Why do they do that?
Sat, 2005-07-16 16:12
#1
Why do they do that?
When major calamities like the London bombing occur why do politicians have to come out with so much patronising tosh and platitudinous nonsense? I give you four examples:
“Londoners are resilient”
Londoners are not a single entity. We come in all types. Some of us are resilient, some are not. I know Londoners who are not being particularly resilient just now and have changed their working arrangements to avoid travelling on the tube, or even coming into London. Why pretend there is something uniformly heroic about Londoners, when clearly we are – like the inhabitants of any other city - a mix of every kind of personality from stupendously brave to stupendously cowardly.
“Londoners don’t panic”
This is simply not true. I read reports which indicated that some people did panic and some didn’t. If a bomb goes off a few feet from you, I don’t think there is any shame in panicking. So why pretend it doesn’t happen?
“We’ll bring the bombers to justice” – George Bush
Will someone please say how you bring dead suicide bombers to justice. I particularly object to this statement because it is yet another example of old thinking being applied to new circumstances. Until we have politicians who are prepared to face up to the real world as it is rather than to a fantasy world based on attitudes and ideas from the 1950s, we are doomed to failure.
“The world is a safer place since we invaded Iraq” – Tony Blair/Jack Straw
Yeah right.....say no more.
pepsoid
OK, first of all... any way to ban that "INFILTRATION.STATION" personage?
Secondly... I'm under the impression that maybe it's not really anything to do with Iraq, Al Quaida (or however you spell it) or whatever, but rather perhaps young British people who are so disillusioned with their lives here that they'd rather die in a blaze of so-called "glory," taking scores of people with them, than continue with their boring, humdrum, meaningless lives? Just a thought...
justyn_thyme
You're making a big assumption there, fateful, by believing what the terrorists tell you. Iraq is an excuse, not a cause or reason. If it weren't for Iraq, they would use something else. This, BTW, does not mean I think invading Iraq was a good idea. It means that the bombers don't need a justification--that's the whole point of terrorism. Give them what they claim they want and they'll come up with another list of demands. The fault lies within Islam itself, and so does the solution. Until they put an end to the death cult in their own midst, nothing will improve.
pepsoid
I'd argue that the fault doesn't lie with Islam either - that also is used as an excuse. The fault lies with a twisted version of Islam, which is nothing like what Islam is supposed to be - cf. Christianity & The Crusades... etc... etc... etc...
...but ultimately the fault lies with certain sections of humanity's need to blame anything but themselves (America, God, whatever) for their problems...
fatalky
It does intrigue me that no other major religion has suicide bombers.
archergirl
That's a cultural thing, quite apart from religion.
Japan had suicide bombers in WWII. It was just as unfathomable to us then as it is now.
My own idea is that suicide bombing has something to do with other forms of self-destruction: within the bombers' psyches lies an absolute belief that life is not worth much in itself, that they (the bombers) are valueless and unworthy: within the larger sphere of radical Islamic 'culture' lies a certain subtext that martyrdom is glorious and somehow 'worth' something of value (this is their excuse). It's not really much different than that bloke who committed suicide by parking his car on the train tracks in Herts. last year. His life was worth nothing, and so were everyone elses', so he took six more lives with him. The only difference is that it is put in the context of a political statement to give greater 'value' to what they were doing.
Just an idea.
archergirl
So 'WAS' everyone elses, I guess I should have said. Phone rang whilst typing. I should be working...
pepsoid
The more we in the West blame Islam for suicide bombers & terrorism in general, the more those so-called "Islamic" Fundamentalists who engage in such martyrdom acquire fuel for their cause. They want to cause unrest, distrust, hate even, so they've got something to fight against. They want "war" & we (i.e. the likes of Pres Bush) give it to them! And thus the cycle goes on...
archergirl
Just think if we spent all that energy making peace with one another.
But then men would have nothing to do. They'd have to invent some new gadgets or something...
justyn_thyme
The nonviolent segments of the Islamic population must solve this problem themselves. It is a disease in their own midst. And yes, I am blaming them for it for the simple reason that they are responsible. They are responsible for creating the atmosphere which encourages and glorifies the extremists in the first place and then does nothing to stop them after the fact. The self-flagellating guilty white liberals in the West are quick to shoulder the blame themselves and then wiggle out of it by pointing the finger at people like me by proxy because blaming the people actually responsible would deny them a magnificent opportunity for a pompous display of self-martydom without incurring any actual consequences. I will not make excuses for Islam no matter how politically incorrect that is among the self-hating white liberals. Using Iraq as an excuse for suicide bombers is like saying Hitler was right when he used the Treaty of Versailles to justify WW2 and the holocaust. Sorry. I doesn't work that way.
archergirl
Well, maybe it'll happen now that it's not 'them' in Palestine/Iraq/Afghanistan but 'us' in Britain.
david floyd
Yes, apparently Bush sees the death penalty as the only appropriate deterrent for suicide bombers.
On the general point, though, these things are convention. Politicians have no choice but to make these sorts of statements.
Ralph
The rule of rhetoric.
fatalky
Thank you David. You made me titter. In another thread to counter the
'wearenotafraid.com' I wrote 'weareafraid.com' Hence the 400% increase in bicycle sales. It's sensible to be afraid, it's called self-preservation. No we won't stop what we do, we just might adjust. I will continue to walk to most places, anything up to 10 miles a day, it doesn't take long, and it's cheap. Oh and you get fit.
[%sig%]
mississippi
>> ..It's sensible to be afraid, it's called self-preservation.. <<
No, it's not sensible at all, it's sensible to be careful, and it isn't self-preservation either, that's something entirely different.
The Jews of Dachau were afraid, and they preserved nothing.
fateful
I nearly forgot the best/worst of them all:
"These bombings have nothing to do with our actions in Iraq" - Blair, Straw, Howard, Kennedy and just about every other idiot senior politican in Britain.
What do they take us for? Of course these events are directly linked to Iraq, in particular to the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi people, killed by coalition bullets and bombs.
If we're assigning blame for London first and foremost I blame the bombers and their support network. But let's not kid ourselves. A big share of the blame also rests on the shoulders of Blair and Bush.
But for Blair's actions over Iraq, 54+ innocent British civilians would still be alive. How does he sleep at night?