Americans Reveal the Secret to Defeating Terrorism

At the Ottawa Citizen, "No surrender to fear":

If there’s anything positive to extract from the Boston Marathon bombings, it’s the response. Certainly there was shock. That is to be expected. What cannot always be expected is a refusal to succumb to that shock. But that is what we saw in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, and because of that response we can extract a not unreasonable confidence that terrorism need not prevail against civilized order.

We’ve seen similar responses to other attacks, of course. Everyone remembers the firefighters and police officers who rushed into the soon-to-collapse World Trade Center towers after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. The 2005 bombings on the London Underground saw ordinary citizens behave with courage and self-sacrifice amid the devastation.

Being scared is an understandable response when terrorists strike. The nature of the attacks shatters our normal assumptions about the security of our daily lives. But an overwhelmingly fear-ridden response is exactly what terrorists want. The fundamental purpose of terrorism is of course to create fear in the public mind. When people refuse to surrender to fear, the terrorists fail.

The terrorists who struck Boston failed. People were scared, yes, but most it seems acted with resolve and resilience.

RTWT.

VIDEO CREDIT: My Pet Jawa, "National Guard Heros Helped Save Lives."