Batuhan: Moral compass

WHEN the great American patriot Thomas Paine wrote his famous “these are the times that try men’s souls” quote, one can almost think that he was prophesying the events of last week.

Yes, the revolutionary times he lived in were trying beyond anything imaginable, but in our more “normal” contemporary standards, the last few days were a fateful throwback to those turbulent and chaotic days.

I was watching late night news on Friday, thinking that all the unbelievably crazy things that transpired were at last behind us, when breaking stories emerged of the tragedy in Barcelona. In what has now become a signature terror attack for ISIS, a utility van was driven by a “soldier of the Islamic State” (as claimed by an ISIS affiliate group) into the unbelievably busy Las Ramblas section of the touristic city of Barcelona -- which was packed with tourists from all over the world, at this time of the year. The predictable result, of course, was sheer and utter carnage – 13 dead and over fifty injured, at present count.

On the run from its power bases in the Middle East, ISIS has found an easy and accessible way to telegraph its “military” ambition to far-flung places it would not otherwise have access to. Unlike the world’s superpowers that have to send out billion-dollar aircraft carriers to project their power, all the terrorists have to do is to radicalize disgruntled youth already living in those target countries (often simply by social media), and let them do the rest of the work – renting or stealing vehicles, and then driving them on to crowded thoroughfares, killing and maiming as many pedestrians in the process.

The tactic reminds us of the suicidal “kamikaze” sorties that the Japanese employed against the Allied navy in World War II, when it became increasingly clear that losing the war for them was just a matter of time. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and ISIS has clearly come to the same realization.

But trying as any time can be, leaders usually emerge to calm people’s nerves. And as has so often happened in many of these incidents, the leader of the United States is usually the voice of calm and assurance, lending support to the victims, wherever they may be in the world.

Donald Trump did try to play the same role. His first “tweet” (his favored method of communicating these days) extended sympathy to the victims, and assured them of US support. The second was the spanner in the works. Instead of letting things settle and calm down, he opted instead to rehash an urban legend about a tactic that was supposedly employed by Gen. John J. Pershing during the “Moro Campaigns” in the Philippines, at the early part of the last century. It has been debunked by many knowledgeable historians, and to bring it up again in a time like this only breeds more division and hatred, rather than unity and togetherness. But this is Trump, it seems, at his best.

Because preceding the Barcelona atrocity, he himself had already been embroiled in the turmoil that begun in the early part of the week. Ostensibly protesting the removal of the statue of the Confederate commander Gen. Robert E. Lee, a group of right-wing and neo-Nazi sympathizers converged in the city of Charlottesville, Virginia – chanting Nazi slogans and acting all Hilteresque. When they were met by counter-protesters opposed to their presence there, violence ensued resulting in the killing of one woman – Heather Heyer.

With most of the US expecting Trump to act “presidential” in this most trying of times, he instead stoked more hatred by insisting that the fault lay “on many sides,” instead of condemning the neo-Nazis outright. Correcting himself 48 hours later, he then undid whatever damage control he may have managed with that, by insisting that his initial comment was correct all along. That really, the blame rested on all sides.

The US is expected to be the moral leader of the free world. But with the country’s leader clearly losing his moral compass, what guidance can the rest of the world now expect?

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