When someone gets killed in the line of duty trying to stop a violent attack, be it in the armed services or the police, rather than justify it, I can at least understand how it happens. When these ladies and gentleman join up, they are made aware that there may come a day when they come face to face with death.

If you are a police officer in a big city or a soldier tip toeing through land mines in enemy territory, there will come a time when your worst fears come to fruition and depending on how your luck is going on that day, you might get away with it, or heroically foil the the assailant or disarm a bomb.

That has to be hugely respected by the public but it also has to be accepted as part of the territory that comes with a career that has been made by choice.

So, what about buying a ticket to a teenage pop concert? Where does that sit on the legitimate target spectrum?

I can’t see it on there, not anywhere, not even of the very end, ready to topple off. I can’t, in my mind, which I consider to be a flexible one, begin to imagine at any point, how anyone could legitimise such an act on people so young and innocent, at a place where the screaming should be that of unbridled excitement.

When my eldest son was about 10, I took him to see Busted, a band who had cornered the market that sits between teenie bopping and the more grown up music we listen to in our late teens. A bit like Five meets the Arctic Monkeys I would say.

As we walked in, I was awestruck by the excitement generated by innocent children in a state of delirium that was making the arena jump with joy. As a parent, it was pretty painful on the ear drums, but to see so many young teenagers having such fun, was enough to make it worthwhile.

When I started reading the news this morning, I tried to imagine a scenario when the screams of joy turned to terror, with parents carrying their children through the death and debris, trying to escape the carnage around them. I tried to imagine how I would cope but my brain wouldn’t let me.

I guess all of you who have children have tried to square that circle at some point today and come up with a vacuum in your brain as you try to find any sense of what this bastard has done and the lives he has wrecked, allegedly, in the name of some ancient, hand picked, passage of preposterous mythology some people call religion.

There is no point me trying to comment much further because it is important to leave the profiling to the criminal experts, rather than making the type of crass judgement that I have seen on social media, sadly some of it in the form of extreme racism from people I have known for decades.

I have tried in the past to be as articulate as I can be in trying to get across the fact that a sweeping generalisation of race and religion is just the result that these evil maniacs are striving for. However, whether it is fear, a lack of basic education, or just a narcissistic desire to look tough on social media, thousands of people are playing into the hands of those who did this.

Extremists want communities divided, they want race crime and they want division. It legitimises their cause and acts as the ultimate recruiting tool to prey on those those who have been marginalised and disaffected, resulting in loss of employment, petty crime and finally, prison.

It shouldn’t be difficult to work that one out, but it seems that some people are so narrow minded they themselves appear vulnerable to extremists from the far the right who pour scorn on children who starve to death on a raft whilst escaping a conflict. A conflict where those from some of the more sinister ideologies in the Western world have had their snouts in the trough for decades.

It’s a desperately bitter and sad fact that the if you seek the route of how this evil bastard came to be in that arena last night, it goes right back to geopolitical cock-up after geopolitical cock up from the righteous who instructed an intrusion into unstable lands without considering the the long term consequences of their actions.

The ‘War on Terror’ has been a disaster and much of the blame lays at the feet of Tony Blair, George Bush and all those who backed such folly on the back of an Iraq based nuclear warhead fantasy.

I read today a piece by that snake David Mellor, trying to turn on Jeremy Corbyn, saying that he was a terrorist sympathiser, virtually blaming him for what happened and asking how on earth we can feel safe with him as PM. This vile toad might want to check the list of those who supported the war in Iraq and those who opposed it.

Which current MPs voted for the Iraq war?

I don’t know whether Jeremy Corbyn would make a good PM or not, but under the AGAINST list, his name stands out, just like it did when he fought against Apartheid in South Africa and just like it did when he wanted an end to the bloodshed on his own doorstep in Ireland.

So what do we do?

Do we fight fire with fire, take an eye for an eye, blow up Middle Eastern cities and accidentally take out a few hospitals and schools with a ‘Mother of all Bombs’ whilst losing more of our own soldiers, many of them ludicrously young and do not know or understand the enemy or what exactly they are dying for?

Or do we try to find another way to stop the endless flow of blood and tears that have resulted from the ‘War on Terror’ whatever the hell that is?

If we follow the same blind alley we are on now, we will be shaken again and again, until we are sanitised and living in acceptance that these things happen and it’s just the way it is.

I feel really depressed today as I really don’t know if this is the beginning of the end.  However, surely we owe it to those poor children and their families to at least try find another way through the craters on the road to enlightenment.

I hope this piece doesn’t seem to confused but like everyone reading this, I am more than a bit confused and shocked today.

Thanks for reading.