This speech is pretty amazing, and I'll post the full text in the comments section.
"For instance, U.S. media pretty much missed the one truly Churchillian response to the attacks -- that of London Mayor Ken Livingstone, a committed socialist and anti-war activist, who issued the following statement on the day of the attacks:
I have no doubt whatsoever that this is a terrorist attack. We did hope in the first few minutes after hearing about the events on the Underground that it might simply be a maintenance tragedy. That was not the case. I have been able to stay in touch through the very excellent communications that were established for the eventuality that I might be out of the city at the time of a terrorist attack and they have worked with remarkable effectiveness. I will be in continual contact until I am back in London.
I want to say one thing specifically to the world today. This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at presidents or prime ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever....
(cont in comments)
For instance, U.S. media pretty much missed the one truly Churchillian response to the attacks -- that of London Mayor Ken Livingstone, a committed socialist and anti-war activist, who issued the following statement on the day of the attacks:
ReplyDeleteI have no doubt whatsoever that this is a terrorist attack. We did hope in the first few minutes after hearing about the events on the Underground that it might simply be a maintenance tragedy. That was not the case. I have been able to stay in touch through the very excellent communications that were established for the eventuality that I might be out of the city at the time of a terrorist attack and they have worked with remarkable effectiveness. I will be in continual contact until I am back in London.
I want to say one thing specifically to the world today. This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at presidents or prime ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever.
That isn't an ideology, it isn't even a perverted faith -- it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other. I said yesterday to the International Olympic Committee that the city of London is the greatest in the world, because everybody lives side by side in harmony.
Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack. They will stand together in solidarity alongside those who have been injured and those who have been bereaved and that is why I'm proud to be the mayor of that city.
Finally, I wish to speak directly to those who came to London today to take life.
I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others -- that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail.
In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfill their dreams and achieve their potential.
They choose to come to London, as so many have come before, because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don't want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.
I think the entire left-is-soft stereotype comes from the aformentioned douchebags reporting sound bites that, the other 99% of the time, reinforce the stereotype. Of course everyone favors a strong and effective and immediate response, if possible, to quash terrorism, and nobody seeks to placate or coddle them. Being soft on terrorism is dumber than, and less common than, being soft on crime. Its effective if completely irresponsible campaigning by the right, where any strong and harsh response is automatically the correct path, and anything else is weak.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, people on your side of the spectrum are incapable of understanding the merits of seeing things in shades of grey.
Do the terrorists hate us for our freedom and liberty? Not in the trite and essentially meaningless way President Bush spouts them out (the words have become placeholders in his sentences for lack of anything substantial to say). However, do they loathe the idea of a secular society? I'm pretty sure.
The thing that gets us on the left all up in arms is when someone naively asks why the terrorists hate America, and the answer comes back "because we're like, so cool, and sweet, cuz like, we've got freedom and junk." There's more to it than that. Our foreign policy, even pre-Iraq, whether or not you approve of actions we've taken and the aims of those actions, has essentially made us a lightning rod for angst and blame around the world. I also think that, maybe to some extent, all these supposed reasons for their rage is a lot of posturing to justify whats basically an outraged and irrational loathing of everything that doesn't perfectly adhere to their fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran.
Livingstone is a mayor, not a national security expert. He did lay out a response, at least over the arena of daily life that he can kind of hold some sway over. He said, fuck it, terrorism is not going to work, so while they keep blowing themselves up for their futile cause, we'll keep living our lives, and hin the meantime England has intelligence to do what can be done about the rest of it.