‘No one will be unaffected’: Other views
Michael Hirsh
, Politico: “In one night of slaughter, the attacks in Paris have caused the tectonic plates of geopolitics to shift sharply rightward, and no one will be unaffected. The new axis of opinion in the U.S. and Western European countries is plainly going to be harsher, more interventionist and less tolerant of, well, tolerance. ... The Islamic State, and al-Qaeda before it, have proved adept at exploiting the perception that the West was at war with Islam, and now the rhetoric along those lines is heating up again. How hot will it get? In their zeal to rid themselves of these killers, the question facing France and other European countries — and their allies in Washington, eager to prove their toughness — is how far they’re willing to go in compromising the very values and liberties that they believe distinguish them most from the terrorists.”
The nature of this war: Our view
Frida Ghitis, CNN: “Anyone who excuses or justifies terrorism — attacks against civilians aimed to create fear and further a political agenda — is part of the problem and shares in the blame. Undoubtedly, we will be hearing again about the discrimination experienced by Muslims in Europe. And such discrimination is real. But it is absolutely not a reasonable justification or sufficient explanation for what happened. … The truth is that these terrorists have actually made life more uncomfortable for Muslims in Europe. And if they thought killing civilians was a way of demonstrating that France should not fight ISIS in Syria, they have only demonstrated how urgent the need is to defeat terrorist groups. They have proven once again that what happens in Syria does not stay in Syria, just as what happened in Afghanistan did not stay there, either.”
Kenan Malik, Al Jazeera: “We should be wary of seeing these attacks as a response, however perverted, to French, or Western, foreign policy. The terrorists did not target symbols of the French state, or of French militarism. They did not even target tourist spots. They targeted, rather, the areas and the places where mainly young, anti-racist, multiethnic Parisians hang out. ... What the terrorists despised, what they tried to eliminate, were ordinary people drinking, eating, laughing and mixing. That is what they hated — not so much the French state as the values of diversity and pluralism.”