This morning I caught a train from south London into Waterloo, as I often do. There was a significantly larger police presence at Waterloo station than I am used to. It was not intended to be large enough to cause anyone to panic, but it there were certainly more police there than there were last week. Some of the police were carrying handguns. (Police in Great Britain are not normally armed). I then walked over one of the Hungerford footbridges that connect Waterloo and the South Bank Centre with Charing Cross Station on the other side of the Thames. Walking across the footbridge were two policement, one of who was carrying a sub-machine gun. (One normally only sees such things at airports, or outside the US embassy, or somewhere like that). At Charing Cross over the river there was again a more substantial police presence than I am used to, and again quite a few of the police were armed.
This was all actually clearly intended to be pretty low key, but I could feel the unmistakeable sense that the police and security forces are nervous at the moment. After the events in Spain last week, they should be. I am nervous. But seeing this kind of response on the streets is certainly something that makes me feel closer to it.
Which raises some questions. Do you think the beefed up police presence will deter an organized terrorist group from trying to carry out a plan? And, as a libertarian (I assume), are you comforted by the extra show of force, or put off by the idea that such force walks the streets, affecting everyone and the normal flow of life, which must go on? Do you think that this extra show of force is more beneficial or more harmful?
Actually, Michael, I was going to ask what effect machine guns are supposed to have on bombs? Terrorists don’t run through the streets lobbing bombs around or shooting people. They plant them and either leave, or blow themselves up. So why the machine guns?
This strikes me as an exercise in reassuring the public. Or they are out looking for that Trafalgar Square fourth plinth sculptor.
Aaahh, the trickle down effect of the Spanish capitulation. Somebody other than me obviously thinks Al Qaida will be emboldened to try and strip away other U.S. allies through horror show attacks on vulnerable infrastructure.
Sorry you folks on that side of the pond have to go through ithe increased security and all; it’s bad enough we live under a cloud in my town, Washington.
Feel free to blame us Americans, if you want: Howard Dean and Mr. Zapatero certainly do. We’re getting used to it. Honest.
Those armed policemen might very well come in handy. Car bombs aren’t the only means of terrorist attack. Anybody else remember the Red Army Faction’s infamous “pinwheel” at Lod Airport in the 70’s? Someone (besides the terrorists) close at hand with a firearm could have done a world of good there at the time.
Just one more reason to REALLY like concealed carry laws here in the U.S.
Breaking news … Daily Telegraph online and the BBC news site reporting that anti-terrorist police have closed Eurostar down. No details yet.
Terror patrols at city stations
Londoners face threat of terror
TERROR ALERT ON RAIL LINE
Remember the tanks at Heathrow? This stuff is all for show. It won’t make the slightest difference to the prospect of a terrorist attack.
Maybe, but this might
Troops ring ‘top al-Qaeda figure’ BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3525000.stm
I agree Waterloo is ridiculous. The show of force? can’t be anything else than that. Surely anyone intelligent enough to carry out the bombings in Madrid would also have the intelligence to take a coach out to a rural city and kill people there.
Still even the most minarchist amongst us must find it reassuring.
A goverments use is to simply ensure basic law and order, and make sure no other can take power.
Still even the most minarchist amongst us must find it reassuring.
I may find it mildly reassuring against the oblique fear of terrorism. But that can more than offset by the idea that our street corners and railways have highly armed government agents who also can keep an eye on us, and more likely so. Just like any other facet of Statism, it is not necessarily the Good thing in its current context, it is the possibilities if it is put into a new context. I may feel secure today against terrorism, but tomorrow’s new fear is the guy on the corner with the submachine gun.
The idea is to take the fight to them instead of letting them bring it to us so we don’t have policemen and national guardsman (for the US) with submachine guns looking at every passerby with interest.
I can’t help but think a lot of this is merely show, for reassurance for the masses. The masses demand ‘security’, or at least its empty, showy equivalent. I’d rather know that specialty troops are garrotting al qaida member in the mountains of Afghanistan or Pakistan than have Officer Johnson with a submachine gun making notations about me while he’s ‘protecting’ the 9:15 from Jersey.
Might I suggest another possible deterrent measure to Islamofascist terrorism?
The heads of Saddam, Al Zarqawi, Al Zarwahiri, Assad, some random crazy violent Iranian Mullah, and about half the wankers at Guantanamo on pikes lining the road into London. It wouldn’t solve all the problems, but the general deterrent statement might be useful, and the specific deterrent message would probably be pretty clearly understood and heeded.
When speaking to a free man, speak the language of democracy. When speaking to crazed, violent, power hungry mental defectives, perhaps we ought to start speaking a language they understand. Chomsky tells us to try to understand our enemies; it’s the least we could do.
Oh my, that sounds really nasty, doesn’t it? Well, I guess I’m just a guy who is tired of getting searched every day for the last 2.5 years, going into work. I’m reasonably certain the daily pat down isn’t being done because government officials like treating me badly; I’m also reasonably certain it’s an effort to thwart those bastards whose heads ought to be on pikes outside London, and lining the harbor in Manhattan, facing east. This makes me think – the thing I resent the most about Islamofascist terrorism is not the threat of death they pose to me and mine. It is what they are turning us into, in the West, in order to avoid those threats.
LAX out here in California had a noticably increased police presense as well. They were still waving all the cars past the check point at the entrance, but then they had all sorts of motorcycle cops pulling people over near the terminals. I couldn’t tell if they were just pulling people over randomly or if they all had tail lights out or something.
Ann – All the world’s major airports have a notably increased police presence. What Michael is talking about is sub-machine guns on the streets of our ancient capital city, where the police have always been unarmed before. We are not talking about the number of armed men going up a notch. We are talking about something alien to Britain being imposed on us as a reaction to terrorists.
Toolkien – I keep arguing for exporting the battlefield to the terrorists’ territory and getting it the hell out of ours. I keep saying, ‘let us stop allowing them to impose fear in our country and inconvenience in our daily lives’, but this doesn’t appear to appeal to other Samizdats, because no one ever responds.
What the hell are we doing allowing them to force us to suspend Eurostar service? British and French taxpayers paid hundreds of millions of pounds to build Eurostar – for our convenience. Because we wanted it. What are we doing letting fascist terrorists deprive us of its service? This is totally inept and disgraceful.
What are we doing with police being allowed to stop and search freeborn Britons going peacefully about their business in the London tube system? This is insufferable.
Yes, Al Maviva – Regarding the medieval bigots Blair & Co have allowed into our midst, Talleyrand they’re not. We must speak the language they are able to grasp.
But more important, we have to stop allowing them to impose an uninvited battle on our streets and public services, and take it to them. That means crushing the states that sponsor terrorism. An eerie green glow in the skies above Riyadh would be a good start.
Certainly it is very bad tactics to allow terrorists to intimidate us and to force us to take up a defensive posture. Thank god for Bush and a few good men with balls. Tone and his left-liberal, left handed batsmen, allow four terrorists to arrive from Cuba and allow them to tell porkies to the left-liberal press picking up a fortune in the process. If our government (and I use the term loosly) cannot pick up and detain traitors for fear of offending the terrorists amongst us, they are no better than the Spanish. I hope Bush holds his nerve in the face of appeasers at home, at least we can trust him. Are there still people who do not understand what these Islamofacists want from us?