You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
The Paris Terror Attacks.
The AP breaks the news to me Friday afternoon on my computer
DING!
Huh?
Then ABC news breaks into programming.
The headline is startling.
18 people dead in a terror attack is all we know.
Within hours, that number would double, triple, quadruple.
It didn’t even seem real.
150 killed?
How could this be?
I see soccer players and then hear a massive explosion that causes the action on the pitch to slow, then become irrelevant.
I see video of chaotic streets and police scaling a building in the dark.
I hear the wails of people crying and sirens blaring.
The reality of 150 dead is unfathomable.
We are numb as a nation.
We are saddened as a free society.
We are horrified as a God-fearing people.
It’s a Friday night in a city full of life, a city full of passion, a city full of lights.
BOOM!
That’s the sound of the fabric of normalcy being shredded by an AK 47 and a bomb strapped to an ISIS suicide soldier.
It’s a coordinated explosion of terror that rips through a café, a rock club, the streets of Paris.
ISIS takes responsibility. They do it with such ease, such casualness, it makes you wonder if they have a heart.
What is inside a human that believes killing an innocent person is the way to salvation?
The French President stands resolute stating it’s an ACT OF WAR!
The French are not known for such pronouncements.
Wine and Cheese and Art, Yes.
Definitive statements of aggressive action?
Not so much.
But the Friday the 13th bombings changed the world.
It’s a turning point in the war on terror that up till this point has seemed to be more of a global police action than full-scale military assault.
An Act Of War means boots on the ground and door to door fighting.
It’s the kind of ugly that nobody wants to talk about because young lives inevitably die.
But up close and personal warfare is the only way to look into the eye of your enemy and watch as his life lamp is snuffed out.
Hand to hand barbarism has always been the true test of warfare.
It was this way in midlevel times, the Civil War, Vietnam, and sadly, it will be the way in the new millennium, once again.
Boots on the ground to defeat terror means our sons and daughters going into harm’s way to rid the world of evil.
ISIS versus western coalition forces going hand to hand, at the business end of a bayonet.
It’s IED’s blowing up personnel carriers. It’s snipers on rooftops. It’s gauntlets of bullets raining down like metallic bees.
The French are traumatized.
They are shocked.
They are hurting.
We know their pain.
We wake up every day knowing that it can end suddenly and violently.
We will cry and sip coffee as we watch the atrocity live on FOX news’ wall to wall coverage.
Evil is training every day in country’s most of us cannot find on a map.
That evil has one purpose in mind.
Kill us.
We are the devil.
It is impossible to rationalize with an enemy who wants to die.
Killing us is the ultimate reward in their suicidal culture.
Virgins and goats and attaboys await the good ISIS terrorist who straps a bomb to his back and pulls the cord.
These beheading savages are hiding in the dark. These monsters are using anonymous twitter feeds to celebrate carnage, to rejoice in misguided mayhem and recruit more terrorists who want to die for a cause.
I’m horrified by the images on CNN.
Blue lights of ambulances lining the street.
Bloody sheets covering bodies on the ground.
Close to 150 people dead.
There are so many dead, how many are injured is almost irrelevant at this juncture.
If you are alive and only injured you are lucky.
That’s sad, and today’s new reality.
News reports will trickle out today.
Video we have not seen will be seen.
If ISIS wanted to scare us, I think they may have miscalculated.
Were we scared after 911?
We were shocked and then angered, then we rallied and kicked some ass.
the Louvre is closed.
The Eiffel tower is dark.
The imagery is flowers being laid at the base of a building where blood flowed out the front door like so much French wine.
Suicide attacks.
Suicide bombers.
Explosive vests.
Automatic weapons blowing people away at point-blank range in a crowded theater?
It is a horrific headline.
Disturbing. Diabolical. Dastardly.
Now it’s our turn.
You’ll see public opinion turn in 24 hours.
You will see a call for action, a coalition of commitment.
If ISIS soldiers want to die. We are going to help accelerate their wishes.
After 911 America was resolute.
After the Paris bombings we will be consolidated in our need to avenge the dead and cleanse the evil that feels murder is status quo.
Today we cry with our Parisian brother and sisters.
Tomorrow we take the fight to these stone age assassins who want to die.
Let’s accommodate their wishes.
Life’s Crazy™