If you ever wonder what it might be like to find yourself in the middle of a terrorist incident, there is a good essay from an American who was right in the middle of the terrorist attack in London.
But the most interesting part are his conclusions. I’ll just quote one of them:
Keep calm and carry on
I wish we hadn’t built a memorial after 9/11. I wish we’d just rebuilt those same two towers, but even taller, if only to say “You didn’t beat us: we still here. You knock down these towers, we build them right back.”
The West is still strong, and no one can defeat it from the outside. That’s why terrorism exists as a tactic: terrorists know they can’t beat a Western army on the battlefield, so they resort instead to cowardly and cruel acts of killing civilians to try to provoke us into beating ourselves. They want us to overreact and do something that accidentally kills civilians in Muslim countries or alienates Muslims in Western countries. That’s how you recruit people to your side: by showing people they’re the “us” in a war of us-against-them.
And as scary as Saturday’s events were, I continually remind myself that statistically speaking, the most dangerous thing I did Saturday was the taxi ride from the airport.
That’s right. Being killed in a terrorist incident has similar odds to being struck by an asteroid.
His conclusion: “It’s only if we give in to fear that the terrorists win.” We should be more like this guy, who fled the terrorist attack carefully carrying his pint of beer:
5 Comments
I guess that should be a lesson to all of us. Always carry a pint of beer!
it goes in the non towel hand. always be prepared.
I dont like beer but I might want to try whatever he was carrying.
Beers are quite expensive in london compared to the US so perfectly understandable.
But seriously for the most part londoners are handling it quiet well. For some reasons its the cities where these attacks occur like NYC, Paris where the people seem to react better. The rural areas where nothing happens seem to react overly fearfully.
Jonah I think a lot live in those areas because of fear. They fear change, people of color, crime, other religions, uppity women, science, and the elite. Oh and Dems. Anything new comes up to stoke their fear on a different subject and they are game. Of course they tell themselves otherwise. They are manly men, with guns and ready to protect their property from all comers, married to women who know their place and kids who quickly learn theirs. John Wayne wanna be’s.