Editorial:
Brave in the face of terrorism,
If there’s anything positive to extract from the Boston Marathon bombings, it’s the response. Certainly there was shock. That is to be expected. What cannot always be expected is a refusal to succumb to that shock. But that is what we saw in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, and because of that response we can extract a not unreasonable confidence that terrorism need not prevail against civilized order.
We’ve seen similar responses to other attacks, of course. Everyone remembers the firefighters and police officers who rushed into the soon-to-collapse World Trade Center towers after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. The 2005 bombings on the London Underground saw ordinary citizens behave with courage and selfsacrifice amid the devastation.
Being scared is an understandable response when terrorists strike. The nature of the attacks shatters our normal assumptions about the security of our daily lives. But an overwhelmingly fear-ridden response is exactly what terrorists want. The fundamental purpose of terrorism is of course to create fear in the public mind. When people refuse to surrender to fear, the terrorists fail.
The terrorists who struck Boston failed. People were scared, yes, but most it seems acted with resolve and resilience.
Police and firefighters and others rushed toward the explosions, organizing rescue and treatment for the injured. Medical personnel, on hand to treat marathoners, quickly turned to the wounded. Bostonians opened their homes to those needing shelter. Runners who’d finished the race ran to hospitals to give blood. Spectators ripped up clothing to make tourniquets.
The politicians also behaved coherently. President Barack Obama condemned the attacks as “acts of terrorism,” but was careful to avoid blustering rhetoric and, instead, praised those who’d acted with “heroism and kindness and generosity.”
Such responses say a good deal about the American character, but they also underline something the terrorist mentality seems unable to comprehend. Healthy western societies possess institutional depth; that is to say, they have structures — everything from courts, legislatures and administrative agencies to civil society organizations such as schools, churches, hospitals, and charities — that enable them to absorb relatively rare terrorist strikes, from within or without, without surrendering to fear.
And that, arguably, highlights the secret to defeating terrorism — if we maintain in good order the institutions that foster a resolute citizenry, the barbarians will never get through the gates, much less control the streets.