The late Ahmad Shah Massoud, 'Lion of Panjshir', Afghan anti-Soviet operative - back when the 'terrorists' were on our side

Sorry for the length of this. It's hard to stop once I get started.

The man the London police gunned down on the tube yesterday was innocent. Turns out he was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, wearing the wrong clothing and acting the wrong way:

"The man emerged from a block of flats in the Stockwell area that were under police surveillance as part of the investigation into the incidents on Thursday July 21.

"He was then followed by surveillance officers to the underground station. His clothing and behaviour added to their suspicions."

I guess being chased by three gunmen makes you act suspiciously:

Train passenger Mark Whitby said: "As the man got on the train I looked at his face. He looked from left to right, but he basically looked like a cornered rabbit, like a cornered fox. He looked absolutely petrified.

"He sort of tripped but they were hotly pursuing him and couldn't have been more than two or three feet behind him at this time.

"They unloaded five shots into him. I saw it. He's dead, five shots, he's dead."

British Muslims are drawing the crazy conclusion that being brown is now a shoot-to-kill offence. But those cops were just doing their job:

[Human rights group] Liberty's director Shami Chakrabarti said: "Our hearts go out to the family of the dead man and to the officers involved in this tragic incident ... These are knife-edge split second decisions made in moments of grave danger.

Mhm. They held him down on the subway floor, and shot him. No responsibility there. Is that like all the bomb-threats being called into mosques, and the murdered Pakistani visiting his family? Unfortunate but tough decisions by racists trying to get to the root of the problem?

Queasy parallels aside, the police have an alibi: they were acting according to protocol. Officers have the right to shoot to kill when faced with a potential suicide bomber:

"If the perception in the officers' minds was that the suspect was posing an immediate threat to them or others, opening fire may well have been lawful. The test is the threat they perceived when they opened fire."

Are our police officers machines, able to add up: bulky coat + running away = bomber? No, they're human beings imbued with fear & racism, just like everyone else. Forced into split-second decisions, they're going to assume that Muslims are terrorists, that brown people are Muslims, that 'they' want to kill 'us'. And they'll act accordingly. Their 'tragic but unavoidable' decisions will resonate throughout British society; already the facist BNP is whipping up racial hatred.

I reject that murderous policing is a necessary evil of responding to terrorism. There is no reason for due process to be left behind. The problem is the police can't stop terrorism, because terrorism isn't a policing problem: it's a political problem. As long as Blair supports the war in Iraq, there will be terrorists. A British troop withdrawal would do more to make London safe than 100 dead 'potential terrorists'. But maybe that's the point: the escalating cycle of violence will only serve those in power, who want retroactive justification for their occupation.

Whose terror?

I can imagine the Right's salivating as they hear of the latest Al-Qaeda atrocity: 88 murdered people in Egypt. Tourists - hardly the imperialist foe - and Egyptian workers in a nearby cafe were slaughtered. Cold-blooded killers, killing indiscriminately for their cause; if I needed more reasons to hate terrorists, they supply new ones daily.

Apparently it's a crime to look for reasons - somehow this interferes with the grieving process. The Guardian's New Labour lapdog, Polly Toynbee, works herself into a righteous lather:

apologists or explainers for these young men can expect short shrift. This is not about poverty, deprivation or cultural dislocation of second-generation immigrants... Iraq is the immediate trigger, but this is about religious delusion.

It's oh-so-easy to sit back in your comfy little office and discuss 'triggers'. Time to make those overzealous youth take a step back and celebrate the Enlightenment. It's so bloody enlightening to see your friends, neighbours and fellow believers get blasted to pieces by an occupying army. How would any of the pro-war liberals react if they saw their world being destroyed around them? Oh, wait - they're getting a tiny taste of it right now, and they're terrified, calling for more powers to the state, lining up behind the butchers of Basra.

Hotel bombings in Egypt: what the terrorists do...

But the irony is lost. It's impossible to empathize with the brown folks getting bombed and privatized out of history. Just react when your side's attacked. Which - another irony - lends credence to the terrorists, who've been saying all along that the only thing the West understands is murder.

Meanwhile the far left, forever thrilled by the whiff of cordite, has bizarrely decided to fellow-travel with primitive Islamic extremism as the best available anti-Americanism around. (Never mind their new friends' views on women, gays and democracy.)

Oh, that's rich. How many suicide bombers struck Iraq & London before the invasion? 9/11 came how many years after the U.S. slaughtered 100,000 retreating Iraqis in the first Gulf War? How many Iraqi & Afghani women & gays have American and British bombs killed? How many democrats did the CIA slaughter in Iraq? Who created the Taliban? How many rhetorical questions are necessary? Al-Qaeda are murderous fuckers who deserve to be drawn & quartered by their peers. The same goes for those creating them, for those who've murdered far more civilians: the U.S. & British governments. No amount of ideological toadies spilling crocodile tears will hide that.

...aftermath of Fallujah bombing: what 'our side' does.

(When terrorists attack, we see the pictures everywhere. When the U.S. attacks, journalists are banned from reporting it. Please visit Dahr Jamail's website for stories & images of the occupation. Warning: some of these are extremely graphic - too much so for my blog. But I think everyone who has an opinion on the war needs to see these.)