The sheer barbarity of the Paris attacks "marks a new low in terror," said Fareed Zakaria on Sunday's GPS. They were designed only to kill innocent men, women, and children, and it's not clear France or the U.S. could have done much more to stop it. "We don't know the details yet, but the attacks appear to have been carried out by seven or eight people, some local, some outsiders, armed with weapons that are easily obtainable anywhere in the world, coordinated only in the sense that they all attacked at about the same time," he said. "This didn't require vast sums of money, complex logistics, or great cunning. It just required barbarity and a willingness to die."
Still, it's not hard to guess how the West will respond: More airstrikes, more surveillance at home, more distrust between Muslims and non-Muslims, maybe even U.S. and French troops entering into battle with ISIS, Zakaria said. "By most accounts," he added, ISIS "wants all of this." Ideally, the West would "act but not overreact," respect its core values, and "strive to restore normalcy in the face of brutality," he added. "To do this would be to understand that terrorism is unique in that it depends for its effectiveness on the response of the onlooker. If we are not terrorized, then it doesn't really work." Watch Zakaria's whole analysis below. Peter Weber
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