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After US Bombs Syrian Government for Third Time in 8 Months, Media Ask Few Questions |
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Friday, 02 June 2017 14:15 |
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Norton writes: "The United States has bombed Syrian government-allied forces three times in just eight months. Major media outlets have overwhelmingly failed to ask critical questions about these incidents, preferring instead to echo the Pentagon."
Victims of an airstrike in Idlib, Syria. (photo: AFP)
After US Bombs Syrian Government for Third Time in 8 Months, Media Ask Few Questions
By Ben Norton, FAIR
02 June 17
 he United States has bombed Syrian government–allied forces three times in just eight months. Major media outlets have overwhelmingly failed to ask critical questions about these incidents, preferring instead to echo the Pentagon.
For years, media have consistently downplayed the extent of US military intervention in Syria, and repeatedly propagated the long-debunked myth that Washington never pursued regime change there in the first place. The distorted reporting on these US attacks reflects this longer trend.
On May 18, the US military launched an air raid against forces allied with the Syrian government, killing several soldiers. The Trump administration claimed Syrian- and Iranian-backed militias had entered a 55-kilometer (34-mile) “deconfliction zone” around a base in southern Syria, near the borders of Iraq and Jordan, where the US trains opposition fighters.
Yet US officials also later admitted that they do not themselves recognize the legitimacy of these de-escalation zones—even while using them to justify carrying out such attacks.
No major media outlets questioned the government narrative, or the notion that the Syrian-allied forces were a “threat.” (For context, 34 miles is the distance between Aleppo and Idlib, considered two separate theaters in the Syrian civil war. It is also roughly the distance between Baghdad and Fallujah, or between Washington, DC, and Baltimore.)
In its report on the attack, Reuters‘ cartoonish headline (5/18/17) was “US Strikes Syria Militia Threatening US-Backed Forces: Officials.” The article uncritically repeated that an unnamed pro-government militia “posed a threat to US and US-backed Syrian fighters in the country’s south.”
Reuters added that, when those “threatening” government-allied forces were hit, they were allegedly still a distant 27 kilometers (17 miles) from the US-led coalition’s al-Tanf base.
USA Today (5/18/17) simply noted that the “forces came within a 34-mile defensive zone around the al-Tanf base,” and unskeptically claimed the US airstrike “targeted pro-regime forces who were threatening a coalition base.”
Fox News (5/18/17) triumphantly declared, “US Airstrikes Pound Pro-Assad Forces in Syria.” Obediently echoing the US government, Fox claimed the Syrian forces “were near the Jordanian border and deemed a threat to coalition partners on the ground.”
The New York Times‘ report was similarly deferential (5/18/17), echoing Pentagon officials who insisted the pro-government convoy “ignored warnings.”
Unquestioned Double Standards
Later follow-up statements added a wrinkle to the US government narrative the media had parroted.
In peace talks in early May, Russia, Iran and Turkey signed an agreement to create four deconfliction zones in Syria. This deal was supposed to apply to the US as well, but the Trump administration has refused to recognize the legitimacy of these de-escalation zones—even while using them to justify attacks on Syrian government-allied forces.
The US military official who is leading the air war against ISIS, Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, insisted at a May 24 press conference (The Hill, 5/24/17), “We don’t recognize any specific zone in itself that we preclude ourselves from operating in.”
Harrigian stressed that the US carries out whatever air strikes it wants in Syria. “We do not have specific zones that we are deconflicting with them,” the general said. “When we’ve talked to the Russians, we do not talk about those deescalation zones.”
Yet media reports still went along with the narrative that US forces were “threatened” by Syrian government-allied forces miles away in a zone that the US does not even accept as legitimate.
An anonymous CENTCOM official quoted two weeks after the attack by Military Times (5/30/17) complained, “These patrols and the continued armed and hostile presence of pro-regime forces inside the deconfliction zone are unacceptable and threatening to coalition forces.”
Meanwhile, Syrian rebels applauded the US attack and called for more strikes against the government.
