And they ask me why I avoid staff meetings. As much as we pretend otherwise and involve ourselves deeply in things that don’t much matter, we are at war, ladies and gentlemen. On Wednesday it was Paris, but there is no reason why the next time it won’t be Milwaukee, or Memphis, or Minneapolis.
Granted, we have avoided another cataclysmic attack of the kind that toppled the Twin Towers in New York City and killed thousands of our fellow citizens. But even that does not make us feel safe, when any sociopath with a grudge can go among the unsuspecting populace and cause all manner of mayhem.
The Paris attack involved guns, but it has to be said, the gun is just a tool. So is a suicide bombers vest, or a time-bomb in a backpack at a train station. And terrorists have created as much fear and revulsion with knives as they have with any firearms or explosives. So it isn’t the tools, it’s who is holding them.
And how do we stop these lone-wolf attacks, where two or three fanatics decide to strike a blow for their beliefs even if it costs them their lives, sure in the belief that 49 virgins await them in Paradise. (A friend in the defense business sent me a photo of what that might look like, some very crabby older Nuns holding deer rifles.) We can but hope.
But they can’t be stopped. Not all of them. No nation has a police force large enough to ensure the safety of its citizens in the world today. “An armed society is a polite society,” the late Col. Jeff Cooper often wrote in his gun columns, but how many armed citizens does it take to guard a nation? And how many of us can respond correctly in a crisis with a split second to make a life-or-death decision?
I have been in Paris when the big black armored vans of the Gendarmerie Nationale hit the streets, scattering pedestrians and traffic like a flock of swallows because everybody knows that they mean business. These are military troops, not policemen, and armed accordingly. But even they did not get there fast enough this time.
They did one time, though, in London in 1980 when terrorists took over the Iranian embassy. It was a typical hostage situation until one of them shot and killed a uniformed policewoman helping to hold back the crowds. That earned them a visit from the Special Air Service, people who usually enter a room by throwing a large explosive device in ahead of themselves, then shooting anybody left alive inside the target area afterwards. But they can’t be everywhere, either.
So what do we do, then? We publish the cartoons, and we continue to protect Salman Rushdie and we continue to honor Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old girl shot in the head by the Taliban for the crime of wanting to go to school.
The pen is mightier than the sword, in many cases, but Jesus did say that you should have a sword, too. Buck up, Sony, and show that second-rate comedy everywhere you can. We’ve got your back (and your $14 movie tickets). We will continue to take casualties, but we will not surrender our open society. But it will be unvarnished hell when that “collateral damage” is somebody you care about. Or their kid.
We mourn the writers and cartoonists who died at that staff meeting at the “Charlie Hebdo” newspaper offices Wednesday morning. That could be any of us, from the New York Times to the Fort Despair Dispatch, but we keep on going. There is no other way.
Satire is a dangerous thing when presented to the untrained mind. It’s like giving a four-year-old a box of kitchen matches and then going out to the movies. What could possibly go wrong?
Lost in the news feed from France was an item relating to the death in Syria of a popular street magician known as “The Sorcerer.” It took place in Raqqa, headquarters of the ISIS Islamic caliphate, where security forces snatched him off of the streets and later beheaded him in a public square, saying that his magic tricks were “an offense to God.” I may not know much, but I do know this:
Somebody is in for a big surprise on the other side of the Great Divide.
