Note the question is not “what’s the best option” for the U.S. in response to the Paris attacks by the Islamic State that left 132 people dead. Because there are no good options. There never have been. But the worst option is overreaction, whether that involves fear, a stepped-up military response, or closing U.S. borders.
In his column in The New York Times, Paul Krugman reminds readers that the Paris attacks represent “an organized attempt to sow panic.”
“Killing random people in restaurants and at concerts is a strategy that reflects its perpetrators’ fundamental weakness,” Krugman writes. ISIS “isn’t going to establish a caliphate in Paris. What it can do, however, is inspire fear — which is why we call it terrorism, and shouldn’t dignify it with the name of war.”
