Paris Attacks Undercut Western Hopes of Containing Extremists

Containment's obviously not working. If the West is going to do something, leaders need to get off their asses. I'm not optimistic in that regard.

At WSJ:

WASHINGTON—The consecutive terror attacks that killed 224 people on a Russian charter plane Oct. 31 and well over 100 in Paris on Friday have undercut what remained of Western hopes of containing extremists, a goal sought through years of faltering wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya.

A day before the Paris attacks, President Barack Obama sounded an optimistic note about the campaign against Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria. “I don’t think they’re gaining strength,” the president told ABC News in an interview Thursday. “From the start our goal has been first to contain, and we have contained them.”

Now that French President François Hollande has blamed Islamic State for the attacks Friday in Paris, world leaders are certain to take a new look at the extremist movement.

Many parts of the world, particularly in the Middle East, are in a state of chaotic and deadly upheaval, with weak or nonexistent governments creating huge voids for terror networks to flourish. U.S. military planes have peppered parts of Syria and Iraq with drone strikes, killing senior Islamic State officials. Islamic State computer wizard Junaid Hussain was killed by a drone strike in Syria in August. A separate drone strike is believed to have killed a British citizen known as Jihadi John in the same city just this week.

But even after dozens of such strikes, the terror attacks continue. They have emanated from cells within Islamic State as well as terror groups stretching from North Africa, across the Middle East, to South Asia. And they often are of such scale that intelligence agencies and police forces are left dumbfounded and searching for answers.

Militants killed 17 people in France in January, most of them employees of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, in a brutal slaying that raised fears about what radical Islamic militants could do after returning from war-torn areas like Yemen and Syria.

In Turkey, more than 100 people were killed by twin suicide blasts Oct. 10 at a peace rally in Ankara, with Islamic State the main suspect. On Thursday, more than 40 died in a Beiruit suburb in a double suicide bombing for which Islamic State claimed responsibility.

The midair breakup of a Russian passenger jet late last month, while still under investigation, is believed to have been a rare mass casualty event caused by a bomb on a plane. And the attacks Friday night in Paris came after the country had ramped up its surveillance laws and devoted more resources to tracking citizens returning from Iraq and Syria.

The U.S. and Western countries have spent billions of dollars trying to disrupt terror networks in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya, but the war seemingly has countless fronts...

Keep reading.

Yeah, well, it's full spectrum terror. See, "Islamic State Shows Mastery of 'Full-Spectrum Terrorism'."