Sorry if this may sound callous - but we've been here before. Yesterday I emailed my niece in Melbourne:
"Now another form of "war" has come to haunt us - terrorism - and it has been a rude shock. We may just have to get used to it, I fear. Do not "make a song and dance" about it and go round weeping and wailing - if we do that, the terrorist has won ! Honour the dead and march on.
Your: "there will be copycat follow up almost certainly". How true ! We watched in unbelief as a huge rally was assembled at St.Anne's Square yesterday: thousands packed together - a perfect target for the organisation (for that is clearly what it is) to take a second bite at the cherry "while the iron was hot". Do we never learn ?
Needless to say the BBC is squeezing the pips out of all this (all the announcers and announcerettes in sombre black). Troops called in (have we any left, after years of cuts to help fund the Welfare State ?) "
"C'ést la Guerre" - and that's all there is to it, I'm afraid.