The New York Times editorial page got around to dealing with the Islamic atrocities in Paris in its lead editorial on Monday, "What Will Come After Paris." But it was the "xenophobia" of "far-right" extremism in Europe that came in for the most hostility. The same day, Paul Krugman, classless as ever, asserted that "climate change" was a greater threat than Islamic terrorism. And a report from Poland pitted security against "compassion" while covering European concern over terrorists coming in under the cover of refugees.
The terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday, along with twin bombings in Beirut on the day before and the downing of a Russian jetliner over the Sinai Peninsula on Oct. 31, show a new phase in the Islamic State’s war against the West, a readiness to strike far beyond areas it controls in Iraq, Syria, and increasingly, Libya.
The challenge for threatened countries is huge. The sort of attacks the Islamic State, or ISIS, has launched are hard to anticipate or prevent, yet in Europe each one intensifies the raucous xenophobia of far-right nationalists ever ready to demonize Muslim citizens, immigrants and refugees, and shut down Europe’s open internal borders. The Islamic State must be crushed, but that requires patience, determination and the coordination of strategies and goals that has been sorely lacking among countries involved in the war on ISIS, especially the United States and Russia.
President François Hollande of France defiantly declared the attacks in Paris “an act of war” and vowed a “pitiless” response. On Sunday, French warplanes bombarded Raqqa, the Syrian city that is an ISIS stronghold. Mr. Hollande is expected to offer other proposals when he addresses the French Parliament at a special session in Versailles on Monday. France already has some of Europe’s most intensive antiterrorist policing; adopting draconian measures of the sort demanded by far-right nationalists like Marine Le Pen of the National Front can only further alienate France’s Muslim population of five million, without offering any assurance against more attacks.
The Times got conspiratorial in its attempts to deny that one of the terrorists was a "refugee."
The discovery of a Syrian passport near one of the attackers, which matched one used by an asylum-seeker who had entered Europe through Greece, was bound to intensify anti-refugee sentiments and calls to close Europe’s open internal borders. There is no proof that the owner of the passport was one of the gunmen. And even if one of the attackers had entered Europe in the guise of a refugee, the first gunman to be conclusively identified, Omar Ismail Mostefai, was not a refugee, but a French citizen born and raised in a town just south of Paris.
Paul Krugman also tackled the Paris atrocities in his Monday column, "Fearing Fear Itself." Whenever tragedy strikes, the Nobel-winning economist turned Democratic hack can always be relied upon to lower himself to the occasion, in this case reaching back to blame the Bush administration while suggesting that fighting back too thoroughly would be "the reaction the terrorists want."
Like millions of people, I’ve been obsessively following the news from Paris, putting aside other things to focus on the horror. It’s the natural human reaction. But let’s be clear: it’s also the reaction the terrorists want. And that’s something not everyone seems to understand.
As is often the case when a liberal wants to minimize the horror, Krugman claims that "The point is not to minimize the horror," before warning of a backlash that would feed into the hands of the extremists.
So what was Friday’s attack about? Killing random people in restaurants and at concerts is a strategy that reflects its perpetrators’ fundamental weakness. It isn’t going to establish a caliphate in Paris. What it can do, however, is inspire fear -- which is why we call it terrorism, and shouldn’t dignify it with the name of war.
The point is not to minimize the horror. It is, instead, to emphasize that the biggest danger terrorism poses to our society comes not from the direct harm inflicted, but from the wrong-headed responses it can inspire. And it’s crucial to realize that there are multiple ways the response can go wrong.
After saying something somewhat sensible admitting "there are indeed some people determined to believe that Western imperialism is the root of all evil, and all would be well if we stopped meddling," Krugman reached back to the loathed Bush era and blamed the Iraq War for the rise of ISIS.
A much bigger risk, in practice, is that the targets of terrorism will try to achieve perfect security by eliminating every conceivable threat -- a response that inevitably makes things worse, because it’s a big, complicated world, and even superpowers can’t set everything right. On 9/11 Donald Rumsfeld told his aides: “Sweep it up. Related and not,” and immediately suggested using the attack as an excuse to invade Iraq. The result was a disastrous war that actually empowered terrorists, and set the stage for the rise of ISIS.
Then Krugman topped himself, forthrightly claiming that "climate change" was a greater threat than terror.
Oh, and whatever people like Ted Cruz may imagine, ending our reluctance to kill innocent civilians wouldn’t remove the limits to American power. It would, however, do wonders for terrorist recruitment.
Finally, terrorism is just one of many dangers in the world, and shouldn’t be allowed to divert our attention from other issues. Sorry, conservatives: when President Obama describes climate change as the greatest threat we face, he’s exactly right. Terrorism can’t and won’t destroy our civilization, but global warming could and might.
Also on Monday, Rick Lyman and Alison Smale reported from Warsaw that "Attacks Change Europe's Migrant Focus From Compassion to Security." Typically, the Times anchored the article to a large photo of a refugee mother and children, despite the fact the United Nations' own data shows the majority of migrants are young unattached men.
With hundreds of thousands of migrants pouring across its borders, and economic and political pressure growing to enact tighter controls, Europe has nevertheless stayed fairly steady in its response to the humanitarian emergency.
But after the attacks on Friday in Paris, fears that Islamic terrorists might infiltrate the migrant flow have deepened across the Continent, and the talk has shifted sharply to security over compassion.
The Times played dumb about a Syrian passport found near one of the dead terrorists:
And since the attacks by militants, and the discovery of a passport of a recent Syrian migrant near the scene of a suicide bombing, the rising antimigrant sentiment seems poised to substantially shift the conversation. Perhaps it could even change both policies and attitudes toward the migrants, as they arrive, make their way across Europe and land in the countries where they hope to make their homes.
....
In Poland, already quite cool to the idea of allowing hundreds of thousands of migrants into Europe, the attacks in Paris further hardened attitudes.
