Raging against the bad guys is insufficient – we have to be better than terrorists to beat them

The Facebook posts, ministers dashing to COBRA meetings, the condemnations, the praise for the emergency services, the prayers of world leaders…. it has become a grisly ritual hasn’t it? A terrorist murders  innocent people in a western city and the clock starts ticking until we go around this loop all over again – today it is Manchester, where will the next one be?

Some people’s lives are shattered and the rest of us shudder inwardly at the horror, we rage at the people responsible and demand action from someone, somewhere… perhaps we should look to ourselves first?

Raging at ISIS will not bring back the dead innocents of Manchester or prevent a repeat in another city, another day,  we all know the next attack is on the way. The government can hold all the COBRA meetings it wants, there is no way to prevent terrorism of this kind with security or vigilance.

To be clear, I am utterly disgusted and outraged by the mentality of anyone who kills children in the name of religion – what on earth is wrong with people like that? But outrage is insufficient, we must be smarter, better and more aware than terrorists if we are to beat them.

There is more to the recent spate of terrorist incidents in western cities than the random actions of inexplicable bad guys. Terrorism breeds in shattered states and terrorist recruitment is boosted by the military imperialism of foreign nations in other people’s countries – nations like the UK and USA in the Middle East.

I am afraid it is precisely in moments like these that we need to consider not just the innocent dead of Manchester – but those in places like Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen too.

You won’t hear much in the mainstream media about the starving citizenry of Yemen or the role of UK weapon manufacturers and military ‘advisors’ in helping Saudi Arabia commit war crimes there. We can choose to turn a blind eye but don’t expect the rest of the world to do the same. The role of the UK in selling weapons to the Saudis is morally indefensible, our concurrent lack of interest in the humanitarian disaster in Yemen is inexcusable.

As a nation it seems we have forgotten also about the shattered state of Iraq and the seemingly endless terrorist outrages that are a direct consequence of the invasion by the US and UK. How many Iraqi children died before the war, because western imposed sanctions deprived them of medicine? How many Iraqi children died during the war and subsequently, do you know? Lots of people in the Middle East do,  we may have forgotten about these things, but we can’t imagine that they have – would we forget in their place?

I wonder how many people in the UK choose to reflect on the role of our ‘special friends’ the USA in  creating and tolerating ISIS? What role did the western powers have in creating and sustaining the bloodshed in Syria – exactly what flavours of Islamist extremism are we supporting in Syria and why?

What are the security implications of the mess the western powers including the UK left behind them in the anarchy that is now Libya? It’s not lost on the rest of the world that the west’s military intervention ended when the contracts for the oil were signed.

What message is sent to the global community by our continued refusal to recognise the Palestinian state and to seek justice for Israeli war crimes against Palestinian civilians?

The unpalatable truth is this, the collective effect of British and U.S. foreign policy in the middle east has been to cast both in the role of pariah states  – the overwhelming majority of people would never harm anyone in response, but it only takes a few people to be swayed towards violence doesn’t it?  

When extremists are looking for real world evidence of the west’s perfidious and deadly nature, they don’t have to look terribly hard to find it in the Middle East and the moral climate of these discussions is all important. If we want to deprive terrorist organisations of the propaganda opportunities that aid recruitment, then we need to become more aware of the suffering of innocent civilians in other nations and the role that the west has had and continues to have in causing it.  

My message is simply this – let us express appropriate grief and anger for the deaths in Manchester, let the culprits be found and punished – but if we continue to choose to limit our awareness, compassion and basic morality to the natives of our own shores, then the baleful consequences of our morally bankrupt actions overseas will make the recruitment of the next wave of terrorists all too easy.

The time to deprive terrorism of its victim narrative is now, we can do this by insisting that our governments treat the sovereignty and citizenry of other nations with the respect we would expect to be shown.

Now is not the time to be swayed by vile idiots like Katie Hopkins calling for a ‘final solution’ to terrorism or any of the other right-wing loop nuts. We are a social species, if we want bad things to recede and good things to grow – then as a collective we must all do our part, don’t leave it to the politicians or the terrorism ‘experts’ – they are but a reflection of our moral dimensions, or the lack of them.