Not to be cowed
Terrorism by design sows confusion as well as division and fear, and much about Wednesday’s London attack remains unclear. Its target, however, was not ambiguous: Westminster Palace, home of Parliament, is among the world’s foremost symbols of democracy.
As usual, the commoners who constitute and protect democracies bore the worst of the assault. The four killed and dozens injured included police, pedestrians and schoolchildren.
The attacker used an SUV to run down most of them on Westminster Bridge and fatally stabbed a police officer guarding the palace before he was shot to death by another. A reporter for London’s Telegraph described images from the scene as “too distressing to publish.” Bodies lay before the historic heart of Britain’s millennium-long transfer of power from monarch to lawmakers, who suspended proceedings as armed officers scoured the building.
The attack provided occasion at the scene for a far-right activist to rant about immigrants and, in America, for Trump scion Donald Jr. to allege that London’s first Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, was resigned to terrorism — misconstruing six-month-old comments in which Khan advised vigilance. The mayor’s actual reaction Wednesday, unlike Trump’s, was dignified and heartening: “We stand together in the face of those who would seek to ... destroy our way of life,” he said. “Londoners will never be cowed by terrorism.”