Islamic Terror in Paris….

Marianne of France

 What has happened in Paris is unbelievable.  Well coordinated attacks on sites of mostly young people, with the purpose of creating fear, panic, a macabre political ‘statement’, along with death of innocents. . Am I surprised? No, just shocked. It was bound to happen and won’t be the last time.  Open borders where people are not checked, no passports, no real history of their actions and behavior in their home countries….though at the present time it looks like these were French Muslim terrorists, home grown though probably trained in ISIS camps in Syria.

We are now informed that the terrorists were wider spread, even unto other European countries and back to Syria.  A worldwide web of savagery.

It’s not like the world wasn’t warned as to what was coming: it’s just that people put it aside, believing it would happen ‘elsewhere’, that the threat and action of this savage violence wouldn’t touch them.  But it does, and it will again. No country is ‘safe’ from this sort of violence. The terror is already here and people feel like sitting ducks.

“Sitting duck” can breed hysteria and chaos. It can breed extreme right wing movements that become part of the problem of lawlessness.  It can create homegrown militias but then again, perhaps this is a reach back into our earliest history as a nation.  There was no standing army, the militias were the soldiers.  I come from the Glines brothers in New Hampshire.  Five of them serving in the Revolutionary War. They were, these militias, the standing army.

But we do have a standing army, and we also have the various National Guards. My son served 4 years in the Navy recently, and is now serving in the National Guard.  I would guess  he would be part of the ‘standing army’ if called.  For selfish reasons, I want Peace.

I am 3/4’s of the way through “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”.  It’s taken me 3 years to complete this book.  I had no idea how important this book would be to my present understanding of what is happening today.  The 1930’s and 40’s certainly lay the basis for WWII….and I can’t stop thinking of the similarities between the invasions and terror of the early Nazis (it was to get much worse…..) and what has happened in Paris last night.

Whether Brown Shirts of  1930’s Germany, or the black clad killers of ISIS:  their ideology all leads to death and destruction in the name of what?

You can call it religion, or ideology, but in the hands of evil, it renders death.

  Our hearts are with the French people but our heads should be pulled out of the sand.  Extreme violence such as we have seen in Paris, etc. will call for extreme measures from our governments.  The safety of our citizens and country depend upon a clearer understanding of what the world is facing.  We are not an island. We are a web.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, November 14th, 2015