Blacksburg is not the sign of a sick society

Simon Jenkins

Such evil is incurable and we owe it to the victims not to inflate the problem by ascribing it to some greater malaise.

THE GLOBAL image of the American school was once of wholesome youths laden with books and cheerleader pompoms. More recently it has become one of over-armed and overweight policemen racing to take up firing positions while students run screaming with terror.

My first response to Monday's horror at Blacksburg, Virginia, was: please, let it not be an Arab. The particular would instantly have become general and a madman a terrorist. Such is the degradation of public response to violence these days that nothing is allowed to be what it probably is, the random act of a mind deranged. It must be a sign of war and subject to the language of war.

Even so, the response of many who wish America ill will have been gratuitous schadenfreude. They see a people who live by the gun also dying by it, be they marines in Anbar province or students in Virginia.

The rifle lobbyist who said on Monday that the college massacre would not have happened if all the students had been armed embodied the macho ethos George W. Bush is seen as willing on the world. How can U.S. soldiers disarm Iraqi families of their weapons in Baghdad yet claim the right to arm themselves to the teeth back home?

Britons whose links with America are long and close (and in my case familial) always find themselves pleading the same cause. First, we scrupulously proclaim the standing of America as a world exemplar of political freedom, though this has become a sort of Hail Mary, recited before yet another pro/anti-American argument. Then we beg Americans to step outside their continent and see themselves as others do.

At the moment of the Blacksburg massacre, a broadcast interview with the former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, asked by what right America imposed its "values" by force on foreign states. Mr. Bolton did not even try to answer. He jeered, "Try and stop us." I am sure, like his neo-conservative confreres, he thought the reply smart and macho. Such people seem blind to the damage their arrogance does to America's image, interest, and, ultimately, security abroad. It feeds those who react to Blacksburg, as to 9/11, with "America had it coming."

Unpredictable

Whenever I see incidents such as Blacksburg I try to apply the doctrine of proportional response. They are exceptionally rare and unpredictable.

Britain's tough gun control did not prevent the massacres in the small towns of Hungerford or Dunblane, where a gunman killed a class of primary schoolchildren. More American children (some 3,000) may die by gunfire each year than the death toll on 9/11, far more than in any other developed country. This may be a function of a migratory society or an unstable community, though it is hard to dissociate it from lax gun laws. But it remains America's choice and America's business.

Meanwhile, Britain would do well to contemplate the soaring use of guns and knives on its streets. If the image of the American school is of armed policemen, that of Britain's inner cities is of grieving mothers and weeping girls laying wreaths on pavements. British policy on alcohol and drug abuse is more catastrophic in its consequences than in any other country, and is more lethal than America's gun laws. Barely a week passes without a report condemning the government's refusal to repeal the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act, largely because of Tony Blair's fear of the press. His failure lies at the root of urban crime, social dislocation, and prison overcrowding. The unregulated drugs market is ruled by violence as ruthlessly on the streets of London as in the fields of Helmand. Yet all Mr. Blair can do is tell the British black community to "own up" to it.

The truth is, we are better at lecturing others than reforming ourselves.

The spectacle of both military occupiers of Iraq making such a hash of law and order in their own backyards plays into the hands of anti-western propaganda. Those seeking to radicalise Islam watch television. Their communities may have their problems, but they can fall back on a degree of piety and social cohesion that puts most westerners to shame. Most Islamic states may not have signed Magna Carta or the Declaration of Independence, but that is their choice. Very few either seek or are remotely able to impose their values on the west. The west, in the shape of Britain and America, not only desires to impose its values on them but is doing so by force. It is no surprise they cheer when we get a bloody nose.

The result has created a dire moral equivalence. Mr. Blair's "values crusade" is depicted as paralleling Al-Qaeda's jihad. The suicide car bomb is "the poor man's F-16." A kidnapped journalist answers Guantanamo Bay. Britain's Trident nuclear missiles legitimises Iran's nuclear enrichment. It is no good analysts protesting that such parallels are trite. The one choice the strong cannot deny the weak is that of facile comparison. International relations since 9/11 have suffered a debased rhetoric drained of sensible meaning.

This week, U.K. Development Secretary Hilary Benn pleaded for linguistic arms reduction. In particular, he wants to ban the "war on terror" as elevating disparate gangs and giving them political credibility as part of some notional global movement. Mr. Benn, who comes late to this insight, might have turned his attention to home. Treating criminals as terrorists and mobsters as warriors flatters not just their egos but also those of Ministers. Modern government has been polluted by the language of war. In the U.K., Mr. Blair's Ministers have declared as many wars as his generals, against terrorism, drugs, truancy, knives, poverty, and homelessness. For the hard grind of social policy, Ministers can waffle about tsars, campaigns, trumpets and drums. Inflating the problem excuses the failure to solve it.
The tragedy at Blacksburg, like those in London and other cities assaulted by bomb, bullet, and knife, was apparently the manifestation of a distorted soul unable to live at peace with the world. Such evil is incurable, which is why such tragedies will continue to happen. The least we owe them and their victims is not to exaggerate their significance by implying that they are signs of a sick society or, worse, that they are wars against which armies can be mobilised.

The most present threat to the "homeland security" of urban Britons is specific. It is the collapse of discipline in their immediate neighbourhoods and the growth of gangs and drug-related violence worse than anywhere else in Europe. That does not mean war. As at Blacksburg, it means that when politicians lack courage, policy goes wrong and someone dies. It is as simple as that.

- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007