How to Retaliate

You want to take action that will frustrate the Paris attackers and harm their interests? Show them that they can't win?

Ok. Here's what you gotta do:

• Embrace refugees with open arms, and do everything you can to see them healthy, happy and secure in a welcoming new home.
• Refuse to see violence as an endemic trait of Islam, and view terrorist action as what it truly is, cynical, political, and tactical, not scriptural or spiritual.
• Don't let the grief you feel over Paris blind you to Beirut, Bagdad, Palestine, and countless other people and places who deserve your concern and empathy. Prove that you don't need people to resemble you physically to recognize their humanity. Prove that kindness is not a limited resource.
• Resist the impulse to rush to violent response when so little is known about who, what, where and when ANY kind of response military or otherwise, would be effective.

Violent radicals use violence as a way to enrage and radicalize the world. They want the world to embrace and operate on their simplistic, good-guys vs bad-guys ideology. They want to erase nuance and any 'greyzone' because they know they are in the minority.

If you split the world in half for them, you swell their ranks and you legitimize their view of you.