Today is Friday the 13th, and for the folks in Paris, France it is a day that they will never forget. Coordinated attacks all over the city killed at least 118 people in just one place, and the citizens of that beautiful city are in shock.
Welcome to the 21st Century. Where, thanks to technology, wars can be fought with just a few animals coming together and slaughtering innocent people. I suspect that there will be more of this to come. On a day when the Obama administration was celebrating the killing of a high profile Isis operative, and Kurd soldiers were taking back a city in Iraq, the terrorist were saying not so fast; we
still have the ability to terrorize you people in the West.
The scary thing is that happened while the French were supposedly on high alert. What would have happened if they weren't ready? These attacks obviously took a lot of planning, and apparently assault weapons are illegal in France, so these guys must have been deep in terrorist mode.
France has closed their borders, declared a state of emergency, and now they are going from neighborhood to neighborhood and trying to find out more about what could have caused this act of terror.
Witnesses on French television said the scene at the rock concert was a massacre.
The casualties eclipsed the deaths and mayhem that roiled Paris in the Charlie Hebdo massacre and related assaults around the French capital by Islamic militant extremists less than a year ago.
An explosion near the sports stadium, which French news services said may have been a suicide bombing, came as Germany and France were playing a soccer match, forcing a hasty evacuation of Mr. Hollande. As the scope of the assaults quickly became clear, he convened an emergency cabinet meeting and announced that France was closing its borders.
As I speak, terrorist attacks of an unprecedented scale are taking place in the Paris region,” he said in a nationally televised address. “There are several dozen dead, lots more wounded, it’s horrific.”
"Horrific" indeed.
"President Obama in Washington came to the White House Briefing room to express solidarity and offer aid and condolences. “Once again, we’ve seen an outrageous attempt to terrorize innocent civilians,” he said. “This is an attack not just on Paris, it’s an attack not just on the people of France, but this is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values that we share.”
It is an attack on "all of humanity" Mr. President, as were the attacks in Baghdad today. Let's not forget that those people are victims of these inhumane terrorists as well. These crazed fanatics who act out in horrific ways to justify their sick indoctrination.
As was the case here in America after September 11, it will take some time for France to return to "normalcy" as they know it. Their country will be changed forever and it will be interesting to see what happens to the "war on terror" going forward. A war, unfortunately, to which there seems to be no end in sight.
*Pic from slate.com/Photo by Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP/Getty Images
