While the media has been entertaining itself with stories about Neo Nazi losers and a made up controversy about Confederate monuments, a Terrorist Attack in Barcelona reminded the world where the real threat to civilization resides. ISIS has struck again, and 13 people are now dead and about a 100 wounded.
What happened in Barcelona?
During the early afternoon, someone in a rented Fiat van plowed into crowds of tourists and locals in the Las Ramblas district and ran over and hit everyone he could manage before coming to rest 500 yards from the start of his death drive.
The driver and possibly another man fled on foot. 13 were killed and 100 or so wounded.
The attack is thought to be connected to an explosion in a house 70 miles away. The place was thought to be a bomb factory. The plan seems to have been to fill the van with explosive butane canisters, meaning that the attack could have been much worse.
The man who rented the van was 18 years old Moussa Oukabi. His brother, Driss Oukabi turned himself into police, claiming that Moussa had stolen his documents.
Police shot it out with five terrorists in the nearby seaside resort of Cambrils, killing them. Law enforcement believes that a second terrorist attack was thwarted as a result.
The motor vehicle as a weapon of terrorism
ISIS has hit upon the use of motor vehicles as weapons of terrorism. Within the past year or so, vehicle attacks have been mounted in Berlin, Stockholm, Nice, London, and Ohio State University. Vehicles have also been used as murder weapons in Charlottesville and Paris but were unrelated to Middle East terrorism.
The problem with using cars and trucks as weapons is that they are hard to defend against. Barriers can be erected between sidewalks and streets. However, anyone can take a motor vehicle and suddenly start killing everyone in front of him or fill it with explosives and blow it and himself up along with everyone around him.
Media reaction
One of the salutary effects of the Barcelona terrorist attack was that it, at least temporarily, drove the hot takes on Charlottesville and Confederate monuments off the news. Next to the threat of death and mayhem posed by ISIS and other Middle East terrorists, the previous stories that had filled the airways were frivolities. Neo Nazis and Antifa are disgusting losers, but they do not pose a threat to civilization. Confederate monuments constitute the ultimate in a made up controversy, something the purpose of which is to allow people to get their names and faces in the news. Bronze edifices do not threaten anyone. ISIS terrorists do.
