Even from our side of the world, as we absorbed first reports from Manchester, our horror took on an almost physical dimension. Again, a terrorist attack; this time an explosion. Innocents killed and maimed as chaos descended. We have come to know the feeling; a weight in the pit of our being as we reach out to others to share concern, disbelief and empathy. All too familiar now, we know the routine.
Terror presents a new level, an evil new angle; families at a market, young people at a nightclub or artists at work. This time, inconceivably, the intended victims are teenagers, mainly girls, and their parents, out on a night of music and dance. A suicide bomber has wreaked this havoc with the aid of nails or other improvised shrapnel cruelly deployed to rip flesh, tear limbs and cut arteries. We are more trepidatious in our own world, disgusted that even this understandable response surrenders to the aim of the perpetrators. Our shock is there, at the benign blamelessness of the chosen targets, even though we know Islamist terrorists often have slaughtered families or schoolgirls in the past to emphasise their hateful zeal. We remind ourselves not to give in — hoping the Brits show their instinct to “keep calm and carry on” — yet we worry that calm is not warranted, that we should not accept such trauma or abide this price and, surely, must commit to defeat this terrible foe.
Read the full editorial at The Australian (subscription only).