5 Takeaways From the Paris Attacks and the Long War Against Terrorism by Aaron David Miller, Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire
1. The coordinated terrorist strikes Friday in Paris belong to a specific kind of terror, part of a global Islamic jihadi movement (however atomized and decentralized that network may be)…
2. President Obama’s point that ISIS has been contained in Syria and Iraq still rings true (even if it looks terribly untimely in the wake of the murderous assault on Paris)…
3. The global character of this threat requires a more effective and coordinated response—involving more cooperation in sharing intelligence, counterterrorism efforts, and border controls to prevent foreign fighters from traveling to the ISIS Caliphate and tracking those that return…
4. Jihadi terror is the product of an angry, broken, dysfunctional Middle East where large ungoverned spaces in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya; and widespread bad governance, or no governance at all, combine with a growing sectarian divide between Sunni and Shiites to feed extremism and violence…
5. A massive and perhaps coordinated U.S., French, European, and Russian military response against ISIS in Syria is both necessary and inevitable…
Read on for a discussion on each takeaway.