The terrorists have won

One of the goals of terrorism is to create a backlash, a backlash that creates more terrorists. By that standard, the terrorists have won. The only puzzling thing is why is it that it's the British police forces that have become terrorists, executing a young man with seven shots to the head for the crime of running from a bunch of shouting men in plain clothes waving guns?

The facts of this day are not known. We know that the media lied, at least, when they stated that he was wearing a heavy coat on a warm summer day. There was no "warm" about that day. The weather report doesn't lie -- it was 55F when Menezes left the apartment he shared with two cousins. I wear a coat too in that temperature. And eyewitnesses have proven equally unreliable. They said he "looked Asian" and "looked like he had wires hanging out from a bomb vest". No such wires were found on his dead body, and he looks about as Asian as I do.

But those were bystanders, not trained policemen. The police are supposed to be different, more observant, more capable. The British police aren't supposed to be the Keystone Kops. They're supposed to be professionals. But having bombs go off has apparently turned them into panicked, trigger happy nut cases ready to shoot and kill anybody brown that they think looks suspicious -- just like the terrorists planned. And all the apologies in the world won't bring him back to his grieving parents.

The terrorists have, indeed, won. They've sucked the US and Britain into a hellhole in Iraq, they've suckered the US and British into destroying the civil rights of their people, they have, in short, accomplished everything they ever wanted to accomplish. The only question now is this: What do we do now? What do we do, now that the terrorists have won?

That is a question I have no answer for.

- Badtux the Puzzled Penguin