god will know his own is not a counterterrorism strategy

Oh, lordy…

Mr Livingstone rejected calls from the Tories and Liberal Democrats for the Met's commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, to resign after yesterday's verdict, and described the media pressure on him to step down as "rubbish in the press". "I think this is disastrous, if an armed police officer believes they are in pursuit of a terrorist who might be a suicide bomber, and they start making calculations based on this, 'how's this going to be seen, am I going to be hauled off to court?'," Mr Livingstone told Radio 4's Today programme. "At the end of the day, mistakes are always going to happen in wars or situations like this. The best you can do is to try to make the potential risk the minimum possible."

Which is exactly what the jury were doing. Of course counterterrorism is hard. The point is that counterterrorism is irreducibly hard. If you make it “easier” by tolerating a permissive attitude towards killing innocent people, then that is what will happen. To reverse Livingstone’s thought experiment: what happens if an armed police officer in pursuit of someone who he believes might be a terrorist but isn’t quite sure starts making calculations along the lines of “I’m legally immune so I’ll shoot him anyway, just to make sure.”

When this happens, you’re not fighting terrorists, you’re joining them in the capacity of a force multiplier. It takes a fair amount of long term planning to create a terrorist atrocity. It must be reassuring for the terrorists if they know that the cops will handle the job of keeping people in fear until they get everything lined up.

Comments

[Igor Belanov]

For some people the fact that we're in a 'war on terror' means that we must do anything to make the job of the security forces easier. It's like the idea that anyone who opposed 90-days detention was helping extremism. Livingstone is just being his usual cynical self. He does want to piss off the London establishment while trying to wrap himself in the cause of 'maximum security for Londoners'.

[Alex]

I have just calmed down.

[jamie]

The whole thing has the intense humming of evil about it.

[Phil]

The word in police-watching circles is that Livingstone not only likes Blair personally but sees him as an intelligent liberal. Which, in his way, he is, although his liberalism is a bit Hobbesian for my taste. I've also heard it suggested that Hugh Orde (RUC/PSNI) is in the frame to succeed Blair if he goes, which might also explain Livingstone's keenness to watch Blair's back.

[Chris Williams]

At least Orde has worked for some years in the same city as a police watchdog with teeth. Blair's got to go. Orde may not be good, but he's better.

[jamie]

"...sees him as an intelligent liberal."

Sees him as a pet cop, IMO. Blair accepts Labour governments as part of the natural order of things, so they cling to him as a rare and valuable asset.

[dsquared]

the thing that has been giving me that metallic taste at the back of the throat has been the small but somehow very affecting detail that they kept on having to try to clear the control room of people who had no reason to be there. For some reason the memory that this triggers is of about a dozen heavy metal gigs in the 1990s where the soundcheck was crowded with dozens of hangers-on and rubberneckers just wanting to be part of the vibe, and I think I understand what the Gold Control Room was like.

[Phil]

School magazine paste-up sessions. I and another guy actually appeared in the production credits for one issue, credited with "???". Sounds like there were a few of those.

[ejh]

Antiterrorism - the new rock 'n' roll?

[Backword Dave]

"???" is a bit insulting. Couldn't they have at least said "Maracas"?

[Phil]

The previous issue Jamie[1] and I appeared under "also present in various capacities". I think they were trying to give us a hint.

[1] Meaningless coincidence.