{"id":287596,"date":"2016-12-28T19:15:54","date_gmt":"2016-12-28T18:15:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-politicians-are-to-blame-for-most-terrorist-attacks\/"},"modified":"2016-12-28T19:15:54","modified_gmt":"2016-12-28T18:15:54","slug":"why-politicians-are-to-blame-for-most-terrorist-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-politicians-are-to-blame-for-most-terrorist-attacks\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Politicians Are to Blame for Most Terrorist Attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<div id=\"attachment_89406\" style=\"width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-89406\" src=\"http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2016\/12\/9332121623_76541444da_z.jpg\" alt=\"Photo by Elliott Brown | CC BY 2.0\" width=\"510\" height=\"383\" srcset=\"http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2016\/12\/9332121623_76541444da_z.jpg 510w, http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2016\/12\/9332121623_76541444da_z-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\"\/><\/p>\n<p align=\"right\">Photo by Elliott Brown | <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>European political leaders are making the same mistake in reacting to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/world\/europe\/berlin-christmas-market-live-updates-lorry-deadly-killing-police-terror-attack-latest-a7485361.html\">massacre at the Christmas fair in Berlin<\/a>, in which 12\u00a0died, as they did during previous terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels. There is an over-concentration on the failings of the security services in not identifying and neutralising the Tunisian petty criminal, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/topic\/anis-amri\">Anis Amri<\/a>, as the threat he turned out to be. There is too little focus on bringing to an end the wars in Syria and Iraq which make this type of atrocity unstoppable.<\/p>\n<p>In the aftermath of the killings\u00a0the visibility of Amri,\u00a0who was shot dead in Milan this morning,\u00a0as a potential threat looks misleadingly obvious, and the culpability of those who did not see this appears more glaring than it really was. The number of possible suspects \u2013 suspected before they have done anything \u2013 is too great to police them effectively.<\/p>\n<p>No politician or security official wishing to retain their job can tell a frightened and enraged public that it is impossible to defend them. Those in charge become an easy target for critics who opportunistically exploit terrorism to blame government incompetence or demand communal punishment of asylum seekers, immigrants or Muslims. At such times, the media is at its self-righteous worst, whipping up hysteria and portraying horrifying but small-scale incidents as if they were existential threats. This has always been true, but 24\/7 news coverage makes it worse as reporters run&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2016\/12\/28\/why-politicians-are-to-blame-for-most-terrorist-attacks\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo by Elliott Brown | CC BY 2.0 European political leaders are making the same mistake in reacting to the massacre at the Christmas fair in Berlin, in which 12\u00a0died, as they did during previous terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels. There is an over-concentration on the failings of the security services in not identifying [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-287596","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}