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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
I’d “bussacap!” ;-)
I have been told, Americans look arrogant, and you can pick us out all over the world just in the way we carry ourselves. I would say that is what people raised to think they are free look like.
I liked your cab story, but that was not want I was on about. I was eating a meal, with my wife, and had worked to use my phrasebook to order. The Waiter spoke English, discovered we were American and told us not to tip. And then went on to explain why tipping is a barbaric custom. I don’t think this is being quick to look for it.
There were also charming people in Nice and Cannes, and I did not encounter anyone how was the sterotype of the “Rude Frenchman”. But, the irony is not lost on me, that if a server in America wanted to lecture me on anything, he would not get much of a tip.
BTW, I expect precisely neither 1) nor 2) to happen, even in the era of Trumpism. Any culture in which the men
toleratelegislate the presence of dudes in the locker room with their wives and daughters is pretty much over.Then I don’t see why you care about who prays or who doesn’t. Really. It kinda seems like a silly attack for no reason to single out prayer as useless in this instance.
I mean I suppose you could say, “Okay, people!!! Here’s my idea. There are some horrible things happening around the globe that you absolutely cannot impact from where you live and work, but don’t you pray about those things because… well… yeah. That’s useless, and the the people who have done bad things pray, so you shouldn’t seek God out because… wellllll…. He’s dead or something. Life has no meaning. Yada yada. Huzzah!!!!” :D
That’s spreading some light there, dude, and it’s pretty counterproductive when thinking about gathering people together to combat the ideological threats that do come from another religion that would like to take over your civilization.
I mean… goodness.
Our secular culture isn’t always very… uh… inspiring, is it?
But then… maybe it is for you? I don’t know.
I love America, but I tie a lot of my country’s best ideas to my understanding of God, so my “faith in nation” would kind of collapse completely if we lived in some subjective reality in which I threw out the Judeo-Christian tradition and kept reality TV and falling prices at Walmart.
I’m also not quite sure why you think I’m claiming to know Islamic theology more than Islamic terrorists know Islamic theology. I simply think they’re wrong about who God is. (I conceded to you that if Allah is real per how Allah is presented, we are all in trouble.)
Is it because I referred to a children’s book to create some shorthand for my religious views that you think I’m making this claim?
Hmmmm….
Regardless, it’s kinda like believing in capitalism instead of communism. I don’t need to worship at the altar of Marx to assess his general ideas and reject his core tenants when different presentations make much more sense.
For what it’s worth, I don’t care one way or the other if you believe in God or gods or no god. Your faith is completely your own, and I respect your right to exercise that faith however you see fit.
I’d only caution you that for literally billions of your fellow human beings, prayer is very important–not hashtag campaign silly important but life affirming important–whether or not you see evidence of its impact.
That is enough to make it worthwhile.
That is why you’ll see more people say, “I’ll pray for them.”
Yet I can compromise.
Maybe we could also yodel??? :D
Perhaps I am an utter rube, but I thought the prayer riff had more to do with the hashtag social media “movements” (like the #bringbackourgirls Boko Haram thing) and less about prayer itself. It has gone deeper since then in the comments to be sure.
There is no doubt that Europe has a terrorist problem. This year there have been 1182 people injured in terror attacks, and 261 people were killed. They do need to start waking up…uh oh I have the wrong stats these are the stats for Chicago.
Not sure what your point is. It seems to me that people in Chicago need to wake up too. In the meantime, when people from Chicago start traveling to London and New York and everywhere else to kill people whom they have never met, let me know
A thousand+ times YES!!! (Kate nails it again)
You may hide as a tactic; you may circle back; there are a lot of options in seeking to gain the initiative. The point is that there is a qualitative difference between advice in surviving a workplace shooter versus how, as a nation, we stand up to a an invasive and persistent terrorism threat.
But, apparently in France you are not supposed to tip so then your waiters get to lecture you on whatever they want. The system works!
Interesting discussion We really are different. The old world is old, less comfortable with change, more tribal and very much more run by elites. They get their views of us from our media feeds and our media personnel may be unwashed, poorly educated and boorish, but they are shaped in the coastal bubble. While conservatives appreciate all the traditional stuff, architecture, food, and most of the rich culture we got from them, their elite can be quite insufferable because even ignorant folks with minor intellects act superior, not unlike our own left. We call them left but they’re just tribal and other directed and believe in top down governance from an administrative state because their class has always controlled it. Moreover, they don’t have to deal with their own lesser classes as equals, but we’re mostly middle class, even our elite so we’re by definition inferior. Our President is a caricature of middle class America and that doesn’t work so well. So we should manage our information policies, our diplomacy our propaganda with skill. I don’t think that is going to happen with this Administration. Too bad, but not without precedent.
