Never Mind the Bollards...

Many of the same people who are so offended by the walls and checkpoints that Israel (and Egypt) have erected between themselves and the Islamists living next door are perfectly happy to discuss the recent ‘vehicle attacks’ in Magdeburg and New Orleans almost solely in terms of inadequate barriers — in effect the problem becomes one of policing and planning: stopping those darned vehicles from getting away with murder.

Israelis show little reticence when it comes to talking about the cultural and ideological issues that force them to live like zombie apocalypse survivors within a fortified compound, but many outside observers roll their eyes at this whilst appearing most deeply engaged with the sorrowful condition of the poor zombies. So what if they keep breaking into the compound and munching people? Israelis should just suck it up, for this zombie apocalypse was somehow all their fault.

Meanwhile, back in their own societies, these same armchair Middle Easterners conspicuously fail to apply the very same conclusions — that simply containing the Islamist problem with ever more formidable fortifications might not be the best long term solution (...rather like arming American High School P.E. teachers).

In other words, that they really ought — as they have long lectured Israel — to address the underlying issues a little more resolutely.

These underlying issues are deeply complex and have an air of intractability about them, but refusing to even talk about them for fear of causing a stonking row and setting off the wingnuts is surely the worst of all possible starts.

Whether the problem is mass murder or mass rape, every time we try to apply labels to it, one can almost hear the hiss of an airlock door as it seals. It’s not Islam, because that’s the religion of peace, it’s not Terrorism, because it has elements of noble resistance, it’s not Misogyny, it’s modesty, and so on.

And in as much that it’s Anti-Western it seemingly taps into a low lying squeamishness that has wider prevalence in the culture, specifically within academia.

Right now the US seems willing to simply absorb the Bourbon Street incident as just another mass killing of the ‘running amok’ variety, where the lasting political issue is ultimately the weapon used, in this case a truck rather than an assault rifle, smothering the need to address the mentality itself and both its foundation and likely trajectory. 

In this case, however, it really is people killing people, not pickups. And not because the bollards aren't big enough.