SO15: Myth and Reality
Every night, when we go to bed to gather our energies at the end of a hard day, we are confronted by the harsh reality of who we are. We are vulnerable individuals caught up in the net of our own uncertainties and weaknesses. The adrenaline that kept as going during the day seems to be gone and we are down to our individuality, away from the trials and tribulations, from the challenges that we face, from the doubts and hesitations.
Even the most frightful organisations are no more than a collection of vulnerable individuals very much like ourselves. SO15 has been designated as an anti-terrorism tool, but how much of an anti-terrorism tool any organisation can be without proper information and without the proper tools to analize and to arrive at the right conclusions that will allow it to achieve its aims is a fundamental question. I am no spring chicken. As a child, as a teenager, as a young man, I watched World War Two movies and I usually complained about being born too late to actually have been a protagonist in World War Two. I felt that after World War Two, whatever happened afterwards would have insignificant. Here we are living in times when much of the present day politics is described using as a reference World War Two. When we talk about politics, we used words like Nazi, Fascist, Stalinist, and so forth. It feels like whatever happened 70 or so years ago is still with us and is very much relevant to us.
I look at and listen to youngsters today who are frightfully oblivious to what happen in my young man's years in Latin America, for example. In the movie The Two Popes - Jonathan Pryce plays Pope Francis. Pope Francis tells Pope Benedict played by Anthony Hopkins about the death flights that took place in the River Plate Region. Most people, including SO15, MI5, MI6, would be totally unaware of the methods used in those days that rivalled what was done during World War Two. What were the death flights? Political detainees, after being tortured and drugged, were loaded onto airforce planes, flown over the sea and thrown while still alive into the sea. You can imagine that when their bodies touched the sea the water would have the consistency of concrete. Bones would be crashed and faces disfigured to the point of making them unrecognizable. This and other methods were used during the 1970 and 1980.
I lived in the River Plate region at that time and I can tell you here and now that there was a lot more than that and, when it comes to terror, what has happened in Britain compared to what happened in Latin America is no more than peanuts. Talking about doing something is nothing. The real issue is doing it and much of what was done and is still being done in Latin America beggars belief because it surpasses in more ways than one what happened in World War Two in terms of levels of perfection of cruelty.
Politics and geopolitics have come together as one, but security services are failing to grasp the extent of the ongoing changes. Today, it is about movements more than political parties, movements that have links across national borders, share resources and for which ordinary political processes like elections are just a means to an end and getting elected representatives might not be the main purpose. Today's security services are about 'Far Right' at a national level and are totally oblivious to the dimensions of what they call Far Right. Anybody without a real political agenda ends up being called Far Right or Extremist or the like. The game has changed but politicians, mass media and commentators have failed to grasp the fact of how much things have changed. I confess that I now rarely read the pages of newspapers like The Independent. So called political commentators don't seem to have a clue of what is really going on. The likes of Tommy Robinson, Jack Renshaw, and others are classified as Far Right, something that they are not in any way, shape or form. Misguided? Perhaps. But the aforementioned could not be Far Right, not in a million years. Terrorists? Really? There has to be a long term ideology. There has to be a plan. There has to be a set of objectives depicting a new reality that they try to create.
If all Jack Renshaw thought about was about killing one Member of Parliament, where is the ideology? Where is the long term plan? Where are the long term objectives? A Member of Parliament can be replaced by another Member of Parliament who will have the same or similar views. Threatening somebody is a criminal act, but what would then be achieved? What real change would then be achieved? Absolutely nothing. One individual is replaced by another individual and it is business as usual. People can lament Jo Cox's death or David Amess's death. What did the culprits actually achieve? Absolutely nothing. Did killing or maming people on July 7th 2005 achieve anything? Corpses everywhere. Lives of passers-by lost. What did killing an unarmed Police Officer right in front of the gates of the House of Commons actually achieve? And what about the incident in London Bridge or in Manchester? What about those killed Lee Rigby? Such actions are the actions of deranged individuals very much like the one who went along the high street street in Streatham in South London trying to stab pedestrians achieved nothing.
When politicians, security forces, mass media and members of the public continue to think about such acts as acts of terrorism, they are taking their eyes away from the ball. We have not had real acts of terrorism and if we continue to misuse anti-legislation using anti-terror legislation for political ends we are going to lose everything worth living for. The real danger is hidden and for such danger we are totally unprepared.
When a politician, that could be a Member of the Cabinet, threatens another country - even without knowing that he or she is threatening another country - the danger grows. When the present Foreign Secretary Liz Truss spoke about a 'no fly zone', she obviously was not aware of that imposing a 'no fly zone' was a declaration of war. When she promoted the idea of Britons going to fight in Ukraine, she obviously was not aware of the fact that mercenaries are not protected by the Geneva Convention. Now, those captured in Ukraine face the death penalty.
When General Patrick Sanders speaks about British forces that should be prepared to fight on the continent, what he says goes against what the Defense Secretary Ben Wallace MP is promoting. You don't fight long wars with commando units. So General Patrick Sanders wants Britain to go in one direction and the Defense Secretary is moving Britain in another direction and the two things are totally incompatible. Fighting long wars means more manpower, not less manpower and you need to get used to the fact that there will be a huge number of casualties along the way and you need to accept there would be retaliation and that the British mainland would be targetted. No one cares to explain to the British public the true meaning of what is being talked about. War in Europe will not be like recents wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
Instead of compartmentalised actions in terms of national security, Britain will have to think about an integral approach based on the idea that national politics and geopolitics go hand in hand. There are clear examples of how disastrous such compartmentalised actions can be. For many years, the Royal Navy, the Army and the Air Force operated as separate entities. There are tragic examples to show how misguided such actions were. Two British ships sent to Asia to confront Japan were sunk by Japanese torpedo airplanes. The assault against Narvik was yet another example of how foolish such actions were. Without air cover, the Royal Navy was a sitting duck. Integration is the way forward because the next war will be fought both at home and abroad.
