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A man takes a picture with his mobile phone of a rose stuck through a bullet hole in a window of the Restaurant on Rue de Charonne where one of the terrorist attacks took place in Paris Friday.
(Frank Augstein, Associated Press)
The vicious terrorist attacks in the heart of Paris, killing more than 125 innocents and wounding hundreds more, if confirmed to have been orchestrated by the so-called Islamic State, represent a marked increase in the group's foreign terrorist reach.
Peeling away the layers to find out how this terrorist assault was organized and facilitated -- and who aided it -- is critical. So is a far more unified and coordinated international front against the extremist Islamic terrorist butchers based in Syria and Iraq variously known as ISIS, ISIL and by their Arabic name, Daesh.
Still, it would be a mistake to exaggerate the power of these murderers.
The terrorists are hardly a "state," despite holding territory. Their warriors are mercenaries, paid with the spoils of plunder and enslaved women.
The Paris attacks came after a series of ISIS setbacks, including the fall of the strategic Sinjar highway junction in northern Iraq thanks to a Kurdish peshmerga ground offensive supported by U.S. air power. Russian air strikes also have reportedly degraded ISIS despite the fact that the Russians appear to be targeting pro-U.S. Syrian rebels, as well. Finally, U.S. officials said Friday they are "reasonably certain" U.S. and British drone strikes in Raqqa, Syria, had killed the British ISIS butcher known as "Jihadi John" -- real name, Mohammed Emwazi -- believed responsible for the beheading of U.S. journalist Jim Foley and others.
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None of that is to diminish the horror, shock and grief in Paris after what many are calling its 9/11 -- an attack, just as in the United States in 2001, that will steel French resolve to continue the pursuit of terrorists.
At least seven terrorists died after detonating suicide belts and an eighth was shot by police after what French authorities believe were coordinated assaults on six sites by three teams of suicide bombers. One has been identified through fingerprints as a radicalized French citizen. A Syrian refugee passport was found on or near the body of another, suggesting the possibility the refugee flow into Europe was used to mask the journey of a terrorist.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry
that the atrocity has only strengthened the world's "resolve to eliminate the scourge of violent extremist groups from the face of the Earth." It must.