‘First Time’ for a Third Time
Immediately after the May 18 airstrike, media portrayed the attack as something completely new. The Associated Press published a newswire headlined “US Airstrike Hits Pro-Syria Government Forces for First Time,” which was reprinted by the Washington Post and Yahoo News. Foreign Policy (5/18/17) similarly claimed “US Bombs Syrian Regime Forces for First Time.”
In reality, this was the third time in eight months that the US bombed Syrian government and allied forces. Some of these reports, strangely, even acknowledged the Trump administration’s April strike on a Syrian airfield, but acted as though this somehow did not constitute an attack.
In September 17, 2016, the Syrian military was leading a fight against the genocidal extremist group ISIS near the airport of Deir al-Zor, in eastern Syria. Suddenly, the US launched an hour of sustained airstrikes on the Syrian military, killing 106 soldiers in the attack, according to the Syrian government.
The US insisted the air raid was an accident and that it had meant to target ISIS militants. This has been called into question, however. A senior officer in the Syrian Arab Army said the US-led coalition had sent drones above the Syrian troops’ positions before the attack, so it knew where they were situated. The officer also recalled that the majority of the US airstrikes were not targeted at the frontline, where the Syrian soldiers were fighting ISIS.
Ultimately, it was the self-declared Islamic State that benefited from the US attack. The extremist group seized important areas around the Deir al-Zor airport. The US air raid also led to a breakdown in the ceasefire in Syria that had been agreed to just six days before.
Since President Donald Trump entered office, the US has launched two more intentional attacks on pro-government forces. In April, the US launched 59 Tomahawk missiles at Syria’s Shayrat airbase, in an attack that the Pentagon said destroyed 20 percent of Syria’s war planes. Trump claimed the strike was done in retaliation for a chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, a village in the Al Qaeda–dominated province of Idlib, although this accusation has been called into question by some arms experts.
This incident, the US’s first officially intentional attack on the Syrian government, also in effect aided ISIS, which launched an offensive near the city of Homs immediately afterward.
Unasked Questions
Many questions remain unanswered. Why can the US use deconfliction zones it does not even itself recognize to justify attacking Syrian government-allied forces? Do the US and UK have the right to tell Syria where its forces can go in its own country? How is 34, or 17, miles “close”? How can the US attack Syrian government forces without benefiting ISIS, a group that routinely threatens Western civilians?
A strong independent media should be asking these important questions. Instead, news outlets are effectively recycling government press releases.
For their part, Syria and Russia were furious after the May 18 strike. “This brazen attack by the so-called international coalition exposes the falseness of its claims to be fighting terrorism,” declared a Syrian military official on state media. The Syrian government said “a number of people” were killed, and equipment including a tank and a bulldozer were struck.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad called the attack “a breach of Syrian sovereignty,” and Russia’s deputy foreign minister said it was “completely unacceptable.”
Yet the apparent presupposition shared and spread by corporate media is that Syria now belongs to the US, and the US can do whatever it wants in the country without anyone questioning it—especially not media outlets, which have been bending over backward to defend US actions.
Escalating US Military Intervention
The May 18 US air raid at the town of al-Tanf is only the latest in a string of attacks that have steadily been growing under Trump. The US has not officially declared war in Syria, although for more than 1,000 days it has waged thousands of airstrikes in the country, most of which have targeted ISIS.
Thousands of civilians have been killed in the US air campaign, which began in September 2014.
Even the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights—which is frequently cited by media as an impartial observer, even though it until recently had the Syrian opposition flag openly at the top of its website and consists essentially of one man in England—has acknowledged the massive civilian casualties.
In the month from mid-April to mid-May alone, at least 225 civilians were killed in US-led air strikes in Syria, including 44 children and 36 women, according to the Observatory. From February to March, another 220 civilians were killed.
The bombing campaign against ISIS has killed many civilians in Iraq as well as Syria. FAIR has previously detailed how media outlets have whitewashed and downplayed US complicity in the deaths of hundreds of civilians in Mosul, Iraq.
Media should be asking critical questions about US military intervention in Syria and beyond. Instead, they are downplaying US involvement and relaying Pentagon press releases.
