ROME — Public places all over the world are targets this century for mayhem and bloodshed. In the United States attackers armed with handguns and automatic weapons have put schools, churches, malls, music festivals, offices, and theaters in their gunsights. The country endures a mass killing every week. Hundreds have died.
In Europe the risk of domestic mass killings is not nearly as keen as the threat of terrorism, much of it linked to Islamic extremism. The century has been especially unkind to residents of the continent’s financial, cultural, and political capitals. In March 2004, terrorists attacked Madrid’s commuter rail network, detonating 10 bombs that killed 193 people and injured more than 2,000. In July 2005 terrorist bombings in London killed 52 people.
Many of the worst attacks occurred in a bloody spate of killings in Paris in 2015, among them a coordinated attack in November on six locations that killed 130 people, most of them in a nightclub. In July 2016, a truck in Nice ran over and killed 86 people. Last year 22 people died when attackers bombed a concert in Manchester, England.
One consequence of the carnage is the visible security presence here in Rome at Christmas time. Perhaps because Italian police gained such bloody experience battling Mafia families with superior intelligence capacity and investigative skill, security forces here have been exceptionally adept at intercepting and halting terrorist plots. All of Italy has largely avoided the bloodletting that has afflicted so many other nations in Europe.
Still, the armored vehicles and armed soldiers patrolling the squares and piazzas and crowded public spaces in this dense city are unmistakable emblems of the ever present threat. It’s the cost of cultural division, the dismal expense of this era of unrelenting mortal danger.
—- Keith Schneider
