On Twitter, one person called the statement “crazy,” while another said it was “a sad indictment on our times.” Heat Street, a conservative news-and-commentary website, chided it for its “defeatist tone.” The timing of Valls’ statement may have struck some as insensitive, but to others, there was a sense that it reflected reality. “I agree with it,” said Colin Clarke, a political scientist at Rand Corporation, a global policy research group based in Santa Monica, California. “We all have to learn to live with terrorism. It’s a different paradigm in the [post-]9/11 world.”
People gather at a makeshift memorial to honor the victims of an attack, near the area where a truck mowed through revelers in Nice, France
Daniel Benjamin, a former coordinator for counterterrorism at the U.S. State Department, called the statement wise. “I think it’s good that leaders are working to cultivate resilience and not creating illusions that there are a series of buttons that can be pushed and terrorism will go away,” said Benjamin, who is now the director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. “Obviously, we have to take it seriously and not get complacent in the face of a threat, but I think it’s a wise message.” French officials said Friday that 84 people were killed and 52 were critically wounded when a man drove a large truck through a Bastille Day celebration in Nice late Thursday. French police identified the attacker as Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, a French-Tunisian who lived in Nice.
Similar sentiments in U.S.
President Barack Obama struck a corresponding note, saying Americans and allies could not give in to fear, turn on each other or sacrifice their way of life. “We will not be deterred,” he said. “We will not relent. We are going to keep working together to prevent attacks and defend our homeland.”
Blaise Misztal, director of national security at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, noted that Obama’s and former President George W. Bush’s calls for resilience in the face of terrorism have not been all that different from the French prime minister’s. “President Bush advocated just such an approach of continuing to go about our daily lives after 9/11,” Misztal said via email. “President Obama has tried to make a similar point in saying that more people die from bathtub accidents than terrorism, and Israel has long ago come to terms with the fact of terrorism.”
'Inured to the horror'?