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FOCUS: The Whole Republican Party Is Shoring Up Trump's Delusions |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>
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Friday, 02 June 2017 11:59 |
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Pierce writes: "It should come as no surprise to anyone, but the Trump administration is waging a more vigorous war against reality and oversight than Karl Rove ever thought of waging."
Donald Trump and the Republican members of the House of Representatives at the White House. (photo: Getty)
The Whole Republican Party Is Shoring Up Trump's Delusions
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
02 June 17
The president* must be shielded from reality at all costs.
 t should come as no surprise to anyone, but the administration is waging a more vigorous war against reality and oversight than Karl Rove ever thought of waging. For example, from Tiger Beat On The Potomac, we learn of the latest attempt to keep the president*'s delicate mellow unharshed.
At meetings with top officials for various government departments this spring, Uttam Dhillon, a White House lawyer, told agencies not to cooperate with such requests from Democrats, according to Republican sources inside and outside the administration. It appears to be a formalization of a practice that had already taken hold, as Democrats have complained that their oversight letters requesting information from agencies have gone unanswered since January, and the Trump administration has not yet explained the rationale. The declaration amounts to a new level of partisanship in Washington, where the president and his administration already feels besieged by media reports and attacks from Democrats. The idea, Republicans said, is to choke off the Democratic congressional minorities from gaining new information that could be used to attack the president.
And, as is typical of this crowd, the restrictions are not only egregiously self-serving, but also extremely petty:
One month ago, Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.) and other Democrats sent a letter to the Office of Personnel Management asking for cybersecurity information after it was revealed that millions of people had their identities compromised. The letter asked questions about how cybersecurity officials were hired, and in Rice's view, it "was not a political letter at all." "The answer we got back is, 'We only speak to the chair people of committees.' We said, 'That's absurd, what are you talking about?'" Rice said in an interview. "I was dumbfounded at their response. I had never gotten anything like that … The administration has installed loyalists at every agency to keep tabs on what information people can get."
And then there's Mick Mulvaney, the Tea Party goon from South Carolina who's in charge of the Office of Management and Budget despite the fact that he knows nothing about management and less about the budget. Having put together a budget with a $2 trillion math error in it, Mulvaney has moved on to attacking the Congressional Budget Office, which took a look at the new healthcare law and subsequently moved en masse to Norway. (Not really.) In response, Mulvaney has decided that maybe it's time for the CBO to go—or that's what he told The Washington Examiner, anyway.
Mulvaney, speaking in his office in the Old Executive Office Building, described the CBO's scoring of the House Republican healthcare bill as "absurd," arguing that it was a perfect example of why Congress should stop being so deferential to the group. "At some point, you've got to ask yourself, has the day of the CBO come and gone?" Mulvaney said. "How much power do we give to the CBO under the 1974 Budget Act? We're hearing now that the person in charge of the Affordable Health Care Act methodology is an alum of the Hillarycare program in the 1990s who was brought in by Democrats to score the ACA." He continued, "We always talk about it as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Given the authority that that has, is it really feasible to think of that as a nonpartisan organization?"
But what about the budget as a whole, with all that pesky math? Mulvaney's answer is astonishing.
"When crafting the budget, we assumed for purposes of the budget that whatever we did would be paid for with the offsets by way of the exemptions, the loopholes, the deductions, so forth. We just made an assumption."
Oh.
"I wouldn't take what's in the budget as indicative of what our proposals are."
Not only is the director of the Office of Management and Budget bad at math, the director of the Office of Management and Budget plainly has no idea what a budget actually is. This strikes me as something of a flaw in the administration's plan to devise a national budget that doesn't balance itself by selling Montana to Russian mining interests.
For years now, starting with its adoption of voodoo economics—Thanks, Poppy!—in the late 1970s, the Republican Party has staked its political future on magic asterisks, scientific illiteracy, and on camouflaging plutocracy in overalls and a CAT hat. This is how it produced a Mick Mulvaney in the first place.
But what's going on now is different. It's become plain that nobody of political influence in the Republican Party wants to do anything that upsets the delusions of the unqualified dolt in the Oval Office. (Remember in his big speech on Thursday, when he talked about how his tax plan was sailing through Congress? There is no tax plan. Anybody want to tell him that?) And, so far, the response to this, across the board, has been supine complicity in whatever fiction the White House is selling on a particular day. Our republic truly has gone bananas. This is the height of the art form that is American conservative governance.
