not mean there aren't moderate Muslims, but it DOES mean there is a communal issue here that needs to be recognized and addressed in some effective way.
Unfortunately, while local community rejection is a necessary element of that it may not be a sufficient one - the Klan was broken up in part due to intevention with force by Federal authorities, for instance. What kept that from devolving into a civil war ws the fact that there were many locals who did not support Klan actions or ideology.
Sorry for a misleading sentence above. The point re: the state of Israel is that it exists openly, can be identified and held directly accountable for its actions. Terror networks operate in secrecy, embedded (to one degree or another) in local communities.
Actually T.J., while I don't hold it, the statement "There is no significant moderate muslim community" is not necessarily "demonstrably" false.
As Robin Burk alludes, the muslim communities are not taking effective action against the extremists moving among them. Moderate or not, so long as the bulk of muslims more readily identify with the extremists, that that can be painted as "moderate" can be argued to be meaningless for they are tacitly providing cover for the extremists.
I'm looking forward to the moderate muslim community beginning effectively to isolate their extremists. But it is not appropriate for you to imply that those who have given up on that happening are merely wishing for genocide.