The Oct. 22 attack on the Cenotaph and Parliament was as personal as a punch in the nose, and a direct attack on Canadian democracy. The challenge now is not to let Canadian democracy cooperate in its own demise.
On Sept. 11, 2001, a handful of fanatics paralyzed the greatest country in history. We have been living with the consequences ever since: the advanced nations have turned themselves into surveillance states, and innocent people have been handed over to torture (in the case of Maher Arar, outsourced to Syria, where our current troubles originate). Our old-fashioned anti-Semitism has transitioned into an equally shameful hatred of Muslims.
One journalist tweeted that this was our “loss of innocence,” as if the FLQ, Air India 182, and many other incidents didn’t count. We’ve dealt with terror, state-inspired or otherwise, since the War of 1812….
Imagine a grizzly bear reacting to a mosquito bite by attacking its own flesh, ripping into its ribs or chewing off its own leg. That is the position we now face: shrug off an objectively trivial attack, or cripple ourselves over it and make ourselves vulnerable to far worse attacks.