Cartoons Hurt

So the big news yesterday was the terrorist attack on a French newspaper that has consistently produced cartoons poking at radical Islamists for many years.  These cartoons have resulted in many threats against the paper from various terrorist organizations.  There was a firebomb at the building several years ago.

Well yesterday’s attack was brutal, fast and ruthless with two gunmen executing specific targets within the building during a scheduled meeting.  It was obviously a well orchestrated attack, so much so that they were able to carry out the attack AND escape. Most of the time these sort of things seem to have a one way ticket where the attacker has no intention of walking away.

Attacks like this of course incite all sorts of anxiety and fear into the populace when they happen in more “civilized” areas that do not have acts of terrorism occurring on a near daily basis.  If gunmen took out a dozen people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, or Palestine it would have hardly gotten a headline, but in France it suddenly gains 100x the amount of importance.

This attack of course was condemned by most of the modern world but I don’t know exactly what good it does.  The attackers accomplished their two main goals, making good on their threats and implanting an element of fear in anyone in the media that brazenly publishes anti-Islamic content in the future. Until yesterday these threats were seen mostly as paper tigers, now any future threats will have real teeth.

It’s a further reflection of just how messed up this world is and how religious beliefs continue to be the common seed for evil acts in the human race today just as has been the case through history.