Paris under attack — again

A November Friday night in Paris: people in restaurants, on the streets. A soccer game at the national stadium. A rock band from California is scheduled to play a concert hall. All is normale.

And then chaos. Explosions, gunfire, police in pursuit, bodies in the street and news reports of what soon becomes clear: These are multiple, coordinated terrorist attacks carried out against innocent civilians in France by forces of evil. Again.

In Paris, the city where a dozen people were killed in an attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January, there are now scores more dead, many injured, still more traumatized.

And the context: The French national soccer team was playing Germany at the Stade de France stadium when a large bomb was set off just outside. Toward the center of Paris, in the 10th arrondissement, there was shooting at a restaurant, while armed attackers occupied the Bataclan theater where an American group, Eagles of Death Metal, was due to perform. Reports from the theater were chilling: unidentified figures, armed and in control, rounding up hostages. Explosions were heard as the authorities tried to move in.

This is all heartbreaking and shocking. Yet it’s a surprise attack that is also no surprise at all. Friday represented the worst terrorist incident in Europe since the Charlie Hebdo attacks and those that followed it. But there were other murderous assaults last year: at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, at Canada’s Parliament in Ottawa, at a cafe in Sydney, Australia.

Knowing the pattern grants us no solace. It only affords the ability to move more quickly from disbelief to resolve. We’re always skeptical of early claims and blame. But if this assault is what it appears to be:

The United States and its allies are engaged in worldwide conflict with a barbarous, devious enemy that is committed to violence, but not to fighting a war as we have fought others. The generals and Pentagon planners who battled previous insurgents and guerrilla armies introduced the idea of asymmetric warfare: surprise attacks and ambushes to make up for a lack of broad strength. What the terrorists do is worse — striking not just with surprise but vicious disregard for the innocent.

And so we will have a terrible Saturday in November of watching the body count in Paris, learning more about the thugs responsible and expressing our sympathies to France, a great friend and ally. Then we will move forward, committed to confronting and destroying this enemy wherever it dares to operate. Because we know that this attack on France was another attack on the West, on America, on the ideals of liberty, democracy and decency that bind us together.

Read the next editorial about the Paris terror attacks: “Now the world must decide about Islamic State.“