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First and foremost, my condolences to those who are French in the wake of these heinous crimes committed by terrorists in your  capital city yesterday.  Je suis Paris.




In addition, how does everyone here think that the strategy of the United States and its allies in Europe will change (or not change) with regards to ISIL now?

As far as I know, France has already closed its borders. I think that might become the trend.

It's difficult. Not all muslims who come over are terrorists, and yet it's nigh-on impossible to determine which is which.

Additionally, there's no guarantee that the terrorists even come from other countries. The power of ISIS is such that people who weren't even muslim to begin with, are converted and trained as terrorists.

It kinda makes it impossible to fight them without spying on the world.

EDIT: That's not even touching on the sensitive subject of the West's guilt in the formation of ISIS. Many of those people have the fullest right to be angry because of the extortion and control from the West over the years.

There just isn't an easy answer.

Indeed. ISIS is far too good at what it does. Still, I feel like this will help further right-wing anti-immigrant arguments and may ramp up the war against ISIS.

An organised and direct war effort didn't help after 9/11, in fact it made things worse. I don't think further escalation is the answer.

I'm not completely informed on this to have any decent answer to this difficult topic. But at the very least, I would also offer my condolences to all of those that were killed by these terrorist groups.  Many, if not most of these people were innocent and did not deserve to be attacked and killed, and it's depressing to hear that they lost their lives because of these terrorists.  My heart really goes out to their families on this one.

But I also will echo the idea that jumping into a a full escalation like we did post-9/11 would be a terrible idea.  I still think we as a country are scarred and are still hurting from that whole thing not just because of 9/11 itself, but because of our actions afterwards that I think genuinely hurt us as a nation.

I agree with you.  This will just make anti-immigrant hate in the United States grow even more, even when it's not well justified.  There will also probably be a movement to escalate the conflict in Syria, but I agree that that is a bad idea. 

One policy shift that the United States should consider now though is to shift from supporting "moderate rebels" and the Kurds to Assad and the Kurds.  We don't need to posture with the Russians at the expense of returning stability to the region. 

Also, will someone give the Kurds a country now!? They've literally helped us for decades now.

I don't think it's going to make much difference at all in the actual military conflict...at the end of the day, no country wants to put troops on the ground and get drawn into another Iraq, so they'll continue with air strikes and support for the moderate rebels, if nothing else to show that they're doing something.

I think what it will have a major effect on is the refugee crisis in Europe, especially seeing as one of the terrorists apparently came as a "refugee" through Greece. Was this person an honest refugee that got frustrated and turned to terrorism, or was this someone that was sent as one to infiltrate Europe? Either way, it's going to make countries more cautious to accepting refugees from Syria. Tens of thousands of refugees are coming in every month, and it's impossible to know the backgrounds of all of them...and as seen, you only need a few people to cause a tragedy like this...

Russia is really cleaning house with their bombings. And for some reason the US has a problem with this.

My guess: the US is sour because Russia supports Assad.

Obviously, Putin is doing this to protect Russia's military base in Syria, prop up Assad, and force his way back to being a relevant power that the rest of the world must interact with after he was shut out over Ukraine. Before the Russian passenger plane was bombed they were mostly targeting the moderate rebels that the US and others are supporting, not ISIS. Their focus only changed after the Russian passenger plane was bombed, and the Paris bombing just gave him a convenient reason to 'work with' France and others.

Convenient excuse or not, he's proving that working with Assad is the most effective solution. I don't trust him at all, but he's proving far more capable than Obama.

Working with Assad, someone who has been implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity by the UN human rights office, is the most convenient solution...what's to be done with all the people who have rebelled against him due to legitimate grievances, long before ISIS sprung up?

I'm not sure Putin is being 'more capable' than Obama...he's just making a bigger splash for now.