Spain was hit by its worst terrorist attack in more than a decade on Thursday, when a van driver plowed into dozens of people enjoying a sunny afternoon on one of Barcelona’s most famous thoroughfares, killing at least 13 people and leaving 80 bloodied on the pavement.
Hours later, the Catalan police said they foiled a second vehicular attack, in the seaside town of Cambrils, 70 miles to the south, fatally shooting four people. …
The Barcelona attack was at least the sixth time in the past few years that assailants using vehicles as deadly weapons have struck a European city.
(New York Time, August 17, 2017)
Truth be told, the groundhog-day nature of this attack is such that I can do no better than to reprise a little of what I wrote a year ago in “Carnage in Nice: France Attacked … Again,” July 15, 2016.
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With all due respect to the victims of this latest terrorist attack, the operative word in my title is ‘Again.’
After all, whether here in the United States or over in Europe, Asia, Africa, or the Middle East, terrorist attacks have become a fact of life … the new normal.
In any event, I presaged these attacks in ‘World Beware: French Riots Affect Us All,’ November 8, 2005. In it, I highlighted the disaffection, disillusionment, and discrimination (racial and religious) that make young Muslim men so susceptible to radicalization. Never mind the chickens-coming-home-to-roost factor stemming from the invasion of Iraq, which spawned the ‘one thousand Bin Ladens’ former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned about.
For a little perspective, it might be helpful to think of the so-called War on Terror like the War on Drugs, and to appreciate that we can be no more successful waging the former than we’ve been waging the latter. Nothing demonstrates this quite like the way terrorism has forced us to change our way of life – with our liberal democracies becoming more like barricaded police states every day. We all know about the Chicken-Little security measures at airports, but have you noticed that municipalities are reinforcing streets with 10 unsightly bollards for every 1 street lamp.
Yet, if it seems like we are helpless in the face of such terrorist attacks, it’s because we are. I’ve been bemoaning this for over a decade:
It must be understood that no matter their collective resolve, there’s absolutely nothing our governments can do to prevent such attacks. That Americans reacted yesterday as if those explosions went off in Washington or New York should compel Westerners to focus on calming our collective nerves, instead of fretting about (or worse, trying to figure out) the motivation for and timing of terrorist attacks by Islamic fanatics.
(“7/7 Terror Attacks in London,” The iPINIONS Journal, July 8, 2005)
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It might be helpful to keep this in mind when you hear or read reports about the latest terrorist attack. And it hardly matters if the weapon of choice is a bomb, vehicle, gun, or knife (as was the case in Finland just this morning when a terrorist went on a stabbing spree, killing two and injuring eight). The terror these attacks inflict is just the same.
Sadly, besides sending reflexive tweets, which invariably promote the Twitterer more than comfort the victims, all any of us can do in the face of this new norm is to intone the Bradfordian prayer:
There but for the grace of God go I.
But, whatever you do, keep calm, carry on, and be not afraid.
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