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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

The response to terrorism isn't about fear. It's about justice. These assholes are trying to drag us all back to 700 AD and reestablish the Caliphate, and they struck at a bastion of western liberalism to that end. You can't appreciate the human reaction to that by short sightedly looking at the risk of dying in a car accident.

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Unfortunately, goading western countries into wars we can't win is the basis of their strategy. So if your attitude causes you to short-sightedly support military action out of fear (even if you tell yourself it's anger), you're helping the terrorists win.

ISIS isn't trying to goad us into war. They're waging war on us, and doing so effectively. The kind of probabilistic analysis proposed by the OP takes terrorist attacks as if they occur randomly at some rate we have little control over, like car accidents. That is not the case when you have an enemy actively killing you and you have to make a decision: fight back, or signal that you won't fight back. If the latter, the number of "micromorts" is going to increase exponentially.

No, goading us into war really is their strategy, whether it fits with your worldview or not[1]. They currently rule over lands whose governments we destroyed, using weapons that we brought there and gave to the "good guys". They are well aware of this, and it is what they want.

[1] https://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/abu-bakr-naji-the...

Of course it's their strategy. That doesn't automatically mean that by obliging them the French would be "helping them win."

Your ability to discern others' true emotions even as they apparently wallow in self-denial is remarkable. So perhaps you could enlighten us all further: is there any act of aggression that you believe would warrant a military response?

People say this all the time, and it's true: our most likely military reaction to terrorist attacks probably is the basis of their strategy; they're not stupid, the response is predictable, and so why strike at all if you don't want a reprisal?

But it doesn't follow logically that military response is strategically bad for us! Just because ISIS wants us to do something doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. ISIS could be very wrong about wanting to provoke military escalation. In fact: it almost certainly is.

That doesn't mean that military strikes are good, or the right option at this point. It just means that saying "that's what ISIS wants us to do" isn't a dispositive argument.

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