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PETER HITCHENS: Put away your pointless troops PM-only beat bobbies can stop terror
DailyMail.com ^ | 5/27/2017 | Peter Hitchens

Posted on 05/28/2017 6:57:00 AM PDT by Nextrush

Theresa May should get herself a stick-on pencil moustache, some very dark glasses and a white military uniform with lots of medals and a set of fancy epaulettes. If she's going to behave like a Third World leader, she ought to look like one.

Troops on the streets, indeed. What a futile non-answer to the problem of terror murder this is, and what a complete departure from centuries of British liberty.

In all my travels....troops posted on the streets have been an invariable sign of a society on the skids, and a government that prefers force to thought.....

... I suspect it's something our dim state machine has wanted to do for ages and now thinks it has the excuse for...

What is far worse is that the idea was not then mocked and jeered off the stage by the rest of us.......

Year by year our hopeless egalitarian schools and our joke universities turn out more and more citizens who don't know that you have to defend liberty all the time if you want to keep it......

....the sight of a one-great country over-reacting in this pointless way must cause our enemies to snigger in their bushy Islamic beards.

'Look at the infidels scurrying about at our bidding,' they must think....

.... old-fashioned beat coppers with a close, intimate knowledge of the areas they patrol would be much more likely to see these atrocities coming than clanking robocops, soliders or our vaunted and hyped 'security' services, who are always claiming to protect us but have failed so completely.....

.... a bearded young religious fanatic with a drug habit started buying large quantities of hair bleach?

He plainly wasn't planning to become a blond. But who was there to listen to such fears?......

(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; United Kingdom; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: counterterrorism; peterhitchens; terrorism
Peter Hitchens argues that cops close to the people are better at spotting the terrorists getting ready to do their dirty work than all the electronic phone and camera spying, the 'watch list' joke.

Police detached from personal contact who go militarized when prodded by events and do all this spying all the time look more like 21st Century Gestapo than the police force of a free and democratic society.

I've been watching the Oregon Standoff and Bunkerville Standoff cases out West over the last year and a half.

We see militarized law enforcement in both situations that use informants and spy on their own people seeking freedom, wasting taxpayers money.

Law enforcement needs to get close to the people and refocused on the real terrorists out there, not their own citizens exercising First, Second, Fourth Amendment rights etc. etc. etc.

Hitchens also touches on the "dictatorship of grief" imposed on society by terrorist attacks in the spirit of Diana's death in the 1990's, also he notes the use of drugs by terrorists.

More than grief is needed to deal with terrorism.

1 posted on 05/28/2017 6:57:01 AM PDT by Nextrush
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To: Nextrush

“dictatorship of grief”

What an excellent descriptor. That’s exactly what this is every time an Islamist lunatic creates carnage and the hand-wringing idiots go into wailing mode.


2 posted on 05/28/2017 7:02:29 AM PDT by headstamp 2 (Ignorance is reparable, stupid is forever)
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To: Nextrush

They may be better at spotting, but as many aren’t armed, there’s little they can do about it, except become victims.


3 posted on 05/28/2017 7:12:24 AM PDT by apoxonu
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To: Nextrush
Most of the older police officers and deputy sheriffs I have known well enough to be in their confidence took it as a given that knowing their "beat" kept a lot of crap from ever happening.

Mr. niteowl77

4 posted on 05/28/2017 7:13:26 AM PDT by niteowl77 (Trust- but verify.)
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To: Nextrush
Peter Hitchens argues that cops close to the people are better at spotting the terrorists getting ready to do their dirty work ...

The terrorists are usually "spotted" already. However, the police are paralyzed by "Islamophobia"-phobia and don't do anything.

5 posted on 05/28/2017 7:25:14 AM PDT by Tax-chick ("I prefer to think of myself as ... civilized." ~Jonathan Q. Higgins)
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To: headstamp 2

Yes, that is a great turn of phrase.


6 posted on 05/28/2017 7:48:31 AM PDT by Bigg Red (Vacate the chair! Ryan must go.)
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To: Tax-chick

May, like the EU in general, did it just for show. All they really care about is that we hate these bastards (”islamophoba”...can’t have that) and more importantly global warming. F ‘em.


7 posted on 05/28/2017 8:01:52 AM PDT by Bonemaker
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To: Nextrush

The truth is, there’s little any law enforcement presence can do once a suicide bomber is out on the town carrying a bomb in a knapsack, or wearing a suicide vest, either of which can be detonated by pulling a cord. This has to be prevented by investigative work before hand, or maybe by not allowing groups known to produce suicide bombers into your nation.


8 posted on 05/28/2017 9:42:03 AM PDT by Will88
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To: Nextrush
What's needed is not just cops walking the beat among the people, but the willingness to deport Islamics, and the willingness to go after Islamic clerics who preach jihad with at least the same enthusiasm that they go after Christian preachers who are against gay marriage.
9 posted on 05/28/2017 9:46:15 AM PDT by PapaBear3625 (Big government is attractive to those who think that THEY will be in control of it.)
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To: PapaBear3625

There is that factor to be taken into account as well.

What’s happened in the UK over the years is sickening.

Terrorists have been allowed to roam as well as men who raped children because of political correctness and a fear of being seen as “Islamophobic”.

Bu$ine$$ is being done with I$lamic countries that are wealthy.

They have money that the Western nations don’t.

We should be troubled and concerned about that.


10 posted on 05/28/2017 9:54:51 AM PDT by Nextrush (Freedom is everybody's business: Remember Pastor Niemoller)
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To: Nextrush

Ofc it’s true that deploying troops in the streets is not going to help with detecting and unraveling jihad plots, but I’m not sure “Bobbies on the beat” will do much, either. What’s needed is saner policies to attack and destroy all jihad networks, with determination and ruthlessness. The Manchester bomber would not have been stopped by more Bobbies walking around neighborhoods. It seems that MI5 did have fairly specific warnings from the FBI about a Libya-connected cell that included this guy, but the Brits fumbled. More local Bobbies would not have made the difference.

Lax policies and PC-sensitive Muslim sympathies are the main obstacles.


11 posted on 05/28/2017 11:00:01 AM PDT by Enchante (Searching throughout the country for one honest Democrat....)
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To: Nextrush

I’m afraid Mr Hitchens is missing the point.

Troops are being used to replace police in guard duty roles, precisely so more police can be engaged in traditional police work.


12 posted on 05/28/2017 7:13:45 PM PDT by naturalman1975 ("America was under attack. Australia was immediately there to help." - John Winston Howard)
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