A lot of interviews have come up with the phrase “Well it’s all very British” and I, personally would have to agree with them. 9/11 made the world aware and America quite paranoid, for lack of a better word. These types of attacks would never happen in America for the simple reason that anyone attempting to scale the White House or invade Congress would be shot where they stood. Britain had the IRA, so we’re not entirely ignorant about it but the whole civility and harmlessness that has concluded these events is very British. We still feel invulnerable to a degree and that boosts the confidence and social manner of the populous. If we remain lax we could be attacked and suffer our own 9/11 and we would become as paranoid as the Americans. If we heighten security to the necessary degree though we start to cut off our personal sense of security. We lose our “Britishness” because of it. Either way it seems inevitable.
Do you agree?
Do you think that the current state of affairs represents a proud and noble nation, or a kid with dynamite and matches?
AQ will hit Britain when they can one way or the other. All the armed guards in the world wouldn’t have helped the people in the WTC and Pentagon once the bastards were on the plane. After 9/11 planes became close to unusable due to the fact that the passengers will not be passive anymore. They then used trains to hit Spain and simply planted a bomb in a pub in Bali etc.
AQ will hit and hit hard using tactics that are hard to fight. The are not tied down to one method of attack. If the House of Parliament is put behind a 100 foot wall it may protect the MP’s but the millions on the tube, on trains/buses or in public places are still open to attack.
Just look at the IRA tactics regarding the Brighton Hotel bombing. They just missed killing or wounding the sitting government at the time. What was their next attack plan? The House of Parliament? Buck House? Military targets? Nope they had started on a plan to plant bombs in holiday hotels on 20+ day delays times to go off at the rate of two a day for 15 days. Luckily this plan was thwarted but it just goes to show you can’t really stop the bastards if they don’t have any qualms about who they kill.
By all means the security should be tightened up but I fear this will be the springboard for the powers that be to try and get more infringements on lawful public protest on the back of these events. IMO nearly every sitting government wants to curtail protests as much as possible but don’t think they can get it past the public.
As Britain has been dealing with the risk of terrorist attack for many decades from the IRA the rule has been to do what is sendible to avoid terrorist risks (any unatended bag is seen as susspicious, especialy on trains, in city centers etc), but also to try as hard as possible not to let terrorism effect normal lives and procedures. The visability of parliament in action is an important right for people within Britain, as is access to their members of parliament. So a ballance is maintained. The nature of government is such that no elected individual is so important that even were the whole house of commons killed it would not greatly damage the country, it would basicly just make the people mad angry. The sorts of people who are central in opposing terrorism and the like are hidden and unknown, they are much safer from any terrorist attack.