Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Reactions to the London Attack, Helpful and Unhelpful
Jon, I was prompted to write this when I saw your post this morning.
I spent the day yesterday with two friends who were visiting from London. They live quite close to London Bridge. One used to be a Ricochet member. Both were, until recently, solid Atlanticists — and still are — but they’re both offended beyond words by the tone of hostility and contempt for Britain that’s oozing, non-stop, out of the US these days, starting with the President, and echoed by many Americans on social media. I don’t blame them for being offended.
“Instructing Londoners to run, hide, and tell,” Jon writes, “is a dramatic departure from the can-do, stiff-upper-lip, globe-striding empire of a century ago.”
Actually, it’s not.
This guidance has been in place since 2014. It’s not a dramatic departure from anything, although it is a response to studying hundreds of similar situations around the world, including many in the United States. You’ll note that Britons are being told, explicitly, not to surrender or negotiate. The reason they’re emphasizing the seemingly obvious — run — is that we now, unfortunately, have a lot of evidence about how civilians (everywhere) behave during terrorist attacks and other emergencies. Some small percentage of them do behave as we all like to fantasize we would: They become superheroes who defeat the terrorists using any implement available. Unfortunately, in reality, many people don’t do that. They freeze.
“Freezing” seems to be something like a biologic default. It’s a cross-cultural reaction to fear. So people do in fact need to be told, specifically, not to obey that instinct. They need to be warned that their first response may be to deny what’s happening, or be confused by it, and freeze. They need to hear (often, repetitively) that this is not the reaction most likely to result in their survival.
This is why we get a lot of seemingly-obvious warnings about what to do and not do in other kinds of emergencies — e.g., “If you need to evacuate this plane, do not stop to get your luggage.” The reason we hear that all the time isn’t because the airline officials condescendingly suspect we might be idiots. It’s because they know we are. There’s evidence, and a lot of it, that a significant number of people will try to get their luggage, even though every second matters when you’re trying to evacuate a smoke-filled plane, and even though people who try to get their luggage put everyone behind them in mortal danger. And yes, this happens in the US as well as the UK. An NTSB study found that 50 percent — yes, 50 percent — of the passengers in emergency evacuations tried to take their bags. Now, why would they do such a stupid thing? Because most people have no experience of situations like this, and most people don’t respond heroically — or rationally — to them, unless they’ve had a lot of training. No matter what you think you would do, the reality is that in emergencies, many people do dumb things, and unless you’ve been in the situation yourself, you don’t know for sure you wouldn’t be one of them.
“Run, Hide, Fight” is standard protocol for active-shooter situations in the US, too. Are Americans wimps because we, too, need to be told to run and hide? Ah, but you say, part of the advice we get is to fight. Well, no one is telling the British not to fight: And indeed, they fought — they fought back with everything they had on hand: chairs, pint glasses, bottles, discarded bicycle parts. They’ve emphasized “Tell” over “Fight” because that actually makes a lot of sense if you’re living a country where the cops are armed and the terrorists aren’t, and it makes even more sense if the cops are able to get there and kill all of the terrorists within eight minutes. That is, by the way, an impressive achievement, and the appropriate reaction from allies to that news is, “Well done,” not “You remind us of Neville Chamberlain.”
Larry Barton, an American researcher at the University of Central Florida, is the highest-rated instructor at the FBI Academy and US Marshals Service. His research supports both the “run” advice and the giving of the advice. He analyzed 61 deadly assaults in public places from 2006 to 2016 — mostly in the United States. Among those who survived, 73 percent did so by running. Those who ran wound up with no no injuries or only moderate injuries, e.g., a sprained ankle. Of those who survived by hiding — 20 percent — a third were more seriously injured. “Running” is generally the best strategy. It is not always and everywhere the best strategy; there is no such thing as a universally successful solution. But it’s statistically likely to be the best strategy. A highly pro-Second Amendment group, The Truth About Guns, ran simulations of the Charlie Hebdo attack, for example, in which one or more of the civilians were armed. The civilians “died” in every scenario except immediate flight from the scene. So overall, based on evidence, the responsible advice to give the public — whether it’s armed or not — is “run.”
When Americans respond to an event like this by insinuating that the victims of the attack are wimps, or that they would have performed better under the same circumstances, it — unsurprisingly — offends the victims. It offends them terribly, in fact. And pointlessly. As one of the friends who was visiting me yesterday wrote on my Facebook page (in response to an offensive comment to this effect):
Before you sneer at us, may I remind you that the UK has the longest continuous experience of terrorism on its soil of any western country, and the greatest expertise in stopping it. Yes, we have had far too many terrorist incidents, but they are a drop in the ocean compared with the myriad plots that have been foiled. I think it’s fair to say the 9/11 plot would probably have been detected here. A little respect for us might be in order, too.
I agree. A lot more respect might be in order.
