shot on suspicion: martial law.
SHOT ON SUSPICION: Martial Law.
It is a tragedy that the one English-speaking nation which has always had the highest tolerance for individual eccentricities, strange manners, speech, conduct and dress, should now find itself in the situation where a law-abiding Brazilian man has been shot to death by the London metropolitan police simply because he looked suspicious to them.
The situation is not improved by what the Guardian newspaper has reported. Up to seven other people have come within seconds or inches of also being shot to death by the special teams of the British police.
This IS a shoot to kill policy! It is also a failure on the policy level. Regardless of Prime Minister Blair's protestations that it is not true, 85 percent of the British public according to the latest polls have drawn a straight line connecting the British military participation in the attack and occupation of Iraq and the attacks made in London. According to Prime Minister Blair, that makes 85 percent of the British public supporters of terrorism!
Prime Minister Blair is blatantly ignoring the nearly two million people who peacefully marched past the offices of the British Government in London, protesting against him joining with President Bush in an attack upon Iraq even before that military attack had been made.
Now, the British Armed Forces are in Iraq and "others" have decided to bring the consequences of aggressive war back to Britain, so that the people in England could themselves get a taste of what war is really like. At the policy level, Mr Blair has clearly decided that a "shoot on suspicion" policy is the proper answer.
Here lies the ultimate failure of Mr Blair's policy. It has made the British civil police as dangerous to any person who might attract attention as are the terrorists themselves. What is the difference between being blown up in a terrorist bombing or being shot to death by the police because of a foreign policy which is certain to bring about such terrorist bombings?
Terrorism, so-called, is the militarily weak party's response to being attacked because it does not have the Tornados or the F- 16s with which to make a "proper" military response to being attacked.
The central policy question here is simple. Is Prime Minister Blair prepared to accept that a full-scale air and ground attack would be made upon Britain because of his own military attack upon Iraq? The answer to this nearly classical question is obvious. Of course, Prime Minister Blair would NOT have made his attack if the response could have been a real, full- scale, "proper" military war with the nation he had attacked.
The attack upon Iraq was made by Prime Minister Blair because he thought that it was "safe". He thought that there would be no direct "proper" military response, because Iraq did not have military means with which to respond.
Now, a response has come. It is neither a "proper" nor an official response. Four bombs exploded in London and another four might have gone off a few days later, if the detonators or home made explosives had functioned. They did not and Londoners were saved from another massive number of dead and wounded.
Now, the political cry is out to the effect that the Blair government needs additional emergency powers. When Parliament returns, it looks like these emergency laws will be passed very quickly. Then, Britain too will be under emergency laws, with the only difference from martial law being that it is its civil police doing the random killing instead of soldiers, as would have been the case under martial law.
