The atrocity in Paris seems to trigger the word “terrorism” with a higher frequency than ever, in the media, from the politicians. Doing so, they sign their intellectual capitulation: trust me, I am not going to try to understand anything. Watching politicians on 56 US TV channels in Georgia there was not a single word analyzing why?; like underlying conflicts and traumas. Nor conciliation and solution. Only a description of what?, the horrible violence. And what to do: more violence, war. With a question mark though: Will it work?
The whole Western world was living up to the old French saying Cet animal est très méchant, quand on le bat, il se defend. (That animal is very vicious, when you beat it, it defends itself). Look at centuries of French/Arab-Muslim relations and find one-way beating, killing, conquest, colonialism, exploitation, France using them in wars against Turkey and against Germany promising freedom and breaking their promises, raw post-colonial colonialism, no respect for their wishes to be the masters in their own house, like now in Mali.
Using them for menial jobs in France, if they speak French. At the bottom of society, shocked when the French school system treats them equally and they climb upwards, like African-Americans when they gained access to the US school system. And eventually to US society, after a century of Jim Crow and the civil rights movement.
France is now in that phase. Do not assume that 350 million Arabs-1,650 million Muslims will take more beating hands down. Read the most belligerent of national anthems, the horrible Marseillaise, admonishing the French to hate foreign intruders “coming into our midst to cut the throats of (y)our sons and consorts–March, march, let impure blood water our furrows”. Watch the French elite of “énarques”, difficult to match in patriotic self-righteousness.
And you get a France with a president declaring war.
Treat what happened as a war and for sure you get one. With the polarization in the term “terrorism”: you are evil with a project of more evil, to talk with you is useless; crush, beat, eliminate.
And with escalation, in, and by, Paris. But watch out: there is not only destructive power, D, involved, with France having more than the other sides. There is also vulnerability, V, with France, USA etc. being many times more vulnerable. Multiply the D of one side by the V of the other sides (in plural): who is stronger? Meaning: the more destructive power one side has and the more vulnerable the other–the stronger the former.