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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
Moderator Note:
Personal attack[Redacted]
I’m Catholic.
Mass is public prayer.
It is not virtue signaling – it is giving glory to God.
Being a catholic at mass doesn’t change the equation.
Please explain – I don’t know what you are saying.
I’m beginning to believe that Tweeting is the newest form of virtue signaling, but it is growing old very quickly. Twitter has its’ share of preachers, followers, and there is a great deal of preaching to the choir. More people have been accused of heresy on Twitter than in any church on a daily basis. Like a marriage ceremony some on Twitter sit on the left side of the altar, and some sit on the right. Recite and agree with the right litany and one does not have to wait for death to enter heaven with the righteous, nor do you have to wait for death to be cast into hell. The only thing that Twitter does not require is an examination of conscience, nor much intellect.
Scott Wilmot is not responsible for my rant. Happy face emoji.
Perhaps not, but I wish I could trigger more rants from you Doug – I enjoy a good rant.
Well don’t tell anyone but my doctor has recommended Benedict Option therapy. I asked him if it was due to blood pressure issues. He said no, but you are running the risk of a hernia from trying to hold up both ends of some conversations.
Claire, thanks for your thoughtful post. A few responses to your points:
I disagree; the government of the UK is telling them not to fight. The fact that those Britons in close contact with the terrorists fought back despite the warning doesn’t surprise me in the least. (If the savages were interrupting a football match, I’m sure those beatings would have been far worse.)
The UK is a country where the cops are armed and the citizens aren’t. When the state removes self-defense from the rights of the public, the relationship between government and the governed turns into parent/child at best (UK) and warden/inmate at worst (North Korea).
I’m sure there are some who have made this foolish insinuation, but I did not. My belief is that the UK government treats their citizens as either children or potential threats. That is unsettling for any “free” society.
Again, some might have made this point, but I never denigrated the UK military, nor did I argue or imply that Britons are wimps who are afraid to enlist. My critique is focused squarely on political leadership, whether Chamberlain or May.
I didn’t call British voters “cowardly, sheeplike, and a disgrace to their heritage.” My concern is that their own government treats them that way.
I very much respect BOTH Claire and Jon. I understand his points, but I also believe that Claire is right about how the post would go over in London… This is based on *my* cultural reading of the English who might very well agree on some levels with Jon but would want to knock his block off anyway.
Maybe you could have Charles weigh in on tone and Brits?
Btw, it’s not that I think Brits are necessarily genteel. Oh, gracious no! Your football comment made me giggle.
But they are proud about their own business.
I can run faster than my wife, and probably faster than at least one of my children. Probably I’d be left behind by the one who was a cross-country runner. Should I go with the statistically most successful strategy?
My sister would cheer Jon’s post. My brother, not so much.
That’s why I try and avoid generalizations about this sort of stuff, on Ricochet and in real life. Because you never know who you’re talking to.
My post was primarily directed at a US audience. That’s my perspective and that of most our readership. If a Brit was lecturing me, I assume I would be defensive as well.
If the government is going to tell them to run (and running is a rational response, if you can), tell them not to do so with their hands on their heads. I don’t know if that was suggested by the police on the scene, but the people tracking the ISIS online presences are going to get sick and tired of seeing those scenes popping up over and over again in recruitment videos.
This man’a reaction seems right to me. I like the cut of his jib:
http://mahoundsparadise.blogspot.com/2017/06/paul-weston-of-gb-liberty-on-muslim.html?m=1
With 200 plus comments, I’ll just add this:
Well, it does seem to me that her words for caution with tone were also directed at a widely read twitter feed… or, perhaps more, the collective sound of MANY social media voices from this side of the pond. ?
Though I can’t speak to her intent, I also don’t think there was rancor in her observations but a plea for our own government–and our people–to understand how words(may) play when speaking through a very loud megaphone.
Is that a fair analysis?
Hate crimes? Are you kidding me? We bent over backwards to show our good will , our willingness to blame ourselves. There are nearly double the number of mosques in the US as there were on 9/11. But has terror decreased? Nuh-uh! So that hasn’t worked.
I’m with @westernchauvinist :
Get.
Them.
Out.
Now.
It’s what we shoulda done after 9/11; what any other country in the entire world woulda done, at that time.
Our delusional response to that act of war set the stage, the horrible example, for the stunning pantomimes of surrender we hear as a commonplace now: Europe will “just have to get used” to living with terror.
Thats probably true, since their leaders have deliberately engineered their colonization by the terrorists.
It is not too late for our country–but only if the Left can be prevented from bringing down our president,
the first, and only, head of state to speak the truth about these events.
