Our Best Defense Against Terrorists

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/16/opinion/our-best-defense-against-terrorists.html

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How we react to terrorism has become a measure of who we are, as individuals and as a society. It is not clear yet whether the heinous massacre in Nice, France, was the work of a “lone wolf” or a terrorist network, but in a way it doesn’t matter. Each new attack, each new convulsion of fear, horror, grief and anger is a progressively greater test of enlightened civilization’s commitment to its core values.

Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the 31-year-old Tunisian who drove a truck through a festive nighttime crowd celebrating Bastille Day on Nice’s seaside promenade, may well have been avenging some personal grievance with the weapon closest at hand. Or it may emerge that ISIS or some other organized terrorists pushed him to this atrocity, targeting France — the country with the largest Muslim population in Europe and the strongest embrace of secularism — for the third time in 19 months.

But whoever struck the blow, whatever its malevolent purpose or toll, the response cannot be to abandon the respect for human rights, equality, reason and tolerance that is the aspiration of all democratic cultures. Though it has become almost a cliché to argue that the goal of terrorists is to bring their victims down to their moral level, it is also a truth, and it must be reaffirmed after every attack.

That is what the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, did in the wake of the assault. Warning France that it had to learn to live with terrorism, he declared that the only dignified response was for the French to remain faithful to the spirit of July 14, “which means a France brought together and united around its values.”

That is not to say that political leaders should take no action. Mr. Valls and President François Hollande cannot be faulted for assuming in the immediate aftermath of so vicious an attack on so exalted a day that it had been an act of terrorism, nor for extending the state of emergency — a measure giving the police extraordinary powers to search and detain suspected terrorists — for three more months. Only hours before the slaughter, Mr. Hollande had made clear that a state of emergency could not become the normal state of affairs: “That would be saying that we are no longer a republic with law that is applicable in all circumstances,” he declared.

Not surprisingly, the National Front, the right-wing party that thrives on aversion to Muslim immigrants, reacted disdainfully to these statements. “Spare us the indignation of the vultures of the main parties who let the wolves in to carry out this carnage,” declared Eric Domard, a senior adviser to the National Front leader Marine Le Pen.

Far more disgraceful and frightening was the reaction of Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House and a possible cabinet secretary should Donald Trump become president. He proposed that every person “who is of a Muslim background” be tested for adherence to Shariah law, and those who supported it be deported. He also suggested that mosques in America be monitored.

Apart from demonstrating Mr. Gingrich’s woeful ignorance of Shariah, his outrageous proposals would violate several Supreme Court rulings, constitutional amendments and laws barring discrimination on the basis of religion or restrictions of freedom of expression and belief. And in so doing, his ideas illustrated the greatest threat posed by terrorism: a descent into the lawless, hateful demagogy of those who despise the West and its values.

As Mr. Valls and many others have warned, there will be more terrorist attacks. More innocent lives will be lost. There is no way that the police can track every vengeance-seeking potential killer or neutralize every weapon as commonplace as a truck. What threatened nations and their leaders can do is to firmly instill the idea that the only sure defense is to stay true to what democratic societies really stand for.