It's also the way autocracies work. But I repeat myself.
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FOCUS: Kathy Griffin With Trump's Severed Head Sets Off US Denial Storm |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=20877"><span class="small">William Boardman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Friday, 02 June 2017 11:04 |
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Boardman writes: "The saddest thing about Kathy Griffin holding Trump's bloody head aloft like some classical regicide is that she soon fled the scene with a groveling apology. This episode speaks volumes about the tortured pathology of American culture in its present mindless form: freedom of thought, freedom of speech are allowed, but only if you exercise them within the walls of your invisible mental freedom prison."
Perseus holds the head of the Medusa and Kathy Griffin holds the head of Donald Trump. (photo: Kathy Griffin/Creative Commons)
Kathy Griffin With Trump's Severed Head Sets Off US Denial Storm
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
02 June 17
Hysteria from Donald Trump to Mitt Romney to Chelsea Clinton is Sad!
he image (above) appeared May 30, Memorial Day, and promptly set the tut-tutters’ tongues a-wagging, especially with thoughtless tweets of condemnation. Condemnation is not a rational argument. Condemnation is not a cogent response. Condemnation is an emotional blurt on the path to censorship.
The saddest thing about Kathy Griffin holding Trump’s bloody head aloft like some classical regicide is that she soon fled the scene with a groveling apology (abandoning Tyler Shields, her photographer, in the process). This episode speaks volumes about the tortured pathology of American culture in its present mindless form: freedom of thought, freedom of speech are allowed, but only if you exercise them within the walls of your invisible mental freedom prison. Otherwise you risk being an outcast. For Kathy Griffin, that risk is substantial, and it’s all too human of her to abase herself to save her career (if she can). The real sickness lies in the cultural demand for that abasement, which serves as a self-righteous cover for a deeply cowardly refusal to consider what the image means in a country where the majority of people want this presidency decapitated and are told they cannot talk about it except in officially approved and restricted ways. The official culture tries to prohibit depicting the living monster as defeated and slain.
We need to talk about that societal unwillingness to talk about that.
The cruel, hideous ruler has long been a universal stereotype and reality
At this point it’s hard to know how much planning went into showing Kathy Griffin like a Shakespearean avenger holding up the tyrant’s severed head (echoing the end of Macbeth), but in a short video of the shoot, she says: “Tyler and I are not afraid to do images that make noise. Also he often lights me to the point where I look about fifteen. But first I’m an artist. But really it’s good lighting.” Her tone is typical Kathy Griffin jokiness, even when she talks about having to leave the country, going to Mexico, “we’re not surviving this.” Even then, prescient as it is, she’s joking.
The image first appeared on TMZ around 11 a.m. Tuesday. Unreasoned judgment followed promptly without analysis: “sick,” “sick and offensive,” “gone too far,” “supports ISIS,” and the like. There was also pushback showing various right-wing images of lynching Obama. In early afternoon, Kathy Griffin responded with two tweets. The first said: “I caption this: there was blood coming out of his eyes, blood coming out of his … wherever,” a direct reference to Trump’s verbal assault on Megan Kelly for asking him about his misogyny. Kathy Griffin’s second tweet at 1:42 p.m. was more direct: “OBVIOUSLY, I do not condone ANY violence by my fans or others to anyone, ever! I’m merely mocking the Mocker in Chief.”
At 4:19 p.m., Donald Trump Jr. wrote in full denial: “Disgusting but not surprising. This is the left today. They consider this acceptable. Imagine a conservative did this to Obama as POTUS?” This is either ignorant or deceitful, as violent images against Obama have proliferated from the right for years.
At 5:01 p.m., Chelsea Clinton joined the rabble with a possible point: “This is vile and wrong. It is never funny to joke about killing a president.” She assumes, without supporting evidence, that the image was intended to be funny and/or was literally about killing a president. She apparently would rather not think about it.