Many Americans believe the British were offended that Obama moved a bust of Churchill. Obama denied that it had been moved. Whether or not it was moved, I’ve never spoken personally to anyone in Britain who was offended by this story. Many have never even heard it. But everyone I know in Britain — and remember, I lived there for seven years, so I do know many people there, and I stay in contact with quite a few of them — is wildly offended by this kind of sneering. It causes real harm to our relationship with the people of Britain. What we say, in fact, on social media and other public fora, causes more offense than anything our politicians say: A politician’s comments can be dismissed, by people with a generous nature, as unrepresentative of the American character. But when ordinary Americans use social media to sneer at our allies, it really leaves a bad taste — and let’s not pretend we would not feel precisely the same way were the situation reversed. We would.
More than 220,000 British personnel have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to Ministry of Defence figures, 456 Britons have died in Afghanistan. More than 7,300 have been treated for battlefield injuries, non-combat wounds, or disease related to their service. In Iraq, 179 British service personnel were killed. Some 5,800 were treated in field hospitals. This is a heavy toll. Britain wasn’t attacked on September 11. We were. They are in Afghanistan because we asked them to be. They entered war in Iraq because we asked them to. They did so despite believing it would increase the risk of terrorism on British soil. They did it because they are our allies.
When in response they hear sneering contempt from Americans to the effect that they’re sheeplike, cowardly wusses reminiscent of Neville Chamberlain — illustrated by wartime enlistment posters, clearly meant to suggest that Britons no longer enlist — they respond exactly as Americans would were the situation reversed. They did enlist, and do enlist, and they have been fighting, by our side, since September 11. Here are photographs of British men (and a woman) who died in 2010 in Afghanistan. In this link, you can see more photos of the British men and women who’ve died in every year of that war since it began.
So why would an American, in the wake of an attack on British soil, taunt the British for failing to enlist? Every one of the men above died because they took seriously the promise that an attack on any one of us would be an attack on all of us. Is taunting the British for being “sheeplike” and unwilling to enlist in the fight the right way to show our respect to their families?
Jon posted a photo of the famous “Keep calm and carry on” poster, intimating that the Britain of calm, dignity, and resilience is dead, replaced by a bunch of cowering ninnies. As it happens, that poster — precisely — has been widely circulating on British Twitter in the wake of the attack. But I suspect that if it were a new poster, Americans would be mocking the British for urging calm and normalcy. Our president would be Tweeting, ‘At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and the British are saying, “Keep calm and carry on!”‘
President Trump’s tweets caused grave offense. You may think the offense misplaced, but I can promise you they did cause offense, and I don’t find that offense at all hard to understand. What on earth would possess him to use an occasion like this to criticize the Mayor of London? Jennifer Rubin’s description of this is accurate:
After receiving blowback for that obnoxious missive, he tweeted out, “Whatever the United States can do to help out in London and the U. K., we will be there – WE ARE WITH YOU. GOD BLESS!” But then he decided to slam the mayor of the city attacked, who had calmly warned his fellow Londoners: “Londoners will see an increased police presence today and over the course of the next few days. There’s no reason to be alarmed.” Trump took the second part out of context and responded viciously, “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’” (The mayor, of course, was telling them not to be alarmed by the heightened police presence.) Trump was not done, however, inanely tweeting, “Do you notice we are not having a gun debate right now? That’s because they used knives and a truck!”
The offense caused by this kind of boorishness has real consequences — for us. It’s insane, right before a British general election, to hand ammunition to a politician like Jeremy Corbyn. But that’s exactly what this kind of behavior from Americans does. It puts defenders of the Anglo-American alliance in a terrible position. And this time, the people who are offended aren’t the usual suspects — they’re not British leftists who have always hated Americans and always will. We’re offending people who have always considered Americans their closest allies. And it isn’t because they’re delicate snowflakes, either. It’s because we’re being offensive. The tone of contempt from Americans, above all, is one no amount of rational argument can counter. If American voters didn’t care for being called “deplorable,” how do you imagine British voters feel about being called cowardly, sheeplike, and a disgrace to their heritage?
The UK has committed 1,250 military personnel to the fight against ISIS. Apart from us, the Royal Air Force has conducted more airstrikes in Iraq and Syria than any other Coalition country. It provides intelligence and surveillance to Iraqi Security Forces. It’s trained 39,000 Iraqi soldiers in engineering, medical skills, and infantry. In Syria, UK armed forces are training Syrian opposition groups in infantry, emergency medicine, and explosive disposal. How does undermining this alliance help us?
Why would we mock the British in the wake of a terrorist attack that killed seven innocent people on their soil? We know what it means to be the victims of terrorism. Why would we spit on our friends? What do we get out of it?
My answer: We get nothing out of it. So I suggest we not do it. It’s not in our interests to harm the friendship between the United States and Britain. And more importantly, it’s just not decent.
