A November night in Paris: people in restaurants, on the
streets. A soccer game at the stadium. A rock band is scheduled to play at a
concert hall. All is normale.
And then chaos erupts. Explosions, gunfire, police in
pursuit, bodies in the street and news reports of what soon becomes clear:
These are multiple, coordinated terrorist attacks carried out against innocent
civilians in France by forces of evil. Again.
In Paris, the city where a dozen people were killed in
an attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January, there are now 129 dead, over 350 injured, countless more traumatized.
And the context: The French national soccer team was
playing Germany at the stadium when a large bomb was set off just outside.
Toward the center of Paris, there was shooting at a restaurant while armed attackers
occupied a theater where an American
rock group was due to perform. I was in my car when the chilling CNN news reports were coming in:
unidentified figures, armed and in control, shooting hostages one by one. You could hear explosions in the background as the authorities tried to move in.
This is all heartbreaking and shocking. Yet it's a
surprise attack that is also no surprise at all. Yesterday represented the
worst terrorist incident in Europe since the Charlie Hebdo attacks. But there
were other murderous assaults last year: at a museum in Brussels, at Canada's
Parliament in Ottawa, and at a cafe in Sydney, Australia.
Knowing all this gives us no solace. It only affords the
ability to move quickly from disbelief to resolve. The United States and its allies are engaged in
worldwide conflict with a barbarous, devious enemy that is committed to
violence, but not to fighting a war as we have fought others. The generals and
Pentagon planners who battled previous insurgents and guerrilla armies
introduced the idea of “asymmetric” warfare: surprise attacks and ambushes to
make up for a lack of broad strength. What the terrorists do is worse - striking
not just with surprise but with a vicious disregard for the innocent.
And so we will have a terrible Saturday in November of
watching the body count in Paris, learning more about the thugs responsible and
expressing our sympathies to France, a great friend and our oldest ally. Then
we will move forward, committed to confronting and destroying this enemy
wherever it dares to operate. Because we know that this attack in Paris was
another attack on the West, on America, on the ideals of liberty, democracy and
decency that bind us all together.
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