I know—and that’s interesting to me. Why not? Again, I’m not claiming that Americans are racists just itching to scapegoat, but wouldn’t one expect there to be more aggression directed at people who resemble those who present themselves very loudly and credibly as a threat? The guy waving the ISIS flag in a demonstration, for example—why wouldn’t that provoke a fight? Doesn’t it seem odd that it didn’t?
Anyway, I want to repeat something I said further back in this thread, because I think there are two (at least) issues being conflated into one. The first is: “Presented with a knife-weilding attacker of whatever ideological persuasion, what is the best thing for me to do to prevent myself and/or my companions from being stabbed?” RUN/HIDE/TELL might well be the best advice for most people under most circumstances.
But the other question is: how can terrorism of this kind be defeated?
A man who RUNS/HIDES/TELLS has a better chance of survival, if we are to believe Claire’s analysis (which seems sound); a man who picks up a broken bottle and counter-attacks might be contributing in his small way to the defeat of a murderous ideological foe.
Should the man see himself as, in effect, a crime victim with no responsibility for crime as a general problem?
Or should he see himself as a warrior and defender?
Not rhetorical questions—really asking.
Remember what Tony Blair tweeted right after 9/11? No? Neither do I. But here is what he said to Parliament:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/04/september11.usa3
It’s a thing that the person doing it engaged in to signal virtue or group solidarity. That’s not nothing, but if your goal is to change the thing you’re concerned about, perhaps doing something about it would be a good place to start.
Facebook is the best example of this, where “Praying!” Is a common response to another person’s travails. I find it to be… Rankling. It does actual stone nothing. But it makes people feel better?
Perhaps I’m a curmudgeon. I just prefer what’s effective.
I could, but I don’t believe that because I’m not a nihilist.
We have a problem of too much cow bell. The answer is not “more cow bell.”
It is, generally speaking. Just as with all aspects of life there is the transcendent and the ugly.
I like yodeling! I just don’t think it has metaphysical significance.
I think my point is that London is probably far safer than Chicago. I doubt that those wounded in Chicago take any comfort in the fact that they were shot by an American citizen rather than an immigrant.
So I’ll let those that wish to worry about Europe do so. I’ll worry about America. If our angst is based upon the number of casualties I would say we should start cleaning up our problems and let the Europeans worry about theirs.
When I was backpacking through Western Europe in the 80’s and 90’s, ran into a few Americans who put Canadian maple leafs on their gear so they wouldn’t be assumed to be Americans. I was always treated well even though I never made much of an attempt to speak the native language or hide my Americanism.
Sure. I’ve run into this, too, but to be fair, this is exactly what people here on this thread are doing to Britain!
There is also always some point of entry to those conversations when traveling, some of which go back to everything I wrote about this previously.
For example, a little girl at an internet cafe asked me if I’d gone to England to get away from “all that horrible violence” in the United States.
From where did she get these perceptions about my country??? What was she on about?
It took me a very long while to explain to that girl that (most) American lives are not like the characters’ lives on ER; mass shootings are not nearly as big of an issue as the BBC presents, and the fact that German tourists were killed one year a long time ago in Florida is a little myopic. (Some Germans are still afraid to travel here.)
Of course she thought we shouldn’t have so many guns.
I mean… she offered her opinion without me soliciting it, but we were chatting!
Also, that whole conversation was like a thousand dialogues that open up in Georgia that could make one feel sour in the end.
Think about this one.
A guy from New York casually says, “I wish there was more respect for others in this country” to an old woman from Georgia.
You know where that conversation leads?
To a lecture about needing more church. Especially in the big cities.
Pretty much all the time.
Sure, she may have just said to the man that New Yorkers are on the hell chute, but then that same old woman might invite him over for fried chicken. God love her.
You see, she wouldn’t mean anything by it. She’d just be sharing her point of view and trying to do a good deed, too. (Saving of souls is always productive.)
Some Europeans are like that little old woman.
Anyway, if someone is really getting on your nerves, you can always politely say, “My grandfather told me about this place… Was your family here in 1944?”
(That’s a version of “Bless your heart” that isn’t in your face WE SAVVVVVEEEDDD YOU.)
:D
If I compare the Jihadis to the mass shooters here in the U.S., it is clear enough that even where suicide is the ultimate expectation, their hope is that they’ll be able to kill lots of people before going off to rendezvous with the 72 virgins. We know that mass shooters research their targets and deliberately look for areas unlikely to have armed civilians or police officers present. Jihadis doubtless do this too. So “hardening the target,” and making it seem more likely that more places will have more people capable of mounting a swift and effective counterattack could be one strategy to pursue.
