Keep Thinking. Thinking is Acting, at least as Much as Shooting is Acting

First, there were all the historically ignorant people ( but, even so,  righteously passionate about the supposed lessons of a past they don���t know about or understand). They yesterday compared me with Neville Chamberlain, presumably because I didn���t urge the immediate bombing of someone or something.

 

Then there were all the ones whose response to my call to ���Think!��� responded, ���but he does not say what we should *do*���.

 

To the first group I have little to say except ���learn some real history��� and ���World War Two is not necessarily the only form in which crises come���. Islamic terrorism is not the Third Reich,  Britain now is a tiny, insignificant country compared with what she was then, and you are not Winston Churchill. As it happens, such people, being the victims of propaganda and conventional wisdom, would almost certainly have been keen supporters of Neville Chamberlain���s appeasement policy at the time. Most were.

 

To the second group, may I introduce the radical idea that thought is an action? May I suggest that seeking the truth about an event, and considering its implications and meaning, are at least as effective, and very probably much more so, than a televised air strike on a bit of desert, or a round-up of suspects? Confronted with a mechanical problem, we will generally trust the skilled, clam man with the precise tools, and mistrust the angry man in a hurry, with a hammer, even if he acts more quickly. It is the same here.

 

Of course I could use this event as a pretext to reinforce my long-held opinion that immigration to Europe should be restricted. But in truth I think the arguments for such restrictions are perfectly good already, and needn���t rely on this horror to strengthen them. What���s more, I disapprove of others using crises as a pretext to push demands they have long sought anyway. So I really oughtn���t to do it myself.

 

Also, I���d be grateful if those who go on about the alleged ���failures��� of the ���security��� services can explain how they would have made such services clairvoyant. Outside Science Fiction and Hollywood, it is extremely difficult to evaluate what must be hundreds if not thousands of potential suspects, warnings and tip-offs. This difficulty won���t cease if more spooks are hired, or more surveillance is imposed. People still have to make judgements on very partial knowledge, and often they will get them wrong. The terrorist, who has almost limitless defenceless targets once he adopts the morals of the murderer,  will almost always get through.  There are very few instances (Guy Fawkes being one) of serious terror plots being uncovered in time.

 

I���m still struck by how little we yet know about the perpetrators of the November 13 massacres. Some appear to be (as any observer of these things would expect) petty criminal low-lifes of the sort who often gravitate to highly-disciplined fanaticism. One has already been liked with cannabis use in the French press, as, once again, I would expect.

 

But on this occasion, much more so than in the Charlie Hebdo outrages, there is strong evidence of a guiding hand.

 

This is not because of the guns. Guns, alas, may be easily obtained by criminals in France. I note the lack of calls for gun control in France, not least because there is severe gun control there already, and it has had precisely no effect on the ability of such people to obtain AK-47s and plenty of ammunition to put in them. Some acknowledgement of the implications of this, by those who demand ���gun control��� in the US after every massacre, would be interesting, if unexpected. You can see why they don���t say much.

 

It is because of the suicide belts. These are very difficult to make, and require a great deal of skill, and discipline, and some pretty tight organisation. And it is also because of the clearly co-ordinated and widespread nature of the actual attacks, in an area they had clearly scouted and researched with a particular and very nasty purpose in mind. They knew exactly which part of French society they wanted to scare the most. And scare them they did.  A brief TV film of a group of mourners in a Paris street, suddenly fleeing in fear when a loud noise is heard, is one of the saddest parts of this story. I personally would hesitate before passing judgement on them. The real possibility of being mown down by fanatics in the street without warning is a potent fear.

 

If the French authorities actually know that this outrage was planned in Syria or Iraq, then I would be very interested to know how they know.  

 

As I have said before, all Muslim terror attacks used to be said to have ���all the hallmarks of Al Qaeda���, for years and years. These ���hallmarks��� were that they were terrorist attacks committed by Islamists, which always seemed a bit circular to me.  The claim meant nothing. Now ���Al Qaeda���, never in fact anything like as co-ordinated or centralised as claimed,  has sunk into obscurity and disuse, and we all talk about IS instead. How much do modern claims that IS is behind such actions mean? I do not know.

 

In fact, I still know so little about this crime that I am still thinking about it, and about what we should do about it.