I didn't intend the only alternative is to cowering is to satirize them, but to stop satirizing them for fear of death is in fact cowering. I also have trouble criticizing a public reaction to people being murdered. It's not simplistic thinking, it's emotional, and I don't believe one has anything to do with the other. This isn't about thinking sensibly, not about governments or politics, it's a matter of the general public standing up and saying enough is enough. When that little town in Missouri was burning to the ground, I thought the rioters were in the wrong in their reaction, acting like stupid animals attacking people who had nothing to do with it, but I still feel wrong to criticize it like that. I know the circumstances of the two situations are different, but if the mosques of Paris were ablaze over this, I would see it as very similar.
At the point where it's become a standoff between terrorists with guns saying they want to die to avenge their prophet, and the editor of a satirical newspaper whose office has already been firebombed saying he would rather die on his feet than live on his knees, I don't think there's any coming back.
But take what happened with Kim Jong Un and
The Interview. "Take this satirized movie out of theaters or we will bomb them." They would have had to answer force with force. Instead they stepped aside, long enough to rally defenses and get Obama on their side, and then they did a digital release which couldn't be easily answered with terrorist force. Cowardly, or strategically smart? It wasn't their own lives on the line, it was the innocent people in the theaters.
I haven't been able to find an account of exactly how or when the police were guarding the Charlie Hebdo building (was it just after the firebombing two years before or were there armed security at the building every day?) but it wasn't enough. You could argue that anyone who continued to work there was accepting the risk. I think it's worth looking at the situation and yes, potentially criticizing any actions that added fuel to the fire.
Simplistic thinking and emotional thinking may not be the same, but they do have a lot in common.
