Bramham: What do we do in the face of terror?

Monday’s bomb explosions left people questioning everything, but what gets done next matters more

The women and men who ran toward the bomb blast at the Boston Marathon’s finish line are heroes. They give us hope.

But it’s grim, slim hope. This is what terrorism does.

It makes people question everything. What place is safe? Who should we fear? What can we do?

The U. S. Federal Aviation Administration declared a nofly zone over part of Boston, while security at Boston’s Logan Airport was increased.

Just after 8 p. m. Boston time, SWAT teams in body armour and carrying assault rifles surrounded hospitals where more than 100 of the injured were being treated.

Along with many others, a Saudi man on the route turned and ran in fear after the blast along with many others. He was tackled by other bystanders and taken by police for questioning.

It’s more comfortable to point fingers far afield to find some “others” to blame. There were plenty in the Twitter- verse who were quick to finger them. And they almost certainly weren’t alone.

Within hours of the blast, # Muslims was trending on Twitter even as others were suggesting that the attack was racially related.

But as Canadians have been forced to recognize in the past few weeks, sometimes those “others” are homegrown. Their anger and disaffection stoked not in some desperate corner of a developing country, but in quiet towns and on university campuses.

Even as people were riveted to TV news, Twitter and other news sources Monday, RCMP confirmed a Canadian may have been part of a group of suicide bombers killed Sunday in a terror attack in Somalia.

A spokesman could not confirm reports that York University student Mahad Ali Dhore was one of the Islamists blown up at Mogadishu’s law courts in an attack that killed at least 30 people. But RCMP are investigating.

There is also an international hunt underway for a fourth man from London, Ont. — Mujahid ( Ryan) Enderi — who may have been involved in a deadly attack on an Algerian gas plant earlier this year along with three other people from that southern Ontario city.

( Ali Medlef and Xristos Katsiroubas, both 24, were killed, while Aaron Yoon is reportedly in a Mauritanian jail serving two years for terrorism offences.)

Following the bomb blasts, President Barack Obama noted that the attack came on Patriots’ Day, which marks the opening battles of the Revolutionary War on April 19, 1775.

Patriot’s Day is now marked on the third Monday of April. But as Slate blogger Abby Ohlheiser noted, April 19 is also the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing ( 1995) and the government’s assault on a compound in Waco, Tex. ( 1993). What we do know is that in free and open democracies like those of Canada and the United States, we are vulnerable to these kinds of attacks — even as it seems we should be invulnerable to creating its perpetrators.

So what do we do in the face of terrorism? Do we run toward its victims or away in fear? Do we hunker down or step up?

Do we change to protect ourselves even if it means curtailing the very freedoms that are the hallmarks of our society?

It’s almost trite to say that how we react determines whether terrorism succeeds or fails.

It’s certainly no comfort to the families of those who died, the survivors who were maimed and the many, many others who are traumatized by what they witnessed or experienced.

But what we do next does matter, starting with finding out who did this and why.