The Tragic and Unsurprising News from Nice
What happened in Nice was shocking, but it wasn’t a surprise, not anymore. Mass murder of ordinary people enjoying a holiday—parents and children, couples, teen-agers, assorted revellers—is almost commonplace. It happened to European tourists on a beach in Sousse, Tunisia, last summer, and to Pakistani Christians at an amusement park in Lahore in March, and to Iraqi Shia families celebrating the end of Ramadan in Baghdad two weeks ago. Nor is the diabolical calculation of maximum damage surprising. The killers in Paris last November, and in San Bernardino in December, and in Orlando last month chose crowded spaces from which escape was difficult—so did the truck driver in Nice.