Having lived in Paris for a brief period (about 3 months), I had fallen in love with the city.
The sheer history, architecture, weather, way of life, and the highly fashion conscious people (read beautiful) lend an aura around the place found in only a few other cities around the world.
The bombings on the other day made me sad about the sheer brazen-ness with which the bombs were blown in public places.
The attack was to prove a point. If they can...they will!
But the way I perceive ISIS is that they have achieved exactly what they wanted. Blood, mayhem, cries for war, followed by global attention (see how the dark eiffel was a symbol of sadness) and finally a resolution to fight war with war.
Honestly, in my view, the world has played right into their hand on how they wanted the response. This incident will see a bump in ISIS stock. Enrollments will increase, and they have become heroes in eyes of their supporters/sympathisers.
All the talk of war and removing ISIS is quite a lot of bull as ISIS is an organisation, an idea with the face of terror, quite similar to the likes of the MI6, CIA or any other world organisation! It was much easier to kill the idea of Osama than the idea of ISIS!
In my opinion, the response should have been just how we respond to a child throwing a tantrum. Ignore.
Paris is much more than a city. It is the idea of love. And by hitting Paris ISIS hit the idea of love. Well,love is all pervasive (at the cost of sounding corny), and it should have picked up just where it left off.
Eiffel tower should have been lit brighter than ever before, cafes should have distributed free food and wine! Newspapers should have covered more about the history, greatness of the city and desisted from writing anything about the ISIS.
All the targeting and acts of war should have been behind the scenes with no media mention.
All is not lost yet, and we can still do a lot to redeem the city of love!
