Point/CounterpointDebate newsworthy and other 'hot-button' topics here. If it can be debated, this is the forum for it. Can't be thin skinned - people will disagree with you. No flaming or personal attacks.
LONDON With the emergence here of suicidal terrorism and of what seems to be an enemy within, Britons are raising questions about their ability to sustain an image as tolerant, open and unwilling to sacrifice civil liberties for security.
The shocks have been profound. Failed attacks on Thursday shattered any vestigial hope, or illusion, that the murderous bombings two weeks earlier - ascribed by the police to British Islamic terrorists - would not be followed by more assaults. Just a day later, plainclothes officers gunned a man down in full public view aboard an Underground train.
Then, on Saturday, the police conceded that the man they shot, Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was an electrician from Brazil, mistaken for a would-be bomber and killed, some feared, because of the color of his skin.
"London's minority communities are feeling anxious for their sons today," Shami Chakrabarti, a civil rights campaigner, said Sunday.
Yet, for all the momentous questions raised by the events, the response has been curiously muted, as if the country were holding its collective breath, or looking away from the seismic shifts still to come.
"We must not lose our grip on the truth: that Britain is a free, tolerant, and generous country that has bent over backwards to accommodate its culturally diverse migrants," said a newspaper columnist, Janet Daley.
That sense of steadfast resolve was mirrored on Sunday in the police response to the killing on Friday.
Senior officers made clear that they had no intention of rescinding the shoot-to-kill orders intended to ensure that would-be suicide attackers are not able to set off their bombs. But they also said they did not plan to put more armed officers on the streets.
Even after the shooting Friday, many Britons still maintain that their police, who generally do not carry guns, are more sophisticated than their counterparts in the United States.
"There needs to be strong policing, but not hysterical policing. " said Amy Bowles, a 25-year-old musician. "I see American police as being trigger-happy. I think there's a lot more respect for policing without guns in this country."
With about 10 percent of officers armed, said Ian Blair, the Scotland Yard commander, "I think that is where we want to be. The landscape is changed. But the underlying structures of policing by consent, working with communities, strengthening communities, will not change.
"It is not the police and intelligence services who defeat terrorism, it's communities," Blair said Sunday.
The police efforts o work with local communities, particularly British Muslims, is now in jeopardy, threatened by a mistrust of the police that predates the antiterror effort.
"The reality is that this young man was probably suspected of being a Muslim," said Kate Hoey, a Labour member of the British Parliament from South London near where the shooting took place. "Now that's going to make every young Muslim - and every other young person, in fact - feel quite fearful."
Sipping a beer in a pub in Clapham, in South London, Helen Armstrong-Brown, 24, an ultrasound technician, said "It wouldn't stand out as much in America, but here it's very surprising. It makes me feel a lot more at risk that they are prepared to kill you without asking you your name. I've always been proud that the police here don't rely on guns."
The police reject arguments that they are trigger happy. Armed officers, said Ken Jones of the Association of Chief Police Officers of England, Wales and Ireland, are volunteers who undergo training and use their guns only "to take life to save life." Opening fire, he said, is "the last act in a play that we hope we would never come to," he said.
Ultimately, the shooting raises a central question: Is uprooting terrorists worth the risk of losing some of the freedoms that many Britons believe Americans forfeited after Sept. 11, 2001?
Some Britons seem resigned to a bloodier new regime. "In the London of July 2005, few would want the police to take any chances," said the Mail on Sunday in an editorial.
Even Peter Hain, a former anti-apartheid campaigner who is the Northern Ireland secretary of state said, the police "are seeking to protect all of us, and we need to be understanding of that."
Can you imagine the uproar such an incident in the U.S. would cause worldwide? All the pc'ers in the U.S. would lead the chorus of complaints about how unfeeling and cruel our people/police/government/etc. are, not to mention requirement for an instant investigation of the life of the shooters; endless inquiries about everyone and everything about the "excessive police action." I am glad British authorities stopped any such nonsense with the simple statement they regret the innocent life taken and will continue to shoot to kill when a suspect resists arrest.
Why is the intelligence of our nation being allowed to slide downwards in the face of criticism from here and abroad - especially from abroad?
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Can you imagine the uproar such an incident in the U.S. would cause worldwide? All the pc'ers in the U.S. would lead the chorus of complaints about how unfeeling and cruel our people/police/government/etc. are, not to mention requirement for an instant investigation of the life of the shooters; endless inquiries about everyone and everything about the "excessive police action." I am glad British authorities stopped any such nonsense with the simple statement they regret the innocent life taken and will continue to shoot to kill when a suspect resists arrest.
That takes backbone, Marianne.
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Point/Counterpoint
07-25-2005, 13:42
Britain's new battle: Tolerance vs. terror 
