The United States is considered by many to be a leader in the effort to eliminate terrorist organizations and acts. A unique factor in the U.S.’s terrorism efforts is that it doesn’t just focus on immediate threats to its homeland — it’s consistently assisting other countries around the world that might be in immediate danger.

This precedent was set back in 1947 with the Truman Doctrine, which proclaimed “the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” And the U.S. still upholds the basic tenets of this document.

Since the attack on the French publication Charlie Hebdo, the French government has arrested about 50 people for crimes of “hate speech,” according to the Chicago Tribune. This response does little but heighten the responsibility of other countries, such as the United States, to combat terrorist efforts.

In the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack, France should be doing more to combat the terrorists rather than unnecessarily policing its citizens.

The way the French government acted is most likely quite pleasing to the extremists, because from the way it looks in the media, they have gotten what they wanted: a crackdown on offensive speech targeted at Islam and Muslims. Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune has also questioned the practices of the French government, saying “But as the French see it, the right to free speech is protected, not the right to hate speech.”

This tactic of appeasement has never worked in the past. It just increases the confidence of the perpetrators that if they threaten with violence, their demands will be met. The way in which the French government has responded has been favorable for the attackers, and detrimental to the rights of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Whether or not it is the responsibility of the United States to be the ones to respond to this attack is inconsequential. While not every individual is in agreement about the morality of U.S. involvement in other countries’ affairs, it has become commonplace. In his State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama made this powerful statement: “We stand united with people around the world who’ve been targeted by terrorists — from a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris …We will continue to hunt down terrorists and dismantle their networks.”

The United States is one of the main players in the fight against terrorism and Islamic extremists because it has been so detrimentally hurt by their efforts in the past. It is also one of the only nations that possesses the strength of diplomacy and military power to do so.

The situation in Paris has indirectly created a resurgence of anti-terrorist efforts worldwide. The European Union created a new initiative to “step up intelligence-sharing both internally and with countries affected by terrorism … and increase its work to prevent funding for terrorist networks,” according to BBC News.

This initiative from the EU is a step toward combatting terrorism, but France needs to do more on its own. This does not necessarily mean France needs to take military action, but it must work to protect its citizens from future attacks rather than bending to the will of the extremists.

Victoria Razzi is a freshman magazine journalism major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at vcrazzi@syr.edu and followed on twitter at @vrazzi.

Published on January 26, 2015 at 12:11 am