Paris

[tardis_stowaway]

I was going to try to get more done this afternoon, but I've spent more time than expected on the computer, looking at the news from Paris.  My heart aches for the victims of this atrocity.  The scale of the attacks is truly awful.  My heart aches also for those affected by the bombings in Lebanon earlier in the day, where over 40 people were

Comments

[kerravonsen]

But on the flip side, incidents like this have the potential to bring out cruelty in the responses, as if the evil of the attacks wasn't already enough. If policy-makers restrict rights excessively in pursuit of unachievable security and if people take out their anger at the extremists on peaceful Muslims, then the terrorists win. Terrorists want fear. They want to ignite a holy war. We can vanquish them only by keeping our society open and free and by living our lives in a spirit of love, peace, and multiculturalism.

I was going to give this an unconditional "YES!" until that oft-used phrase "then the terrorists win" struck my eyes anew. No, they don't win. If they had won, they wouldn't feel the need to continue attacking. Nobody wins. Everybody loses.

I totally agree that removing freedoms and answering violence from the guilty with violence against the innocent are totally wrong moves to make. They only make things worse. And therefore doing the opposite is a way of not making things worse, and definitely wise. But I'm not quite optimistic enough to think that it will necessarily make things better, that peace and love will vanquish the terrorists. As the saying goes "It takes one to make war, and two to make peace." It's a difficult problem, and it doesn't have a simple solution.