Paris

Still trying to come to grips with that events in Paris over the past twenty four hours. What does seem clear, inevitable and, I think, unavoidable is the response to the attacks that is likely to come...a broader military response by members of the European Union in concert with the United States which will certainly involve a stepped up air campaign and possibly the deployment of military units on the ground. Unfortunately it is precisely that response that ISIS has been trying to provoke and, with the latest attack, has likely succeeded in provoking. At its core ISIS has always viewed its campaign as intending to once and for all confront the west and its secular way of life and rid the world of any person, government or state that does not adhere to its extreme fundamentalist views. The realization of this "end of days" vision can only come to be if the west and any nation state that opposes ISIS' fundamentalist vision (including Arab states opposed to ISIS) is drawn into a broad conflict. It appears that we may very well be at that point as it no longer seems possible to confront ISIS on a limited basis. They have shown its willingness and now its capacity to carry the fight beyond the Middle East with horrific consequences. The world, already a very dangerous place, is about to get much more so. I fear that ISIS is building toward something even bigger and more deadly in the United States; that as horrific as the events in Beirut and Paris have been they are but practice runs for a much larger attack. Regrettably I see no alternative but to confront ISIS now and end this before it gets worse.