We should not seek revenge and call it justice but we need some action to eliminate the senseless violence that is being perpetrated around the globe. Martin Luther King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
We must do everything in our power to keep all progress toward the advancement of justice. This doesn’t mean there should no consequences for evil actions.
Revenge and justice are often confused. It is untrue that only justice is fair and that all revenge is unfair. The tragedy of the 22 innocents murdered by an evil suicide bomber at Manchester Arena during a concert makes understanding the distinction vitally important.
Revenge is an act of passion while vengeance may be an act of justice. It is time for some proportionate retaliation to be delivered to the perpetrators of terror in a dispassionate and sensible fashion.
Professor Thane Rosenbaum says that it’s time for Americans to be honest about revenge. He claims, “The distinction between justice and vengeance is false” and “a call for justice is always a cry for revenge.” He goes on to dismiss the idea of turning the other cheek as cowardly and antithetical to basic human nature. He overstates the case but he is correct that we cannot sit still to analyze the distinction between justice and revenge.
It is time for President Trump to come up with a plan that will secure America and protect our allies. The Bush and Obama administrations developed working protocols and collaborated with allies to assure effective intelligence gathering and the strategic disruption of terror networks using counterintelligence and targeted strikes.
President Trump will have to collaborate and lead the civilized nations of the world so that together we can assure safety and security. We cannot have peace in Peoria if there is none in Pakistan or Pyongyang. We cannot allow evil to be unmolested and unchecked or it will fester like an untreated wound.
We have partner governments, especially Great Britain, that have stable governments and the resources and the will to monitor, arrest, investigate and jail suspected terrorists while eliminating known criminals when the opportunity and circumstances warrant it.
The less stable areas of the world like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen must not be permitted to host terrorist leaders, preachers of violence and bomb-makers while allowing disillusioned young people to congregate and be brainwashed to kill by twisted ideological monsters.
Injustice there is the fertile ground for violence everywhere. The United States and its allies must force the malevolent creatures who foment these terrorist acts out into the daylight. We need to expose them in their hypocritical beliefs and negate their ability to do harm by dislodging, disrupting and defunding them.
We cannot allow civil wars to rage around the world because it is not our problem, because when the rule of law breaks down, jihadists and other terrorists can claim relevance and take advantage of the situation to establish and spread their hateful ideas.
We need to provide real training and inculcate real motivation in the peoples of these unfortunate lands. Throwing money and supplies merely promotes corruption. It took fewer than 2,000 ISIS fighters to drive out 30,000 well-armed and well-supplied Iraqi troops from Mosul. ISIS happily took our equipment, weapons and ammunition to supply more jihadist forces.
The United States and its allies must provide a framework for these societies to establish basic services and to eliminate corruption while providing aid. It will be less expensive in the long run and it is the only way to bring these bases for terrorism into the community of civilized nations.
Civilized societies must hold their citizens accountable and not allow people in their own societies or other societies to go unpunished when they have committed wrongs. Justice requires that victims feel avenged but revenge is never appropriate because it is always disproportionate to the wrong committed.
In Manchester, the victims ranged in age from eight to 51 and most were young girls with some older persons. We the people of the United States must work with Great Britain and our allies around the globe to prevent this from being repeated.
The names of the victims bear repeating because names are something we can relate to and understand even if we did not personally know the individuals. These individuals could have been our daughters, sons, granddaughters, aunts and uncles, and they were murdered without any justification.
We remember Saffie, Alison, Angelika, Chloe, Courtney, Elaine, Georgina, Jane, Megan, Lisa, Michelle, Nell, Olivia, Wendy, Eilidh, John, Kelly, Liam, Marcin, Martyn, Philip and Sorrell. The world mourns but the world must prevent this from happening again. We owe it to the children of the world and we owe it to the memory of these innocent victims.
May her memory be a blessing 
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