Here’s Pat Buchanan asking the question of the hour which, by the way, applies to Americans as well:
If the purpose of terrorism is to terrify, the Islamic State had an extraordinary week. Brussels, capital of the EU and command post of mighty NATO, is still in panic and lockdown.
“In Brussels, fear of attack lingers” was Monday’s headline over The Washington Post’s top story, which read:“Not since Boston came to a near-standstill after the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 has the life of a major Western city been brought to a halt this way by the fear of terrorism.”
Below that is this headline: “After Paris, a campaign changed by fear.”
That story is about what’s happened in our presidential race: “Across the country … have come pronouncements of anger and fear not seen after the terrorist attacks in London and Madrid — or even in some ways after Sept. 11 2001.”
Voters speak of “feeling more afraid of the Islamic State, more horrified by the imagery of the beheadings and other atrocities.”
The New York Times’ Roger Cohen describes the Paris he loves.
“[T]hey are shaken. There is a void in the streets too empty, a new suspicion in appraising glances, a wary numbness. Paris is afflicted with absences — the dead, of course; visitors frightened away; minds frozen by fear; and tranquility lost. The city feels vulnerable.”
“I think France is attacked above all for what it is,” writes Cohen, “That in turn is terrifying. … I don’t think Paris has ever felt so precious or precarious to me as it did over the past week.”
Terrible as the massacres were, some perspective is in order.
Read more: Townhall.com
Image credit: www.townhall.com.
