Is nothing sacred? Not for the islamic fascists of ISIS, it seems, who today murdered an elderly Catholic priest in cold blood.
This is not a good time to be French, or to be living in France for that matter. As someone who has friends who live in the country, I wince every time there is a new atrocity, which appears to be on a near daily basis. France is under attack.
Do not believe that being across the English Channel makes us safe: it doesn’t. As we discovered on 7/7 back in 2005, the terrorists only have to get lucky once. We have to be lucky every single time.
But the state of France is truly worrying. The attacks are all soft targets which are easy to mount and to carry out. And by their very nature, the attacks heighten our fears about terrorism. They’re bound to.
It does not need to be in a church, a concert hall, an aircraft – it can be anywhere. It could be at any large gathering, as in Nice, it can be somewhere small, like a market.
The French authorities are already coming in for criticism as well they might. President Hollande comes over as a weak and bumbling leader, wholly unconvincing and clueless about what to do next, other than to drop more bombs on Syria. I am not against dropping bombs on islamic fascists but is that the best he can come up with? And whilst the security forces are being hammered for letting these terrorists through the net, there are some 12,000 people on their terrorist watch lists, one of whom appears to have been involved today.
Of course, our French neighbours should carry on with their lives as normal. To do otherwise simply achieves what the terrorists want: the abandonment of their lifestyles. But I feel different too now.
Walking through a crowded Amsterdam earlier this month, I am not going to pretend that I didn’t at least think about what could, in essential circumstances happen.
No one is immune from this wave of terror which, I fear, could go on for years, if not forever. My thoughts today are with the French and everyone who lives in France. Freedom is under attack and so far we haven’t come up with a good way of defending it.
