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The “13/11” massacre reveals the scale of the ISIS threat. That makes a coherent response vital
“The bomber will always get through.” In the deep valley of the 1930s, a phrase used by the British conservative politician Stanley Baldwin came to stand for the sense of foreboding with which beleaguered European democracy envisaged the prospect of another war. Today, after the latest massacre of innocents in Paris by a jihadi cell, it is hard for many citizens of France and its neighbours to escape the same mix of pessimism and fatalism.
So unequal were the odds on that convivial Friday evening, so “easy” the targets in the restaurants and clubs where young Parisians were gathering, and so infinite the opportunities presented by open societies to those intent on killing without discrimination or restraint: no wonder that the outpouring of grief and solidarity following the events of 13 November has been shadowed by a “fear of the future” of the kind expressed by Baldwin in 1932. By shell-shocked Saturday, when the unleavened horror of the night before was becoming plain, the bleakest thought of all (to adapt Albert Camus) was that those in the grip of a nihilistic ideology will always “get through” to kill and die in a happy city…
