After the appalling attacks on London recently, inhabitants of the city are naturally feeling nervous. What is less natural, however, is that on top of the expected apprehension over terrorists, they are now equally fearful of the police.

The shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes on 22nd July was not only a disgraceful mistake, but will do considerable harm in London’s own War on Terror. After the attacks, commuters appeared understandably shifty when confronted with anyone wearing a backpack or a beard, or otherwise acting strangely. Unfortunately, London’s commuters now also turn shifty-eyed when encountering their own police officers, presumably for fear of being shot eight times in the head for having poor fashion sense. Whether the Metropolitan Police have been training their recruits using zombie movies, in which only total destruction of the brain will take down the undead, is not yet known, but the implications of the incident will not do any favours for our efforts to combat terrorism.

If terror can be defined as the amount of fear felt by a population, then the execution of an innocent man on a crowded train by our own police service was an even bigger act of terror than the disgusting attacks on 7th July. Not only do we now have to worry about being blown up during rush hour by some demented zealot, but we also have to watch our step around the police, the very people who are supposed to be protecting us.

For the terrorists, this will be a positive boon. We are now fearful of our own police. Their plans to divide our society and change our way of life have not only succeeded, but have been helped along by the actions of the police, with the world watching. In just over a month, our entire way of life has been altered. Before the bombings, the shooting of an innocent man would have been unthinkable, and yet now it is almost to be expected. Police patrol train stations with machineguns, passengers have their bags searched constantly, and a new climate of oppression has sunk over the capital. All this is to be expected, of course, following a major terrorist incident.

What is not expected, however, is for our own police to degenerate into American-style trigger-happy gunslingers. Any terrorists watching the events unfold will only feel vindicated at having proved to the world how savage our authorities can be when provoked. What was once, in the eyes of the world, a peaceful, reserved country has now been turned into any other post-9/11 panicky police state. The militants must be loving it.

We can only hope that the officers responsible for this action will be held accountable for their actions and brought to justice. The problem lies in how fare up the chain of command the “shoot-to-kill” policy truly goes. Should it be the officer who pulled the trigger who takes the blame, or the officer in charge of the investigation? Or the officer above him, who assigned him to the role? Or should the blame go higher still, to the man who is indirectly responsible for provoking the terrorist attack in the first place?

Just as the police must take responsibility for their actions, however, so must the Government in its stance over Iraq. While it is unlikely that Iraq was the sole motivator of the assaults, the impact that our decision to go to war has had over the Arab world has been enormous. If the fundamentalist Muslim community was angry before, then our being part of an illegal invasion of another nation may well have pushed them over the edge. If we think of terrorists as a swarm of angry wasps, launching quick stinging operations against unsuspecting targets, then the invasion of Iraq is the equivalent of attempting to destroy their nest with a chainsaw. The nest may be destroyed, but we’ve got a lot of angry wasps to deal with, and we can expect to be stung quite a few more times. The Americans in Iraq are currently taking the brunt of the stings, of course, but it is naïve to think that we would never have been a target.

Until then, of course, we can only try to remain calm. Incidents such as the shooting of Mr. de Menezes cannot go unpunished, since not only has an innocent life been lost, but our reputation is at stake. We must be seen in the eyes of the terrorists to be panicking, or else the so-called war on terror is already lost. Britannia should not be afraid of a few wasps, and neither should our police.

If we had not gone to war, there is a good chance that the attacks on 7th July, as well as the shooting of Mr. Menezes, would not have occurred. Perhaps Tony, rather than Ian, Blair, should be the one considering his future. There are a lot more angry wasps out there, after all. Perhaps the man who provoked them into stinging should take some of the blame.