At 6:14, Mitt Romney, who snottily and falsely once characterized 47% of Americans shiftless good-for-nothings, chimed in with this cheap shot tweet: “Our politics have become too base, too low, & too vulgar, but Kathy Griffin's post descends into an even more repugnant & vile territory.” (The immediate twitter response from Elliott Lusztig is stinging and powerful, concluding: “you have now turned into an abject coward.”)
Under withering attack, Kathy Griffin apologizes for exercising her rights
By 8 p.m., Kathy Griffin was tweeting “I am sorry. I went too far. I was wrong.” In a video posted at the same time she retracts everything she can:
Hey, everybody, it’s me, Kathy Griffin. I sincerely apologize. I’m just now seeing the reaction of these images. I’m a comic, I crossed the line, I moved the line and then I crossed it. I went way too far. The image is too disturbing, I understand how it offends people, it wasn’t funny, I get it. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my career, I will continue. I ask your forgiveness. Taking down the image, gonna ask the photographer to take down the image, and I beg for your forgiveness. I went too far, I made a mistake, and I was wrong.
Forgiveness for Kathy Griffin is not happening yet. Squatty Potty fired her as product spokesperson. Fox News reports that the Secret Service may be checking this out as a death threat. CNN fired her as New Year’s Eve co-host (and at 10:26 p.m., New Year’s co-host Anderson Cooper piled on with a smarmy tweet: “For the record, I am appalled by the photo shoot Kathy Griffin took part in. It is clearly disgusting and completely inappropriate.”
Almost 12 hours after Kathy Griffin’s abject apology, at 7:14 a.m. May 31, Trump weighed in on twitter: “Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself. My children, especially my 11 year old son, Barron, are having a hard time with this. Sick!” This tweet is surrounded by other presidential tweets about Trump’s Russia carelessness, health carelessness, and climate carelessness, with no indication his children have any problem with any of that. And the tweet comes from a man who has more reason to be ashamed of himself than most mortals.
Perhaps the ugly feeding frenzy surrounding Kathy Griffin will not destroy her completely, which may be the best she can hope for at this point. It would be a pleasant surprise to hear Anderson Cooper or anyone else say that this unjust victimization for an act of freedom in a supposedly free country is “disgusting and completely inappropriate.” Waiting for that could take awhile, mainly because it’s true. And it’s difficult. And it requires facing some brutally awful truths about a country that too often prefers to demonize the truthteller.
A mature culture might attempt to understand majority feeling
So here’s a list of eight ways of thinking about Kathy Griffin’s severed head image that don’t begin with mindless rejection. No doubt there are more.
(A) This is a classical reference to Medusa, an epic monster with snakes for hair. She was so horrible, merely looking at her would turn you to stone. When Perseus beheaded her, he became a hero. In the present version, Trump is the monster and Kathy Griffin the would-be hero. Trump IS a monster, with a host of monster-enablers. But Kathy Griffin has been turned to stone, it seems.
(B) The head is not a part Trump makes much use of, so losing it does him little harm.
(C) If this is really Trump’s head, why does it have what appears to be Kathy Griffin’s hair? Is she trying to get into his head? Is this as far as anyone can go to get into his head?
(D) If the image is true, why not have the courage of your convictions? If it’s not true, why create it? Let’s assume it’s a valid, potent image. Then what do we make of the majoritarian, craven, cultural bullying that would rather destroy an uppity woman than search its own soul? Or even wonder if it still has a soul?
(E) Clearly the severed head of Donald Trump is an exercise in freedom of speech. So why does anyone think it should not be allowed? That’s the opposite of freedom. That’s a police state mentality.
(F) This is not an actual assassination. It’s not an actual attempted assassination. It’s not even a call for assassination of or even violence against Trump. It’s a far cry from all those right-wing memes lynching Obama. This is an example of artistic license. That’s another trait of free societies. Police states hate artistic license, even when it’s literally licensed.
(G) The image is a metaphor. It raises the question: would the United States be better off without this particular head of state? Clearly that’s a debatable question. Clearly a majority of Americans think the answer is yes. No wonder the authorities and their media gatekeepers would rather condemn the idea than talk about it. Of course any discussion quickly arrives at the likelihood that a decapitated Trump gives us a President Pence. Would that be better?
