Last night, a man walked into the foyer of the Manchester Arena as the crowds were leaving an Ariana Grande concert. Surrounded by the happy faces of children, he detonated a bomb, killing and injuring as many as possible. Others have also died or been maimed, and all deserve the very deepest sympathy and respect — but girls and young women were undoubtedly the main target. It was an Ariana Grande concert. And even if the killer didn’t know who the members of an Ariana Grande concert audience were likely to be, he will have seen them all around him before he chose to end their lives.
Thoughts must be with the victims and with those for whom they were and are the whole world — and in those family homes where (as a friend wrote this morning) ‘a make-up- and clothes-strewn room is silent.’ And thoughts must also turn to the prevention of further atrocities. The act was possible because of particular security assumptions that now should perhaps be revisited. But it was also possible because of certain fantasies that must no longer be indulged. The killer’s intention should have been inconceivable; it was not.
This is what terrorism is. Never accept a point of view from which it might be justified.