Published in General
Do you think talking about how blacks should get married and get off welfare would change the crime stats?
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448319/theresa-may-islamist-extremist-comments-sharia-law-their-goal
Front Seat Cat – policies which accept this as inevitable anywhere make this more possible everywhere. Jmho.
Too late for me. I began my despair for the West when Americans elected a man with the middle name “Hussein” after 9/11 and the Iraq war (possibly the perfect storm of virtue signaling). Why should the Brits be any different?
I’m trying to decide whether this is supposed to be humor or not, because looking bad among your peers is the opposite of virtue signaling.
The problem is in how you work the logic. You are saying that first there are people who don’t want to kill us and then this religion comes along and makes them be terrorists. And then we’d have to assume that there are over a billion people in the world who don’t understand their religion at all and are doing it wrong.
The first thing is that there are people who hate us. Then they find something to organize around. A flag, a religion, a cause. Then they pick a tactic.
The cause and the tactic are important and are tightly intertwined and can’t be ignored. But they ought not be mistaken for the thing. Because if we do, we are wrong and we lose.
We don’t necessarily lose. I think it’s important now, in the age of explosives and nuclear weapons, to finally eradicate Islam as a political and military and terrorist power. Western civilization has put up with it for over a thousand years. We failed in the Crusades because we weren’t united and determined enough to overcome their fanaticism. We are in the same boat now. Islam relies on our failure to unite, it’s how they succeed.
Reminds me of the virtue signaler in chief….. plenty of people admire virtue signalers.
“”Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it,” Trump told a fired-up crowd of backers that packed the downtown Quicken Loans Arena.”
You’re making the assumption that they hate us first, and then join the religion. How do you know that it isn’t in fact the religion that’s making them hate us? What percentage of Islamic terrorists over the last 30 years or so were converts to Islam as opposed to born and raised in it?
Uh.. yes. If they followed through. Larry Elder thinks so, too. But, I’m white, so what do I know, except maybe to keep my mouth shut about problems caused by secular progressives among blacks?
Speak of the devil…… some more virtue signaling from the POTUS who recently asked whether protestants were christians……
President Trump will address a group of religious conservatives at a hotel in Washington on Thursday as former FBI Director James Comey testifies on Capitol Hill.
The Faith & Freedom Coalition announced Tuesday that Trump will address the “Road to Majority Conference” at Washington’s Omni Shoreham Hotel at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/336508-trump-to-speak-at-religious-conference-during-comey-testimony
Right except for the word Islam. Islam doesn’t rely on anything.
The religious wars of Europe in the 16th and 17th century resolved themselves with the Peace of Westphalia. The treaties ended the wars of religion. But it didn’t end European wars. Those went on for another 300 years.
What I’m saying is that they hate us period. They hate us with Islam. They hate us without Islam. They hate us in a boat. They hate us with a goat. They do not like us Sam-I-Am.
Worked great. We went several centuries in the US without many muslims and did just fine.
What do you think they would say?
Yeah, we had a pretty good run there…
Claire – were you living in Turkey or France when you researched and wrote Menace in Europe? Maybe you had a more objective outlook toward the direction Europe was heading as an outsider then? You have an American passport, but now view life there as a European – understandable. So you may have gotten used to cultural shifts, more terror as new norm, in Paris and elsewhere, as the London Mayor called it. Here, we’re more shocked, and realized that political correctness needed to be voted out. It will never be the new norm here – we don’t want armed to the teeth police on our beaches, at malls, transit, monuments, churches, synagogues. I don’t follow Twitter and have unhooked from Facebook. Ricochet at least offers a conservative outlook with reasonable conversation. To much time is being wasted on being offended in social media. I believe Trump cares deeply about the Brits, and Brexit was an attempt to regain their country, who welcomes people as we do, with the rule of law. Whether homegrown or imported, radical Islamic fundamentalism has no place in Western culture.
Especially when you mention that they were allied with Hitler before he turned on them, and joined him in carving up Poland.
Guns who converted to a primitive, suicidal death cult brought down the World Trade Center, shot up Fort Hood, mowed down pedestrians in London, blew up concert-goers in Manchester…
Muslims who were used to shoot over 26,000 dead in the US so far in 2017…
There are many ways to live, many of them better than death.
Is that Metallica? That sounds like Metallica.
And we left a lot of Nazis unkilled after the war. The left would say (back when they were interested in the issue) that we left too many of them unkilled and unimprisoned.
No, because we still have business corporations on welfare.
I have no idea. I’ve heard of Metallica, but that’s about it.
Absurd analogies and false dichotomies are exactly how the left apologized for and excused communism during the Cold War. Islam’s apologists are just as wrong.
I agree. They are wrong too.
If you shove a microphone in your mouth and scream your sentence, you’ve pretty much caught up.
Do you have a point?
Nope, just sharing some photos of the good ol’ days.