(H) Ask yourself this, if you can: “How is this photo worse than what the Trumpini are doing to _____________ [fill in the blank].” How is Kathy Griffin holding a fake head with fake blood in a photo studio worse than Trump’s vicious literal or figurative decapitation of healthcare or Medicare or immigration justice or climate justice or criminal justice or racial justice or pick your own real horror that destroys innocent real people’s lives in ways Kathy Griffin’s photo never could? How are the feelings of Trump’s family more deserving of compassion than the innocent civilians he dismembers by proxy in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and God only knows where else?
So what should be a higher priority: Expressing distaste for a crude image from powerless artists? Or confronting a powerful, apparently soulless president whose human compassion is so limited he could put the planet at risk?
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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The UK Inches Toward a Security State |
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Friday, 02 June 2017 08:35 |
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Anderson writes: "What are the risks for a nation seeking to protect its citizens from violence? Is there a point at which a society can become so bunkered, walled off, and restrictive that it begins to forfeit its essence?"
'Going forward, I wouldn't be surprised if we see arguments over the blurring of the lines between what the Army and police traditionally do,' a senior member of the British security establishment said. (photo: Rex Via/AP)
The UK Inches Toward a Security State
By Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker
02 June 17
 hat are the risks for a nation seeking to protect its citizens from violence? Is there a point at which a society can become so bunkered, walled off, and restrictive that it begins to forfeit its essence? Something like this, to various degrees and in different ways, is happening in Erdo?an’s Turkey, Netanyahu’s Israel, Modi’s India, and Trump’s America. For much of the past forty-five years, the United Kingdom, too, has intermittently had to answer questions of national security and civil liberties—and even human rights—in dealing with the threat of terrorism. Last week, it had to ask them all over again.
The British are rightly proud of their tradition of remaining stoic in the face of horrific adversity. The so-called “7/7” attacks of 2005, in London, when four young jihadis set off bombs on trains and a bus, killing fifty-two people in addition to themselves, is a notable case in point. When children are the target of an attack, as they were in the gut-wrenching atrocity at the Manchester Arena, last Monday, stoicism is much more difficult to maintain. Even so, a decorous calm has mostly prevailed in Britain, notwithstanding an ongoing security alert triggered by fears that other terrorists might be preparing to strike.
After meetings with security officials, the Prime Minister, Theresa May, announced that Britain’s terrorist threat level had been raised to “critical”—meaning that a new attack was regarded as “imminent”—and that she had ordered the deployment of thirty-eight hundred Army soldiers to key sites across the United Kingdom, from Buckingham Palace to sports stadiums. For Britons, the measure has elicited mixed feelings: on the one hand, a sense of reassurance that the security services are at the ready to forestall a new attack; on the other, consternation over the prospect that such heightened measures might be anything other than temporary.
On Wednesday, in the Guardian, the columnist Jonathan Freedland expressed his hope that the troops would be gone by June 8th, when the United Kingdom goes to the polls in a general election. Despite the particular horror of the attack, he wrote, “It has not besieged our democracy; it has not struck our political system with a blow we cannot sustain. We are still standing. What’s more, the notion of an election under siege, a ballot conducted under the gaze of armed men, also gives these pathetic young men—men so frightened of life that they make a target of little girls—far too much respect. It grants them too much power.”
Freedland’s concerns underscore one of the key questions looming over Britain’s future. Beyond the Manchester response and the upcoming election, the British government, heading as it is toward “Brexit” and disengagement from the European Union, faces important decisions about how to deal with security challenges. Does it outwardly maintain the “Keep Calm and Carry On” ethos while temporarily stepping up security at strategic sites, or does it begin to close off vulnerable public spaces and ramp up security in more permanent ways? (A temporary state of emergency imposed after the November, 2015, terrorist attacks in Paris has already been extended five times, making the sight of armed troops across France a constant. For the time being, it will continue: President Emmanuel Macron has said that he will ask France’s parliament to extend it beyond its current July end date, to November 1st.) A senior member of the British security establishment told me that the Manchester attack posed a “new threshold” in a debate taking place about the future of security and defense. He said, “Going forward, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see arguments over the blurring of the lines between what the Army and police traditionally do.”
