Keep Things In Proportion

Yesterday a Canadian convert to Islam attacked the National War Memorial and the Parliament Building in Ottawa up here in snowy (well okay, not yet) Canada.  He initially killed a soldier guarding the memorial.  Due to the quick thinking and high level of training of a parliament security guard he was shot before any more innocent people could die.
Maybe I'm just used to terrorism stories from Israel.  Maybe it was the near simultaneous terrorist attack in Yerushalayim in which an infant was cruelly killed and dozens wounded but when I started reading opinion pieces in the newspaper today about the event I had to roll my eyes.
I know journalists make their money on sensationalism but there was still something irritating about reading things like "Canada fought back!", "We won't be cowed by terror!" and "Terrorism strikes home!"
I mean really, one guy who by all accounts was an unstable nut job without any formal terrorist group alliances (perhaps he thought he was auditioning for ISIS?), only one death (fortunately) and the press made it sound like Al Qaeda itself had flown over and tried to blow up the entire Ottawa downtown.
Yes, Canada is a boring country that often has to invent problems so the local news operations will have something to report.  Yes, Canada is far away from the real crisis zones in the world which is probably why when anything, however limited, happens here we get all excited.
But let's keep this clear: Canada was no in real danger at any time here.  The security team around Parliament along with the police sprung into immediate action.  The government members were immediately in hiding or taken to safety.  There were no bombings.  This was the act of a single lunatic acting out his religious fantasies of killing the infidel, nothing more.
We up here need to be grateful that this is all that happened, that Canada is working on the side of good in this conflict and to recognize that in the bigger picture there is indeed a struggle between Western civilization and Islamofascism that is at play here.  Freaking out over minor incidents and acting as if something truly calamitous has occurred obscures that.