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July 23, 2005
London police murder innocent citizen
Ooops. Sorry. In the nervous aftermath of the London Muslim bombings of 7/7 and 7/21, London police shot an innocent man to death as he ran down into the subway.
A lot of what we're faced with here is a problem of numbers. No one would disagree that, if a terrorist is standing there with an armload of plastic explosives, then he deserves to die. But, the reality is, that when you bring in police to search people, and give them the shoot-to-kill powers, they're going to seach millions of innocent people, and kill many innocent people, and probably never come into contact with a single terrorist. Remember, when the subways were completely unguarded, they went a hundred years without being attacked.
The same problem holds for the disaster of 9/11. Although lots of people said we should have shot the planes out of the sky on 9/11, the reality is, that if you start shooting commercial aircraft out of the sky because you can't communicate with them and they're off course, you're going to kill way more people than the terrorists ever would.
Having police in the subway stations is about as effective as when we had the National Guard guarding the Golden Gate bridge. More often than not, they were asleep in their trucks. Not that you could blame them though, because the odds of any one place getting attacked at any point in time are so absurdly low, that you'd fall asleep if you were guarding it, too. It's boring.
As for my own personal proection, I really don't see the terrorists as a threat to my safety, with or without the police. The number of people that the terrorists have killed(in a world of six billion people) is statistically insignificant. Logically, I focus my attention on the true threats to my safety. And I don't live my life in fear. I do not change my life based on the actions of a few insane muslims.
Posted by Peenie Wallie on July 23, 2005 at 4:04 PM
Comments
Allowing the state to assume the power of execution without any due process or right of defense sets the stage for the eventual death of far mor people than Osama ever dreamed of killing, and compromises the liberty of every citizen the secular West. Remember this incident in the years to come, when you begin to wonder just what the hell happened to freedom...
Posted by: Harry Hamlin on August 9, 2005 at 12:08 AM