Understanding the UK after the London Attack

Today, I read an article about the terror attack in London and one of the comments, written by a reader from Great Britain, left me with the need to apologize to him and to the rest of the world. What a weird feeling that is. How do you reach out to someone you don’t know? So much is going on that we can’t control, so much is being said and written that we wish nobody would hear or read.

The comment didn’t leave me alone and I decided to post it on my blog, mostly because I would like to know (need to know) that I am not the only one in the U.S. who feels that way.

See for yourself how it makes you feel. Here is the comment. It was posted in the New York Times:

U.S. Citizens should understand just how angry people are in the UK at the response from the U.S. president and from U.S. news outlets at terrorists murders last night and over the past months.

We are incensed when the President of the U.S. uses the death, injury and trauma of British citizens to promote his own agenda.

We are insulted and angry when people such as the US president use tragic events in the UK to advance their argument in support of gun laws that we think are insane.

British people are outraged by Donald Trump’s attempts on Twitter to use an attack on us to support his own attack on freedom and tolerance.

We are outraged and angered by the leaks of confidential information that were important to police investigations, while those investigations were still in early stages. We are angered by the appropriation of our suffering and tragedies for your entertainment or gain.

We are also insulting by the newspapers claims that we are ‘reeling’ that we are ‘under siege’. I will—we all will—go back to work on Monday in London upset and distressed, but determined to carry on unaffected. We continue to celebrate our mixture of races, cultures, nationalities and religions. We will not allow these attacks to divide us—because that is their intention.

Is it too much to ask that, as our allies, you act like you actually support us, actually know something about us and our resilience and stop using our suffering for your own gain?

Peter, whoever you are, I thank you for writing this. The second last paragraph gave me so much hope, and with that, you didn’t leave me a choice;  I had to post it on my blog.