Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

I've seen a lot of HNers suggesting that we must over react and ramp up the war on terrorism. I'm all for cutting off immigration, but how will ramping up the wars do us any good? I don't see how another ten years "fixing" things is going to work.

Obviously it won't. No one who thinks about it for a second can possible think it will.

We terrorise you, you terrorise us. Only difference is we kill you in far greater numbers than you can ever dream of.

The war on terrorism will end when a new enemy can take it's place. The smart money is on China, but don't never count the Red Menace out, good outside bet they come good at the last minute.

It won't; a lot of people are radicalising just because of the 'war on terror'. As I said in another comment, what would you do if your family was bombed in a drone strike?

How will cutting off immigration do anything? I think it's important to realize that this is something that happens and that you don't necessarily have to do anything. If you get a cold, you don't quarantine your block and divert your life savings to rhinovirus research, you just deal with it and try and take sensible precautions about hygiene.

It won't.

The discussion needs to turn to how can people defend themselves. How 10/20/30 people trapped in a theater CAN overwhelm 3 attackers. How these people will not be willing to spare you no matter how cooperative you are or how sympathetic you are.

If you can't flight, fight.

The terrorists were most likely not immigrants, but french citizen/permanent resident.

ISIS has a very fundamentalist view of the end of the world from their reading of the Koran, and are trying to hasten the "final battle". This belief was not "caused" by the war on terror or frustration with the west, though it does align with what they expect to happen.

Wow, you literally side with the terrorists over the victims. Illuminating.

I think the point is that drone strikes that kill innocent victims can be a source of radicalization. Ignoring that aspect of our foreign policy would be idiocy.

Equating this with a cold virus is the height of imbecility. Governments have a responsibility to protect their citizens. The scope of this protection is up for debate, but ignoring it is not a choice that most citizens will tolerate.

I thought the metaphor was clear - society, as a whole, is not threatened by this sort of thing, and it is not even particularly dangerous from an expected value perspective. The point is not that nothing should be done - as I mentioned with my reference to hygiene precautions. Washing your hands and encasing yourself in an antiseptic bubble are two very different things, and the fact of the matter is that not all deaths are preventable. I was trying to make the point that the knee-jerk reaction of "something should be done" discounts the possibility that sometimes it's not worth it to do anything, either because additional action would have no effect or because the marginal cost of that action exceeds the benefits.

A fairly large number of people die from influenza every year, but we don't have a mass surveillance dragnet to try and isolate flu vectors, for good reason. We do, however, have a fairly robust vaccination system which is a sensible precaution to take.

It wasn't equated. It was mentioned as an example of something that is practically impossible to eradicate. Accepting this is better than for example sacrificing all of our civil liberties in exchange for security theater.

Even if I was a homicidal maniac, I doubt I'd mass-murder French civilians.

That's what confuses me the most about these attacks. Many people have legitimate grievances against NATO forces, but how does that lead to shooting random Parisians? It's so wasteful and counterproductive.

I think attacks like this are absolutely threatening to society, besides the obvious direct impact on everyone personally scared by their experience tonight, they likely increase islamaphobia and racism, cement negative prejudices in minds of average citizens, and yes likely lead to many "wrong" reactions by the State.

But it's completely wrong to conclude that the right thing to do is therefore nothing. As we learn more about who, what, why, and how this happened the first goal is to hunt down, arrest, put on trial, and if found guilty imprison for the rest of their lives (or execute) anyone who contributed to this attack. Every angle must be criticized to understand what effective countermeasures could have been in place to detect, disrupt, or kill the attackers sooner. There should be a tremendous outpouring of support for all the people and families impacted.

The most sickening is the celebratory response from various camps, and I wonder if that's happening anywhere inside France.

Particularly if this turns out to be a home brew attack, the Islamic communities bear a tremendous responsibility, not for the attack, but going forward, in significantly strengthening and mobilizing all their resources towards preaching nonviolent protest and leading the efforts to root out radicalized groups in the community. Where are the Islamic MLKs to rally the community against radicalization? The fear-and hate-fueled backlash against French Muslims may only be stemmed by a disproportionate response against the violence from within the communities.

And just a pedantic point, we actually do spend a reasonable sum on detecting flu trends by "surveillance" of hospital visits and even monitoring Google searches to identify and better respond to possible outbreaks.

Those are not mutually exclusive conditions . One does not need to be native-born to be a citizen or legal resident.