Maybe this time it’s the final straw, the five-alarm wake-up call to the world that ISIS must be defeated once and for all.
The butchery in Paris a week ago is, once again, an atrocity so unthinkable it makes the human mind reel in horror. It’s the latest in the constant series of barbarous outrages perpetrated by ISIS, including, according to Russian investigators, the mid-air explosion of a Russian passenger jet and suicide bombings in Beirut that killed scores of civilians. Those kinds of crimes should have rallied the world instantly, but once again they didn’t.
What makes the Paris attack the long-overdue wake-up call is that it’s the nightmare ISIS has long “promised” the Western World: a devastating murderous rampage against ordinary people in the midst of ordinary daily activities: attending a soccer game, enjoying drinks at an outdoor café, listening to music in a nightclub. Anybody who watched those scenes of pain and carnage had to have thought instantly: That could be me, that could be you, it could be us, anybody or everybody.
ISIS gleefully crows about their cruelties. They bragged about the beheadings, they cheered about exploding the Russian jet. They amped up their propaganda videos to thump their chests with pride about the killings in Paris. Such behavior more than justifies the definition of “psychopathic monsters,” as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry dubbed them the other day.
President Obama, with limited success, has called repeatedly for all countries to join the fight against ISIS. These Paris massacres, finally, just might open everybody’s ears and prompt all countries to join and take decisive, no-holds-barred action against these rampant butchers who dare to claim “religion” as their rationale for their string of atrocities.
The Paris massacres appear to be a “game-changer” for a number of reasons:
- It’s the first time in France that ISIS killers used suicide belts in a killing spree. Anybody can understand why suicide belts are so frightful. It’s because attackers who literally explode can cause so many deaths and hideous injuries, and really nothing can stop them as the killers obviously do not care if they are killed or not.
- Some European cities are breeding grounds for jihadist murderers, more so than even security forces had once thought. Typically, such converts tend to be street thugs willingly indoctrinated via Internet initially to become ISIS jihadists, with the hope of attaining pathetic “hero” status for their evil deeds and getting a one-way ticket to the after-life where virgins await them.
- Some of the Paris killers apparently slipped through security dragnets, perhaps because they are using electronic communications devices that cannot be monitored. That fact is a disturbing one, which brings home the stark realization that security forces in all countries cannot just keep “swatting at flies” again and again as mayhem continues unchecked. The source itself – ISIS – must be dealt with.
- One of the Paris killers appears to have entered Europe by posing as one of the millions of refugees fleeing the killing grounds in Syria. That is another reason the source must be dealt with. ISIS is a major reason for the exodus from misery, pain and death. ISIS knows exactly what it’s doing: causing waves of refugees to destabilize other countries, possibly using that outflux to smuggle in killers and all the while hoping to recruit youth to their “Caliphate” from among disaffected refugees in the future.
A tangle of pent-up divisions and hostilities complicate the fight against ISIS. Syrian dictator Bashir Assad and ISIS are enemies of each other. Rebels in Syria are fighting Assad’s forces, who are using vicious means, including barrel bombs, that kill and terrify civilian populations. The Kurds to the north have been fighting ISIS, but Turkey, leery of the Kurds’ intentions, is reluctant to assist in the fight. All the while, ISIS is happy about these divisions that help them thrive, that make it so difficult to root them out and defeat them.
Russia, long an Assad supporter, recently entered the conflict in Syria. Now, after ISIS has bragged about downing the Russian jet, it looks as if Vladimir Putin is serious about tracking down the killers “anywhere on the planet.“
Is it possible there will soon be an alliance of necessity among European countries, the United States, Russia and even possibly other erstwhile enemies like Iran to degrade and defeat ISIS? That’s the way the cards seem to be stacking up. Anything less than such a massive alliance will probably prove futile, and we and the rest of the civilized world will go on living with fear, cleaning up carnage and swatting at flies.
