Barcelona attack reinforces need for global terror fight

London. Paris. Nice. Berlin. Stockholm. Jerusalem. Columbus. Charlottesville.

That roll call of proud, diverse cities owns a common yet chilling claim to fame. Over the past 13 months, each has fallen victim to mass public butchery low in technology but high in depravity: terror by motor vehicle. Collectively, dozens of innocent pedestrians in the path of intentionally out-of-control cars and trucks were killed and scores of others were injured.

Last Thursday, Barcelona, Spain, became the newest addition to that collection of municipalities where murder by tractor trailer, rental truck or compact car has viciously played out with disturbing frequency.

Even though this mode of hate-fueled automotive terrorism has lost some its ability to surprise, its repeated recurrence nonetheless must never be tolerated as an unfortunate fact of 21st century life.

Indeed we condemn the attack and urge that authorities in Spain and leaders of the international community spare no energies toward apprehending the depraved driver and all others connected to the mass assault. More generally, we renew our call for concerted international cooperation and intelligence-sharing to reverse the rise in extremism in all of its ugly forms, both foreign and domestic.

It was late last Thursday afternoon when a white Fiat van veered onto the pavement of Barcelona’s swank La Rambla shopping district, crashing rows of pedestrians for 1,800 feet. After zigzagging at high speeds down the boulevard, the driver fled and remained at large as of Sunday night.

In what some believe was a coordinated attack, one day later, another vehicle plowed into a crowd of pedestrians in Cambrils, Spain, but Spanish police shot and killed five suspects in that melee.

Collectively, aside from some of the attackers, 15 people were killed, including one American, and more than 100 people from 34 nations were injured in Spain.

Once again, the radical Islamic State group claimed in an Internet statement that its “soldiers” carried out the attack. IS also declared that the attack took place in retribution for the ongoing U.S.-led coalition’s military operations against it in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the world.

In response, the international community doubled down on its commitment to quash violent extremism. Antonio, Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, said the world body stands in solidarity with the government and people of Spain.

In addition, all 15 members of the U.N.’s Security Council spoke with one collective voice in vowing to intensify global efforts to combat terrorism by sharing resources and intelligence.

RESTRAINT FROM TRUMP

For his part, U.S. President Donald J. Trump showed uncharacteristic restraint and responsibility in his initial reaction to Thursday’s massacre.

In a tweet not long after the attack unfolded, the president wrote, “The United States condemns the terror attack in Barcelona, Spain, and will do whatever is necessary to help. Be tough & strong, we love you!”

Contrast that with then-candidate Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip response to the vehicular attack last summer in Nice, in which 84 French Independence Day revelers died. He blasted former President Barack Obama’s measured response and said had he been commander in chief, he would have declared full-scale war on ISIS.

Trump’s response to Barcelona also contrasts with his weak and misguided reaction last week to the domestic terror attack in Charlottesville, Va. In that case, he gave comfort to the forces of extremism by saying some in the group of neo-Nazis, Klansmen and other assorted-white supremacist protesters were “nice people.”

We hope that Trump and other leaders come to recognize that terror – regardless of its form, cause or color – is repugnant and must be universally condemned and repelled.

We hope he and others also recognize that this most recent European attack provides no renewed license to malign an entire culture of Muslims. Worse, it must not feed into the fear-mongering used by Trump and other nationalist leaders in Europe to unjustly limit or ban Muslim immigration.

Doing so only alienates a culture, whose support intelligence officials sorely need to wage a full-throttle campaign to wipe out IS-inspired terrorism. In Barcelona, as in London, Paris, Nice and other cities victimized by automotive slaughter, prejudice must never overpower aggressive global cooperation to slam the brakes on terror.