President Obama did not attend the massive, high-profile protest in Paris on Sunday following the attacks on magazine publisher Charlie Hebdo. Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel), Mahmoud Abbas (Palestine) Angela Merkel (Germany), Francois Hollande (France), David Cameron (Britain), Matteo Renzi (Italy) and 38 other high-ranking government leaders and officials did.
This is okay. For a number of reasons, it was a good choice. (What is regrettable, however, is the backpedaling on the decision now taking place in the White House.)
Why is U.S. absence okay? Why is it good? All around government leaders were joining together in a common spirit of remembrance and with each step taken in tandem, they galvanized an attitude of 'none shall tear asunder the liberty we are charged with protecting'. The picture of the unbroken line these men and women created could have more diplomatic impact than the last two decades of U.S. foreign policy combined. At the very least, it is an image that will be burned into the minds of attacker and victim alike.
And that's just it. This is Europe's time to take stock. To consider the systems of order (or disorder) that exist within each member country's border and consider the short-and-long term implications of protecting the personal freedoms of its citizens. Personal freedoms that can serve to enlighten and elevate or be hidden behind and maligned. This is Europe's, and Africa's, and apparently Israel's and Palestine's turn to stand together and to communicate apart from the mighty shadow of US involvement. This is another part of the world's opportunity to decide how it feels about the state of things when those things land on its very doorstep.
The U.S. can and should empathize. Americans, especially those living in New York City, know what it is to be terrorized. To be targeted on home soil. To be singled out en masse (oxymoronically) while going about an average day. It's at once incredibly personal and chillingly abstract. It sets into motion a powerful process of dealing, emoting, rationalizing, responding, feeling and renewing that no one can truly understand until they have lived it.
Obama's attendance in Paris on Sunday would not only have created a security nightmare--and potentially turned a peaceful march into a target for even greater violence--it would have been stealing from those directly connected to France a powerful thunder on an otherwise silent day.
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