Sometimes The British Are So Annoying

Dame Stella Remington the former head of the Security Service (MI 5 for those who like spooky numbers instead of bureaucratic names) has gone on record lambasting the US for "overreacting" to the attacks of 9/11. In her considered opinion we should have sent a bobby or two to arrest the miscreants rather than announce a "War on Terrorism."

In her interview with the Guardian she took the position that the mass killings of 11 September 01 were just one more terrorist act, not unlike the many, many to which the British public had been exposed to during the long years of tumult and violence emanating from Northern Ireland;

Our "huge overreaction" and consequent treatment of the event as an act of war rather than one more boringly familiar challenge for law enforcement "wrong footed" the entire effort to counter the acts of terror. Her stance was echoed by Sir Ken MacDonald, the country's top prosecutor.

The Geek is no fan of the current administration's Great Global War on Terror for many reasons all of which have been adduced in previous posts. He does agree with the decision by the denizens of the Oval and adjacent regions to consider the attack by manned (and involuntarily crewed) cruise missiles on targets in two American cities to have constituted an act of war committed by foreign actors with a foreign base.

When foreigners mount an armed attack resulting in thousands of American deaths, it does not matter if the attackers are called the Imperial Japanese Navy or al-Qaeda. It does not matter if their home base is the Empire of Japan or Afghanistan.

It would have been no more proper to send J. Edgar Hoover and a posse of Feebs to arrest Admiral Yamamoto and the Japanese Emperor in December 1941 than to dispatch the cops to arrest Osama and Omar nearly sixty years later.

Get a grip on the real world, Dame Stella: Armed attacks by foreign actors constitute an act of war under international law as well as in the pages of history.

When terror attacks have been executed by individuals resident in or native to the US the Federal law enforcement and judicial authorities have a good record. Just in case you were preoccupied by such matters as dealing with the Provos or planning the beginnings of the most surveiled society outside of Singapore, Dame Stella, allow the Geek to remind you of the aftermath of the first attack on the World Trade Center or what happened following the truck bombing of the Federal Center in Oklahoma City.

Dame Stella, Sir Ken, please note that in those cases and many of similar nature the requirements of due process were followed closely and carefully. Police and prosecutors acted with utter professionalism and propriety. No rights were violated. No shortcuts in appeals were taken.

The Geek agrees that the current administration erred and erred badly with secret detentions, intensive interrogation authorization, the construction of the micro-Gulag at Gitmo and the repugnant Military Commission approach to dispensing justice. He is also of the view that the British surveillance society is violative of basic rights--most importantly the right to privacy, which means the right to be left alone.

The Geek also recalls that the British security forces both civilian and military were less than jealous protectors of rights, due process and psychic equanimity when dealing with the far less lethal even if more pervasive terrorist acts in Northern Ireland. It sticks in the Geek's memory that there was little to choose between today's Gitmo and HM Maze Prison twenty-five or so years ago. He also is reminded that many of the intensive interrogation methods were employed in North Ireland by HM security and military personnel including sleep deprivation, stress positions and extreme environmental stressors.

Let's cut to the chase, Dame Stella, Sir Ken. If the US had not committed the Mother of All Blunders of invading Iraq so that the Afghanistan operation could have been conducted as a quick and relatively clean punitive expedition, you would not be casting stones today.

Casting stones while forgetting that your country's recent history demonstrates that you both live in a glass house.