At the risk of sounding a bit like Victor Meldrew I am getting increasingly bloody grumpy with every interview I see about the London bombing. Every damned person speaking seems to have bought the Short Oxford Book of Cliches, and to be determined to weave every entry into the interview:
“we came out because we wanted to send a signal to the terrorists”;
“life has to go on - if we change they win”;
“I say this to them: ‘you cannot win, we will defeat you’. “;
“they hate our freedom and want to destroy it”;
“they just love killing for the sakes of killing”;
“nothing justifies this”;
“they are just plain evil”;
“we cannot allow them to change our way of life”;
“we can’t ever let this happen again”;
“I wanted to remember them and honour them”;
“this was pointless murderous carnage”
Sure, it was very nasty and unpleasant, and difficult (but not impossible) to justify. I hope also that we can catch them quickly and before they do it again. But can we leave this sort of vacuous non-thinking to Americans?
Terrorists/Guerillas/freedom fighters are not just evil and sometimes they aren’t evil at all. they may be misguided foolish naive selfish amoral immoral and stupid. Perhaps they are also uncompromising idealistic determined brave. Talking in moralistic black and white terms is not going to get us anywhere and it is definitely not going to contribute to defeating them.
What we need to do is understand them, defeat them and address the underlying, substantial, grievances. That way a future generation will not replace them to continue their fight.
Talking in cliches becomes a substitute for thinking.
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