Let’s act without hatred

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/07/2016 (3624 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

By any standard, Thursday night was an awful evening for anyone paying attention to breaking news.

Reports began surfacing that evening of dozens of people killed in Nice, France, when a large truck plowed into a crowd of revellers watching the fireworks display celebrating Bastille Day along the Promenade des Anglais. The driver of the vehicle, identified as a French-Tunisian citizen, travelled about two kilometres down the promenade, swerving all over the road in an apparent attempt to hit more people.

The images coming out of Nice are horrific.

It’s estimated that about 30,000 people were on the Promenade des Anglais at the time of the attack, according to a report by the BBC. As of Friday afternoon, the number of deaths stood at 84 individuals, with many more injured — some critically. Many of the victims were children. Several tourists were also among the dead, including two American citizens, a Ukrainian, a Russian, and a Swiss woman. There were mixed reports of perhaps one or two Canadians among the dead or injured as well.

France has been under a state of emergency since last November’s attacks in Paris that were carried out by ISIS militants, and in which 130 people were slaughtered. That state of emergency has now been extended by three months.

In fact, France has been targeted often by radical Islamic groups over the last few years, including three days of horror in January 2015, that began with a bloody attack on the office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo by Islamic terrorists that left 17 people dead.

These kinds of evil acts are enough to enrage even the most moral of any of us. All too often we see images flash across our screens of innocents dead and dying in the streets, and carnage tearing apart neighbourhoods. Reactions vary from feeling heartbroken, to fear, to reactionary anger and rising aggression in opposition to these attacks upon our freedoms.

In the immediate aftermath of the breaking news out of Nice, there were just as many commenters suggesting that Western powers destroy all Muslim populations “and their children” as a means to end attacks on innocents, as there were mourners expressing their heartfelt sadness.

U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump seemed to echo those thoughts of hatred when he said “This is war,” during an interview on Fox News. He also suggested that NATO should be used “for a purpose,” — to fight the “cancer” that is the Islamic State.

More local comments here in Canada wrongly suggested that our country would soon be going the way of France, because the federal government is letting in too many refugees and immigrants — even though the driver in the attack in Nice was a French national.

Trump is quite right — this is a war. A war on our principles, freedoms and Western values of democracy. How can the West fight such an enemy without becoming as dark and disturbing as those we seek to stop? How can we respond to such terrorism and hatred? Being weak and passive will not stop bombings and terror attacks, but meeting slaughter with slaughter does not make us a better or more just society.

Is it actually possible to love our enemies in the face of so much hate? To date, bombing the Middle East back to the stone age has done little to make Western countries safer. All it has done is create more jihadists bent on suicide missions in crowded night clubs and other public settings.

Besides, the whole point of terrorism on the West is to force us to give up our freedoms, spend money on anti-terror policies, and bleed our budgets dry with military engagement.

Without doubt, Europe, Canada and the United States must take action to curb terrorism. But let’s do it with better intentions than mere vengeance.