Last week, in London, a British friend expressed her apprehensions. “Manchester was, of course, absolutely horrible,” she told me. “But it’s important to keep things in balance. How many people have been killed in this country this year by terrorism, compared with those killed in traffic accidents?” Her point was that it was important not to succumb to the kinds of security fears that could erode the atmosphere of public trust that has long been a cherished feature of British society, including its tradition of having unarmed policemen patrol its streets. Nevertheless, it’s clear that ISIS sleeper cells, and the so-called lone wolves who take up the group’s calls to action, have set a strategy of attacking public spaces where crowds of people gather together in what used to be called the pursuit of happiness. We saw it in the Paris attacks, which targeted a football stadium, cafés, restaurants, and the Bataclan theatre. We saw it, also, in the attacks on the Pulse night club, in Orlando; the Reina night club, in Istanbul; and now in Manchester. The truck attack in Nice on Bastille Day of last year heralded a similar attack on a Berlin Christmas market and, most recently, in March, the mowing-down of pedestrians by a self-appointed jihadist driving across London’s Westminster Bridge.
This strategy has developed in tandem with new forms of attacks on the freedom to travel. The train bombings in Madrid, in 2004, were followed by the 2005 ones in London; the attack on Glasgow Airport, in 2007; and the coördinated strikes in Brussels last year, at an airport and a downtown metro station. Since 9/11, new techniques to bring down commercial jetliners have included the December, 2001, effort by a passenger to ignite explosives packed into his shoes; a plot, in 2006, by British-based jihadists to detonate explosives concealed in liquids; and an attempt, in 2009, by another jihadist convert to set alight his underwear, laced with explosives, on an airliner above Detroit.
None of those latter attempts were successful, fortunately, but we have all become habituated to the security responses they elicited: the removal of shoes at airport security checks, the prohibition on liquids in carry-on luggage, and full-body scans at most Western airports. In a new development, in March, the U.S. and U.K. governments banned travellers from several Middle Eastern countries from taking laptops and tablets into plane cabins, after intelligence suggested that jihadist technicians had devised a way to turn them into explosive devices. (Details of this information is allegedly what Trump divulged to the Russian visitors to the Oval Office.) The Department of Homeland Security is reportedly considering expanding that ban to all international flights to and from the U.S.
In recent years, meanwhile, Britons have grown accustomed to being under video scrutiny to a degree unheard of in most other Western nations; there are CCTV cameras literally everywhere, with the average Londoner captured on video hundreds of times each day. This was once a source of public controversy, but nowadays it has ceased to be a topic of conversation, much less debate. The issue is not really whether the latest security measures are excessive, because there is no way to know that yet. It is that, with every new attack, some of our essential freedoms are being chipped away in the name of security, and that trend will almost certainly continue. (By a similar token, in Britain, messy and mostly unresolved political debates have taken place over what to do about the country’s Islamist hate preachers and British jihadis returning from places like Syria and Libya, as the Manchester bomber, Salman Abedi, did, apparently without hindrance from British authorities.) Liberal democracies are inching toward security states, and the full consequences of that will take some time to become apparent.
Last November, the Investigatory Powers Act, which Theresa May had introduced a year earlier, when she was the Home Secretary, was passed by both houses of Parliament. Known as the Snooper’s Charter, the law obliges Internet and telecommunications companies to preserve the browsing histories and phone conversations of their users for twelve months—and to allow the police, security services, and other government agencies access to them. The law came into effect on December 30th, to a generally muted public reception, though the European Court of Justice ruled that the “general and indiscriminate retention” of communications is illegal. May has also said that, if she wins the election on June 8th, she intends to set up a “commission to counter extremism” to help the government root out radicalism in Britain while campaigning to promote “British values.”
In light of such developments, it seems a good moment to recall something George Orwell wrote in his essay “England Your England,” published in January of 1941, at the height of the Blitz. “England, together with the rest of the world, is changing,” he wrote. “It is therefore of the deepest importance to try and determine what England is, before guessing what part England can play in the huge events that are happening.”
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