When terror is weak
The Manchester bombing has a peculiar horror. The murderer intended to slaughter young teenagers and their families with bolts and nails. His aim was to sow the deepest form of shock and disgust.
Manchester, though, has reacted with wisdom and warmth, refusing to blame the whole Muslim community and declining to betray its own long tradition of social solidarity and tolerance. Manchester’s profoundly civilised response is an act of defiance to the terrorists, who want to sow rage and despair and doubt.
There is a sense, perhaps, in which the West might be starting to learn how to deal with terrorism. That is, by defying it and carrying on with our everyday lives. Above all, to treat terrorists as criminals and psychopaths rather than political activists or even poisoned idealists. We should treat them as exceptions to the normal rule of human co-operation and mutual aid.
There is a certain sense even in President Trump’s declaration that terrorists are ‘‘losers’’. They are not martyrs whose names we should remember. They are murderers who should be punished according to the usual rules of law, and then forgotten.
Western societies must at the same time continue to reach out to Muslim communities everywhere. Trump, who as a presidential campaigner sought to make Islam the enemy, now as president seeks to build fences with Muslim countries. He is trying to undo some of the damage he has already done. In this he is absurdly inconsistent, praising his Saudi hosts, whose Wahhabist tyranny has inspired many terrorists, including those of 9/11, while blaming his traditional foe of Iran.
But perhaps Trump has given up scapegoating Muslims in general, although his campaign to stop immigration from a range of Islamic countries remains stalled in the courts instead of formally abandoned.
Trump has also abandoned the American attempt to remake the Middle East, a campaign which has greatly boosted world terrorism. George W Bush’s invasion of Iraq was in that sense fatally counterproductive, leading both to Isis and to a wider outrage among alienated Muslims throughout the West. We don’t yet know what support the Manchester had, but he might just have been another twisted soul wanting revenge on the world.
The main lesson of terrorism is that it is a weak force that does not threaten the society in which it occurs - unless we collude with the terrorists by overreacting. If we allow terror to give more power to the demagogues among us, the terrorists win because the demagogues will destroy our liberties.
Manchester the day after the bombing showed solidarity, grief, and a refusal to panic or look for scapegoats. In Norway, another Western democracy where a home-grown psychopath committed mass murder, civilised and democratic life goes on as before.
New Zealand has so far avoided terrorism, but here too there are demagogues who would try to make capital out of terror. We must continue to resist them.
Terrorists should be treated as the criminals they are.