Stop trying to turn international attacks into personal ones

A gruesome attack happened in London on Wednesday, leaving five dead and dozens more injured. It is a horrible, tragic event that occurred, despite increased security measures throughout Europe in the recent years. There’s a lot to take in. In the past two or three years, Europe has been struck by frequent terror attacks. The strategy behind this one — using a vehicle and then a knife to attack law enforcement officers — is described by the British security service as a “marauding attack,” something they have been preparing for. The British officers were able to stop the attacker, and Scotland Yard is now working on protecting the city as well as investigating the attack as a whole.

Now there’s a lot — which is frankly an understatement — one could go into when analyzing terror attacks in Europe, taking into account socio-political relations, historical connotations, current politics and security, media focus on Western-centric events, the preparedness of the police force ... the list goes on. It was hard to narrow down just one talking point.

But while trying to find something worth delving into and exploring, we found a host of Americans making this international issue about themselves.

We’re not saying all Americans do this, but it’s worth noting that the ones who do are loud, proud and project themselves as the voice of our country.

For some reason, there’s a group of people out there who are trying to make this terror attack in the U.K. about American gun control policies. There are groups saying this terror attack in London is anti-American. There are groups saying if this happened in good old ‘Murica, the police would’ve shot the guy down before he had a chance to hurt anybody. There are groups using this as an excuse to project hate toward an entire religion, even though currently, there is no evidence as to whether this attack was motivated by religious or cultural beliefs.

There’s a global stigma that Americans are self-centered and uninformed. We’d like to think that’s not the case, that most of us are open-minded, aware of the world around us and understand the world is not centered around the U.S. But then events like this happen, events that occur in other countries involving complex foreign policies and situations, and instead of offering solidarity and compassion, some Americans like to stick their fist in the air and claim that we could do it better, claim that this problem involves us, claim that we know how to fix it.

And for whatever reason, the Facebook search algorithm decides to highlight and amplify these people’s voices. It’s no wonder the rest of the world thinks we’re narcissistic idiots.

We don’t know how to fix problems in foreign countries. We should stop pretending we do. We should stop making tragic international events about whatever hot-button issue is affecting America. Because the fact of the matter is that right now, it’s not about us. It’s about London. It’s about the U.K. It’s about Europe. It might affect us, sure — in terms of business, travel and politics. We can offer sympathy, compassion, support and aid. But it’s important to realize that this attack — and all the other attacks in Europe — are not about America, and therefore, we should not make those issues about us.