OPINION:
We have been on notice for some time that there is a heightened threat environment. That prediction, sadly, was confirmed on New Year’s morning (“An aspiring nurse, football star, single mother and father of 2 killed in New Orleans attack,” web, Jan. 1).
With the savage mass murder perpetrated in New Orleans this week, a community has been shattered and countless lives have been destroyed. The country is now faced with a great challenge.
Although the Islamic State group has been largely defeated, this massacre demonstrates that the terror group’s ideology of hatred and destruction lives on, and that a great deal of harm can be caused by one person who is “hell-bent on inflicting carnage,” as the New Orleans police commissioner said about this most recent attack.
We cannot ban vehicles from the roads, so we must find new ways to beef up security to prevent another attack like this one. It will not be easy.
The atrocity is compounded by the media giving the killer the notoriety that he surely sought. His photograph is prominently displayed on newscasts and in the pages of newspapers. We have learned a lot about his life and will soon know everything about what grievance drove him to commit such an unspeakable act.
It is a sad day for America.
OREN SPIEGLER
Peters Township, Pennsylvania
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