France

[Elle]

It's so terrible, not very long after they have endured other shocking attacks. It is also terrible to think about what we were doing on the 4th of July, since presumably they were having a similar celebration. Fireworks going off everywhere, haze of smoke in the air, and I cannot even imagine if that suddenly turned out to be real noises of gunshots. You can't help thinking about all the times you spent in crowds of people celebrating on the 4th - perhaps the scene was like that. And all the children - I cannot understand this type of deliberate evil. I mean, I've read theories, I have heard it explained why people think this helps their cause, but it makes utterly zero sense.

[Cazmonster]

They can't fight on 'Modern' terms because no one has the money to field drones and aircraft and thousands of soldiers but those the Super Powers allow to do so. The people who 'fight' this way do do as it is the means of attack at their disposal.

It is monstrous and should not happen. But then again, no civilian should have to hear the hum of a drone in the sky and fear they are about to die. Note, choosing to be a soldier must accept risks, like drone strikes and snipers.

[Elle]

I'm hearing a couple of striking things about the creature who did this horrible deed. First, he seemed not to have any special religious convictions or to be motivated by the kind of religious extremism we have come to identify with the source of Islamic terrorism. Some speculated that recruiting these people is now as much about finding bad guys who are already willing to do bad things, as it is about a particular religious commitment. And the existence of this umbrella group waging an Islamist war, against basically everyone else on earth including Muslims, permits any criminal who wants to do something bad to align with it and thereby seize a larger meaning for his otherwise small actions. It's a terrible thing - not sure we've seen that before in quite this way.

The second thing is that the man supposedly had a history of assaulting other people, and especially his own wife. Even though he supposedly wasn't participating in an extremist religious group that through its normal actions tries to violently control women, he was still all about violently controlling the women. And every one of these groups that spawns Islamist terrorism is all about the violent control of women - the more of that, the more support for terrorism, or so it appears. What is up with that? I am sure there are people out there who have already explained all this a thousand times over while I'm still just sitting here remarking witlessly on how crazy it is. But it's crazy!