A completely fair analysis. There is certainly no rancor in Claire’s response.
Yep, that’s very fair. I wrote it after spending the day with two friends who live in the area of London that was attacked. One used to be a member of Ricochet. When I saw Jon’s post, I thought, “I don’t think I’ll have much luck convincing her to renew.”
Perhaps my broader point — and maybe this should be a separate post — is that when we post something on the Internet, we’re not writing for “a local audience.” (Unless we use privacy settings to limit who can see it.) Anyone with Internet access, anywhere, can read what we write here, and quite often people far from us do read what we write. I don’t argue for censoring ourselves for fear of causing offense, but I do argue for speaking to people as we’d wish to be spoken to — and for remembering that the victims of this attack are our friends and our allies.
Another view is that there are about 1500 or so guys who are most of the killers and many of the victims:
If you are able to stay out of the neighborhoods in which the gang bangers live and shoot at each other, you’re pretty unlikely to get caught by a stray bullet. Take those people out of the statistics and Chicago is pretty safe.
On the other hand, the UK is home to at least 400 returning veteran jihadis and thousands more on the terror watch list; these are people who are considered to be likely to deliberately murder innocent Britons. David Goldman does a good job of discussing the common thread in the jihadis’ evolving tactics; a significant plurality of the Muslim community supports some of their aims and tactics, so these guerilla fish have a pretty big sea of people to swim in.
I think this is about five times the core number of active combatants in the IRA and its offshoots at the height of the bombing campaign.
@bryangstephens beat me to it. I am in Britain right now. Later today we are meeting a friend who was on the London Bridge with her daughter just hours before the attack.
Over dinner with relatives it was non stop sneering at me, my brothers and sisters and countrymen. Eyes were rolled when I told them about the shooting classes my sisters and I have attended. Horror was exhibited when I spoke of the guns my brother has. I was having so much fun I showed off the pic of my then pregnant daughter with a rifle.
I made the mistake of sharing a Mark Steyn post on Facebook after a Paris attack. I legitimately offended a few relatives (I won’t see that crowd for another few weeks) and since then have kept my opinions largely to myself.
While being onslaughted non stop about American gun culture, our crime, our crazy elections and our insane president
Out of good manners I defended my country while not criticizing theirs.
Three weeks left on my trip. My husband is taking bets on how long I can keep it up.
By the way I too have lived in Britain and have kept in touch with many friends and relatives for over 30 years while visiting often.
They think we’re nuts? I’ve seen a tough and proud people be reduced to trying to decide if they want to have London or Belgium as overlords.
I prefer nuts.
He’s right. The only way to end Muslim terrorism in the West is to extricate Islam from every Western nation, root and branch.
John Hinderaker at PowerLine has a post up entitled News Stories Having Nothing To Do With Islam.
He links to a moronic letter in the Independent where we see the way-too-common response that the terror attack had nothing to do with Islam.
Mr. Hinderaker also gives us a peek at the Channel 4 documentary The Jihadis Next Door and also the latest jihadi attack in a Catholic Church.
My favorite part of his article is this:
At least some people in Europe understand the problem. Here is a clue: Islam is the problem.
And the only way to eliminate gun violence is to take away all the guns. Irrefutable.
Except it isn’t. This is a case of two sides with wrong answers arguing. Islam, Catholicism, environmentalism… these aren’t the causes of terrorism. Celibacy isn’t the cause of sexual abuse. Communism didn’t kill anybody. People did these things.
Wave your wand. Convert all Muslims to Christianity. Does the terror stop? The answer is no. It’s these people who hate us for being us. Islam is just the justification.
To win you have to correctly assess your opponent. Naive oversimplification doesn’t help.
And perhaps this is another.
Plenty of good Muslims fought with me in Iraq. That being said, your oversimplification of Muslim terrorism as just something angry people do is sadly naive and wishful thinking.
There have been other terrorists but no others have been backed by so many and with such religious furor. The world has been in relative peace except for Muslims. That is a fact.
We cannot change the minds of these fanatics. We must kill them to make ourselves safe. All the fanatics must be killed. They are like rabid dogs, except they are worse.
Virtue signaling about virtue signaling in matters of faith there can be no end…
Who are you claiming to be fanatics that must be killed?
Muslim communities started to do this in India – refuse to bury terrorists – so now the army buries them after killing them. Which I guess is good – if you say they aren’t really Muslim put your money where your mouth is and stop burying them like Muslims – but I don’t know that it discourages any terrorists from being terrorists.
Yup.
As usual Andrew McCarthy is spot on with this topic as well.