A Birthday Wish for France

A look back at a moment of tragedy and the triumph of liberté, égalité, fraternité.

Poet and French Resistance leader René Char (1907-1988).

The short piece below was first published by The Wall Street Journal not long after the July 14, 2016, terrorist attack that killed 86 men, women, and children in Nice, France. As the AP described it, “thousands of people had packed Nice’s famed boardwalk on the Mediterranean coast to celebrate France’s national holiday. In 4 minutes and 17 seconds, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel rammed his 19-ton truck at full speed into a crowd of families, tourists and others on the picturesque Promenade des Anglais, killing 86 and leaving 450 others injured.” The driver of the truck, an Islamic State “sympathizer,” was killed by French police that night; and in 2022, a French court convicted eight others charged in connection with the attack.

I revisit this atrocity because France, the U.S. and our allies in Europe and elsewhere are still living in the world shaped by 9/11 and the wars, terrorist attacks, and cultural and political shifts that followed. Fr…