Roll the dice, spin the wheel, and pick a card. The odds in your favour are low, the reward isn’t very big, but at least the only thing you have to put on the table is children’s lives. Even then, most of them aren’t even your own.
At least, that was pretty much the situation after threats were made to the West Edmonton Mall (among other specifically named targets) in an online video released by al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda-linked terror group based in Somali. RCMP and city police said there was “no imminent threat” in response to the video, but still 35 teams pulled out of the annual national Alberta cheerleading competition. Faster than you could say, “beware the terrorists,” people were basically calling those teachers, parents, and cheerleading staff cowards. “What is really scary is [sic] these parents subscribing to the fear of terrorists. They are doing exactly what the terrorists want,” said one commenter.
All right, for the sake of argument, I’m going to go along with what these people are saying. I get that we, as a nation, want to be able to live our lives freely without subscribing to baseless fear mongering. Nobody wants to be dictated to by anonymous terrorist threats that are unlikely to ever come to fruition. Doing so would only make the terrorists happy, like giving the bully our lunch money. No, thank you. Staying home just because you hear about a vague threat to a popular mall could even be considered an overreaction. Some even say that the Harper government is doing just what the Bush administration did, which is to use fear to control the people and increase their own political support. In fact, a lot of people have been blaming the government and saying things like: “Pretty sad state the federal Conservative government has put Canada in.” So there, have we covered all the reasoning as to why keeping children away from the West Ed Mall was a bad idea?
Now, time for some common sense: YOU’RE GAMBLING WITH CHILDREN’S LIVES. I can’t make it much clearer than that, if you didn’t already comprehend that from the opening paragraph. The Harper government didn’t make that terrorist video, therefore they his administration didn’t concoct this as some dark political plot to put the people in fear-based chains. Even the RCMP and the city police said there wasn’t an imminent threat. The government didn’t flood the airwaves with headlines like “TERROR AT WEST ED MALL” or “ISIS IS COMING FOR YOUR CHEERLEADERS.” The only propaganda happening here were the wannabe-political pundits commenting on social media.
The reality is that terrorist threats are a rising concern in Canada. Being a neutral party and peacekeeping nation can only protect us for so long. Just last October, Canada’s domestic terrorism level was quietly raised from unlikely to “could occur” for the first time in four years (according to a Global News report). Nobody wants to create unnecessary fear, but that doesn’t mean we should bury our heads in the sand to hide from the reality of the situation. United Nations and humanitarian personnel have even been attacked in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years. The truth is, while the chances are low, there’s still the possibility that Canada might be their next target, even if just as a means of getting at the United States.
That said, specifically targeted threats to Canada are few and far between. It’s not like even the most cautious person has many reasons to duck for cover and stay at home. So when a situation like this recent threat to West Ed Mall happens, are we really “subscribing to the fear of terrorists”? Perhaps, but it costs us almost nothing and potentially saves us everything. If keeping my child at home for one event means I’m removing that small chance that he or she will be the victim of a bomb, then you can be damned sure I’m going to do it. I don’t want the regret of knowing that I sent my child out to a threatened location just because that threat was “unlikely.” My dad always said, “Prevention is better than a cure.”
Now, this weekend shows that there were cheerleaders determined to attend the competition, and that’s fine. They made that choice for themselves and obviously they proved the threat was baseless. However, just because nothing happened doesn’t mean any parent that chose Option B should feel ashamed for wanting to protect their child. Nothing happened doesn’t mean nothing could happen.
