For quite some time, England has lived with the reality of IRA terrorists who would like to see various important Brits dead. London knows a lot more about living under that sort of threat than we do. That’s a simple statement of fact; 9/11 was of much larger magnitude, but England’s been dealing with this sort of thing for decades.
In all those years, they have somehow managed to keep the Prime Minister and the Queen safe without shutting down the London Underground. One wonders what sort of a cowboy is afraid of risks the Queen of England takes on a regular basis.
(Via Charlie Stross.)
4 Comments
Where to begin?
That aside… Didn’t we once call the President of the United States the “Leader of the Free World”? I thought only brutal third-world dictators and Louis Farrakhan required as much security as the law allowed, and then some.
Hey, Bush can defend himself. He’s a figher pilot, you know.
I was going to post a snide comment about third-world dictators being more popular than Bush, but forgot what it was.
I wonder how much of those efforts are to keep Bush safe and how much of them are to keep him isolated from how people (not terrorists) really feel about his actions and policies.
That he could profess shock at his reception at the Australian Parliament tells me that he’s either a much greater actor than I think (doubtful) or that he is really oblivious to public opinion of him and his presidency.