The Futility of Terror

Separate and very distinct attacks rocked Europe and Asia on Monday, both with serious international repercussions — but not the ones the attackers intended. In Ankara, a Turkish cop gunned down Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, in an art gallery. The gunman, 22, shouted jihadist praise and pleaded: “Don’t forget Aleppo. Don’t forget Syria.”

It was a throwback to the political assassinations of past eras. Some even likened it to the 1914 slaying of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which quickly plunged Europe into World War I.

That parallel seems overwrought, as the killing shows no sign of derailing Ankara and Moscow’s efforts to reach a reconciliation over the crisis in Syria (an alliance that, yes, also bodes ill for US interests).

And the killing is also a sign of mounting anger in the Sunni Islamic world over Russia’s alliance with Shiite Iran, which has resulted in rivers of blood in Syria (which the Obama administration impotently denounces).

Meanwhile, in Berlin, a truck rammed into a crowded Christmas market killing 12 and wounding 48 more — an attack that bore all the hallmarks of all-too-modern jihadist terror.

Indeed, ISIS has now claimed responsibility for the attack, though the terrorist (along with any accomplices) is still at large.

The slaughter harkened back to July’s similar attack in Nice, France, which killed 81. And it came just days after German officials said a Christmas market attack by a 12-yearold in Ludwigshafen failed when his bomb didn’t detonate.

Yet the Berlin attack, too, will fail. Yes, it adds to the fire mounting on Chancellor Angela Merkel for her open-border policy on Muslim refugees. But it’s sure to bolster — not cow — European opposition to Islamist extremism.

Terrorism wages war on civil society, hoping to break it. But it more often pushes that society to defend itself — to adapt until it finds a way to crush the threat. It’s not just a tactic of losers, but a losing strategy.