I think people are playing right into the terrorists hands, and feeling pride as they do it. The terrorists know what these attacks will cause, they saw what happened after 9/11, they know what will happen now. What we need is not a war of guns, but one of culture. We need to obliterate the sense of identity in the middle east, fill it with Christian missionaries, propaganda of the American dream, and build so many factories and so much infrastructure that ISIS couldn't hope to destroy it. We need to replace their way of life with our own, and until that happens, these terrorists will continue to be a problem. ___ As for the reaction based on terrorist bombings elsewhere. France isn't part of the middle east, it's part of the "western world". Paris is an icon, France is a long ally of the US. The reality of the world is that we only care about suffering and death when it is connected to us. France is, Lebanon or wherever else isn't so much. Why do you think we kill and torture pigs, cows, and so on, without a second consideration, while we treat dogs well? Why do we care so much for the suffering of children while the suffering of adults with much more complex lives and emotions get less attention? The suffering of kids matters more, as kids are the future. Adults have lived a part of their potential, and as a result, are more expendable. Why do soldiers of enemy nations not matter? Where is the empathy for the pain and suffering for the terrorists, the circumstances that lead to their desperation? They don't just not matter to us, they hurt us, so their pain and suffering may well be celebrated. It's cold, it's calculated, and it's what we are "programmed" to feel, regardless of if we want to believe otherwise. Lives do not inherently matter, they never have, and our teaching of that they do is leading to a lot of confused and misguided people living lives of guilt, wondering why they can live in such wealth while those in Africa starve to death (and similar examples).