Just World News with Helena Cobban

Back last Sunday, I wrote that the best response to terrorism is based primarily on solid, international investigative and police work, not on militarism. The British government has been showing us all how to do this (despite the terrible over-reaction of the shooting death of Jean Charles de Menezes, for which Tony Blair was very fast to apologize.)
Today, the British and Italian police arrested three of the men accused of involvement in the abortive mass bombing attacks on July 21, meaning that now all four of the prime suspects from that day have now been arrested.
The success of this arrest operation– and the intel bonanza that will quite likely flow from the police having taken all four of these men alive– is great news for the British people and for opponents of terrorism everywhere. It also underlines the importance of something I have argued ever since 9/11/2001: namely the importance of focusing, in both the police and the political responses to acts of terrorism, on those who might have reason to condone those acts, as much as on the shadowy (but necessarily small) terror networks themselves.
In the current case, vital clues regarding the whereabouts of the first of the suspects arrested were reportedly supplied by the man’s own father. And I have no doubt that in the other cases, too, vital clues that helped locate those suspects were provided by people who knew them fairly well, even if not they weren’t blood kin.
Think about it. If you were a Somali immigrant to Britain, or indeed any kind of a British citizen, would you turn your son in to the authorities if he were accused of involvement in something like the July 7 bombings?
It’s a tough question. I’m thinking about my own kids. If any of them was accused of involvement with a heinous crime, in the States or in Britain, would I turn them in to the authorities? (This is not a purely hypothetical question. Remember that in the US, the police only ever got their hands on the Unabomber back in 1996 because his own brother turned him in.)
As a parent, I think I’d say that if there was a strong chance a child of mine would be tortured or otherwise badly abused after being arrested, I would probably be very reluctant indeed to turn her or him in. (Ted Kaczynski’s brother reportedly only turned him in after receiving assurances from the police that he would not be given the death penalty.)
So that’s a first point. If you want to get family or close friends of suspects to cooperate with the police– and very often, they would be people with some of the best clues as to how and where to find him– then they have to have some assurance that their cooperation will not lead to their relative or friend being abused. There has, therefore, to be a basic degree of trust in the fairness of the justice system to which this person is being given up.
At a broader political level, too, though, the judgments being made about the general fairness and political legitimacy of the political system by people in the suspect’s broader community are equally important.
This is where we come to the issue of the importance of focusing on the community of potential condoners of the terrorist network. Not the (presumably smaller) community of people who actual logistic, ideological, or financial supporters of the terrorist network… But the broader ethnic or religious circles in which people might know something about what the terrorist networks are planning– in more or less specific terms– and they are in a position to choose whether to share such information as they have with the police authorities, or not…
In Britain, it seems that the events of July 7 shocked many people in the Muslim communities there who might previously, for a number of different reasons, been prepared to condone or turn a blind eye to the activities of Islamic-extremist organizers. But after July 7, I’m sure that a large proportion of previous condoners of the militant networks suddenly thought, “Oh my gosh, this business is extremely dangerous to many, many things I hold dear… What can I do to help the police to root this violence out of here?”
Note that since July 7, the British leadership has been very calm, resolute, and systematic in its pursuit of the police investigations. Tony Blair did not immediately “declare war”, or take extravagant actions to put the country on a war footing. The British police did not launch any campaigns of mass arrests of Muslims. Blair’s public stance was notably not anti-Muslim.
(Actually, in some regards, Bush’s reactions immediately after 9/11 were similarly wise and measured… With these two huge exceptions: After 9/11 some 700 suspects, mainly Muslims, were hauled off the streets of various US cities and put into fairly abusive and lengthy detention situations of very dubious legality; and then, within just a couple of weeks of 9/11, Bush started to get into the rhetoric– and associated militaristic actions– of the Global “War” on Terrorism.)
So anyway, this evening I want to say hats off to the British and their focus on massive and (with that one notable mistake) successful police work. And hats off to their ability to build new relations of apparently greater trust and mutual respect with people who formerly– and for various reasons, not all of them crazy– might have turned the condoner’s blind eye to the activities of the men of violence in their midst.
Calm, de-escalation, building relationships, and sticking to decent values of respect for everyone’s human rights… That, it seems to me, is the best way to contain and then end the scourge of terrorism. Globally, as well as within nations.
And no, it needn’t take decades to do this. Not if we start out, from the get-go, with a solid, values-based approach.

So much killing, so much hatred… The BBC is reporting that at least 88 people were killed in the multiple bombings in Sharm al-Shaikh, Egypt, yesterday, and at least 22 have been killed today by a truck bomb in the east-Baghdad district of Mashtal (which means a nursery for young plants, or saplings).
This after the well-known series of other large-scale killings of civilians we’ve witnessed in recent weeks, in Iraq and London.
Each one of those lives snuffed out is equally precious… We should remember, too, that the “point” of terrorists who kills civilians is not just to carry on killing until everyone is dead, though sometimes it does almost feel that way. Their “point” is to leave everyone else so terrified that they accede to the demands of the terrorists. And along they way, they often hope to provoke an over-reaction from the targeted society. Llike, for example, the serious mistake the British police made when they shot to kill a fleeing “suspect” who turned out to be a Brazilian unconnected with the Qaeda-style terrorists the police were seeking.
That kind of an over-reaction helps to polarize important portions of society against the police, and thus poses a huge obstacle to the kind of very thorough and principled police work that– in Britain as internationally– remains the best answer for how to incapacitate the Qaeda-style terrorists.
Already, several prominent British Muslims have said that if the British police have a “shoot to kill” policy, that will make it much harder for the police to win cooperation in the Muslim communities.
… Well, if we think that the British police shooting to kill one fleeing individual was a dangerous and potentially self-defeating form of over-reaction, then what do we think about the Bush administration– “in response to” the threat from an Afghanistan/Pakistan-based Al-Qaeda– launching a war to invade and control a whole different country, Iraq?
In Britain, I hope and expect that the Rules of Engagement that last friday apparently allowed a small London police squad to shoot to kill a fleeing suspect have since been changed. And also, hopefully, that the whole incident will be rigorously investigated and any officer who exceeded the rules of engagement in place at the time would be disciplined.
Of course, the British police and government should also apologise profusely to the family of the slain Brazilian, and make some meaningful form of amends to them.
But what about the Bushites’ extreme form of over-reaction in Iraq?
When will we see that policy reversed?
When will see a thorough investigation into the whole affair, and those responsible for that dangerous over-reaction brought to justice and disciplined?
When will we see a US apology to the affected Iraqis, and serious efforts to make amends to them?
Soon, I hope.
And at that point, everyone in the world who actually, in practice, recognizes that solving longstanding political differences through dialogue and discussion is a far better way of doing things than through any applications of violence, can start to come together and make the case for a far smarter, more focused, response to the terrorists.
This response would be based on:

(1) solid, international investigative and police work;
(2) building strong political alliances based on a commitment to nonviolent values rather than a reliance on militarism; and
(3) a commitment to hearing everyone’s existing political claims and grievances with an equally sympathetic ear, and a commitment to equality-based outcomes.

There are many ways to respond to terrorism without getting sucked into the terrorists’ games and paradigms of relying on violence to solve problems. Pleae God, let’s be smart enough, and concerned enough about the kind of world we’ll bequeath to our children and grandchildren, that we commit to using those ways.