Here We Are Yet Again

First and foremost, no matter what else, my prayers for peace and healing for the families affected by the Paris attacks.  As with any mass killing, that's the highest of priorities.  

Bayou Renaissance Man puts up a thought-provoking post on the attacks in Paris, "Paris and the pain of being human".  I trust you've read it; if not, it's worth your time.  This started as a comment over there, but as always, when a comment gets too long, one of the privileges (the only privilege?) of having this space is the ability to post longer thoughts here.

The one type of attack that is impossible to stop is the surprise attack: you have no idea what it is or where it's coming from.  After all, that's why nations invest billions in intelligence agencies: to discover those attacks before they happen.  Compound that with surprise attacks in which the attacker doesn't care if they survive, or actually wishes to die, and the number of options for an attack increases while the ability to ward them off approaches zero. 

I'd say from Isis' standpoint, Paris was immensely successful.  As of reporting I saw this morning, a mere 7 of their men - who wanted to die in the first place - achieved their goal while killing over 120 directly and emotionally damaging hundreds more.  On a purely demographic basis, they will wipe out western civilization before they run out of jihadis.  As long as they sacrifice less than 10 and take out 10 to 100x that number, they can effectively destroy Europe.  Or it can be over in fewer attacks if they use more lethal weapons.  Nuclear or Biological agents have the desired lethality that could end this within a handful of years.

As others have said, what are we to do?  We have a moral responsibility to protect our families, our societies and ourselves.  It's immoral to allow your family to die in some sort of attempt to have a moral high ground over those who attack you.  On the other hand, they want the West to attack them with overwhelming force so they can play the victim card in their civilizational jihad; "Look! The great Satan really is trying to kill all Muslims!!"  They believe the West nuking them would be a great recruiting tool.   

If we refuse to play their game and don't respond with righteous outrage to attacks on our families, what are we left with?  That we only punch back?  We wait for the next surprise attack, which is surely coming ... and then what?  Chances are the attackers will either commit suicide in the operation or be killed by police or defense forces so there will be nobody to retaliate against.  In other words, do we, as "enlightened Westerners" accept being shot first before we shoot back?  In the event of a surprise attack like these in Paris, when you don't know who's attacking or where they're coming from, is there any alternative to taking the first shot?  How many family members are you willing to lose?  Note: in my view, any number higher than zero is unacceptable.

One of the most important abilities humans have is pattern recognition.  I don't think we'd have survived a few hundred years without it.  We see the pattern behind these attacks, and that leads to the dehumanization Peter writes about.  Not recognizing the incompatibility of the societies, and trying to integrate Islam into the West is suicidal.  The "enlightened left" will bristle at this, but Western societies' morality is derived from Judaeo-Christian ethics; Islam's moral code is not.  They're inherently incompatible and if we insist on attempting to integrate Islam into Western societies we're going to have to accept a continuing number of attacks that kill hundreds of innocent people every time.  

As a people, we really need to answer the question of "so what are we to do?".  As has been said many times, the Jihadis have declared war on us.  When someone declares war on you and swears they're going to kill you, it's wise to take them at their word.