Terrorists who would like to do another 9/11-style hijacking are handicapped not by the (frankly) lame ministrations of TSA, but by the fact that the citizens on the airplanes have demonstrated a willingness to leap into action. Same idea here.
and right here is the start of the problem of the Wests response.
‘Many were Muslims. It cannot be said too often: this atrocity appalled decent Muslims everywhere and is wholly contrary to the true teaching of Islam.”
Someone forgot to tell a hell of a lot of muslims that “fact”.
And then how many muslims did Mr Blair and his party hustle into the UK ?
But terrorism isn’t just a European problem. And most-not all, but most gun deaths in Chicago are probably not random. I would bet anything that most gun deaths in Chicago involve gang members killing other gang members, with innocent people sometimes caught in the crossfire. With terrorism, innocent people are the targets.
We are worried about Europe because we are worried about America; we don’t want their problems to come here. And their problems are worse than our problems. Gang violence has always existed to one degree or another; importing people who adhere to a hostile ideology which is bent on destroying Western civilization is a new thing. We shouldn’t do it.
That last bit showed his hand. Why say it? Is it because Blair believes that his Muslim audience is sufficiently savage that they would be ok with it if none/few of the victims were Muslim?
He was a very silly waiter.
I get it.
That would put a bad taste in my mouth, too.
I am glad that you had better experiences elsewhere.
“Other kinds of emergencies” such as plane crashes, train derailments, ship sinkings, and natural disasters are not acts of war. Terrorism is. How do you think the instruction to “run and hide” looks to the enemy? It is a sign of weakness, and such signs are not unimportant. There are times when running and hiding are not the preferred course of action. Flight 93 comes to mind.
I appreciate Claire’s point about having to instruct and remind people to do, and to refrain from doing, certain things in certain stressful emergency situations. But we’re not talking about verbal instructions in the heat of the moment. We’re talking about public service advertising before the fact. The authorities should have chosen different words to get the message across.
All that said, I don’t approve of kicking the UK while they’re down and trotting out Neville Chamberlain to make the point.
After my husband was killed, I received word from various area churches and at least one synagogue that I, and my family, was being prayed for. It was very touching and encouraging.
Most people who disdain the prayers of others don’t understand what prayer is and does. I don’t expect that “pray for the nice widow” means the nice widow will get her husband back. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be how this works.
What it does mean is that a whole bunch of total strangers stopped what they were doing—took time out of their lives, a small but not meaningless sacrifice — in order to deliberately and sympathetically turn their attention to the plight of a family they had never met. That’s not nothing. Moreover, those churches also “did something” for me. They brought food. They offered to house visiting relatives. People who pray are, in my experience, terrific providers of practical assistance: food, money, phone calls. If I may say so, the prayers tend to be a lot more useful than the non-prayers, in fact. Maybe it’s because, as I find that when I pause and pray, the moment of focus lets them see what else, in addition to prayers, they have to offer.
Sometimes, maybe most of the time, there is nothing we can do, and prayer is all we’ve got. Okay. But I’m not sure the world would be a better place were it one in which kids are blown up and those who can’t actually bring casseroles just shrug and move on.
On this, I feel you.
I guess I didn’t understand your intent here: you are making more of a point about social media than prayer.
Alright.
The first is more limited and can be exceptionally irritating. The second–when done for real with sincere belief and not per some weird show of solidarity per a cyber hashtag–is a thing that is truly important for many people and certainly doesn’t feel like doing nothing.
#yodelforpeace
:D
I’m not saying we should import people with a hostile ideology, we have more than enough of our own homegrown hostiles to deal with, whose ideology also promotes carving out territory, taking control of neighborhoods, and engaging in violence without any concern for innocent lives.
Now if we expect Europeans to listen to us about their violence problem we should also be willing to listen to them if they point out our problems with a city like Chicago.
I actually got teary-eyed reading about your experience, @katebraestrup.
When people mean it, prayer matters. As you so eloquently said, it’s also not just words that typically happen.
I find it very encouraging to hear about a community embracing you when you needed that the most.
I am also so very sorry for your loss.
I don’t think anyone is saying people shouldn’t run and hide. We are saying that for “Run Hide Tell” to be the official policy is pathetic and embarrassing. And it emboldens ISIS. Until the policy changes to something more like “Get Out of Our Country and if You Want to be Mad at Someone, be Mad at ISIS,” nothing will change unless it’s for the worse.
Thank you for this. Too often prayers are mischaracterized or misunderstood. There’s so much to our prayers that it’s unfortunate that in this day we don’t understand what they really are.