The world’s wealthiest failed state... a population that’s complicit.... a very strong implantation... politicians who don't want problems....

"[D]espite its success in arresting [the alleged leader of the Paris massacre Salah] Abdeslam, Belgium continues to present a special security problem to Europe."

The country of just 11.2 million people faces widening derision as being the world’s wealthiest failed state — a worrying mix of deeply rooted terrorist networks, a government weakened by divisions among French, Dutch and German speakers, and an overwhelmed intelligence service in seemingly chronic disarray....

“This shows the limits of the actions you can undertake in a state of emergency,” said Philippe Hayez, a former official with the D.G.S.E., the French external intelligence service.... But unless you occupy it militarily, you don’t hold a town just by circulating police cars. We’re talking about guerrilla terrorism. And there’s a population that’s complicit.”...

[Alain Juillet, who helped reorganize the D.G.S.E., said:] “We can easily see that Belgium has become a hub. So that when you arrest someone” — he referred to the arrest Friday of Mr. Abdeslam — “there will be a reaction... All of this is to say that the implantation of the network is more firm than we thought... The police were efficient — and yet this happened. So, there is a very strong implantation in Belgium"....

“The Belgian police are excellent,” said another former D.G.S.E. official, Alain Chouet. “The problems are political. They let develop violent Islamist currents. They were not disrupted because they didn’t want problems with the Muslim community.”

"'I absolutely love this job,' [John Kerry] told me more than once. “It is so much fun.”

Me = David Remnick, in The New Yorker, who drops that quote right after this description of a few weeks in the life of John Kerry:

One day, his plane settled in Samarkand, where he patiently endured a forty-five-minute lecture from the dictator of Uzbekistan. The next day, he was in Ashgabat, the surreal, peopleless capital of Turkmenistan, a hermetic state where the post-Soviet dictator renamed the days of the week and devoted a national day to the muskmelon. Kerry had flown to Santiago to take part in a conference to save the world’s oceans. Then he was in Paris, in the wake of the terrorist attack at the Bataclan concert hall, to join talks designed to rescue the earth from overheating to the point of global catastrophe.

Can you detect Remnick's opinion of Kerry in those 4 sentences? I think he doesn't want to speak ill of him — not outright — but he sees him as a sad failure. Here's one more paragraph from the article. Test my theory:

But while Kerry made his name in a radical voice, he was always a man of the establishment. More than any diplomat or politician this side of Bill Clinton, he has an abiding faith in the value of personal relationships and of his capacity to persuade. All he has to do is get the parties in a room and he can’t lose. Obama, by contrast, has no more cultivated relationships with foreign leaders than he has with Republican leaders. Where Obama is skeptical, Kerry is almost sentimental in his optimism. He has even made his peace with Henry Kissinger: “I seek his advice—he’s a brilliant guy.” He recounted a lunch that they had recently, at which Kissinger told him, “The difference between you and me is that I think that personal relations don’t matter much. I think interests matter.” Kerry replied, “I think interests matter, of course, but I think personal relations can help matters—they can be influential.”

And, a bit later:

There is no concealing his eagerness to make a deal; to a critic, his style is reminiscent of the customer who sternly tells the salesman, “I’m not leaving here until you sell me a car.” No one seems to inspire Kerry’s outrage, including the worst of his negotiating partners. “I think they want to be valued for who they are and understood for where they come from and what their life is about,” he told me. “I think if people have a sense that you know what they’re about, they can build some trust with you....”

But don't you have a sense that they know what you're about? What if they see you as an over-optimistic sentimentalist who really wants to make a deal and to feel that he has a relationship with you?

Break out the champagne! Yesterday's raid did, as intended, get man believed to have led the Paris attacks.

"Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Belgian militant suspected of orchestrating the Paris terrorist attacks, was killed in a police raid in the northern Paris suburb of St.-Denis early Wednesday, the French authorities announced on Thursday. The confirmation of Mr. Abaaoud’s death followed forensic tests, the Paris prosecutor, François Molins, said in a statement."

What does this new Charlie Hebdo cover really mean?

The text translates: "They have weapons. Fuck them. We have champagne!"

One interpretation is: The French are resilient. They retain joie de vivre through all adversity. The champagne flows in and right out of the bullet-riddle body but life goes on. There's more champagne. They can never stop us.

But there's an alternate interpretation: We are oblivious. We party on as if we are not dying. We're in the last steps of a dance that cannot continue. The intake of champagne can't possibly match the outflow of champagne/blood. Stop playing and get serious.

"'Not in my name' - Muslims speak out against Paris attacks conducted in the name of Islam."

"Muslims have taken to Twitter to say '#IAmAMuslim and I condemn the Paris attacks' in order to show solidarity with France and that Islam is a religion of peace."

Was there a "mastermind" of the Paris attacks?

It troubles me to see press reports that inflate the ingeniousness of terrorist attacks. In a post yesterday, I was critical of reports that called the attacks "well-coordinated" when it seemed to me that the attacks were "sloppily done and mostly unsuccessful."

Today, I'm seeing a NYT banner headline: "FRANCE SEEKS BELGIAN MILITANT AS MASTERMIND OF PARIS ATTACKS." Whoever participated in the attacks is despicable. Why glorify him as a "mastermind"? A "mastermind" is — I'm quoting the OED — "An outstanding or commanding mind or intellect; a person with such a mind" or — and this is most relevant here — "A person who plans and directs a complex and ingenious enterprise."

I don't see complexity and ingeniousness. The attackers didn't invent the communications systems or the modes of encryption that must have made it possible to say today's the day. They didn't assemble the crowds in the restaurants or concert hall or stadium. And they didn't figure out how to get anywhere near President François Hollande.

Why inflate the reputation of these people? Even if you respect the value of propaganda, how does it serve our interests more than theirs?

"The well-coordinated series of terror attacks on Paris left more than 129 people dead..."

That's from a CBS News article, "ISIS claims 'blessed invasion' of Paris." Obviously, "blessed invasion" is inflated propaganda from ISIS, but I want to question the characterizations we're seeing from our own politicians and journalists. I keep seeing expressions of respect for the sophistication of the Paris attacks, and I want to question it, because there is a temptation to say, when attacked, that the enemy must be very smart and strong and determined.

But was it really so difficult to send a bunch of men out all on the same day to hit soft targets — 4 restaurants, a concert hall, and a stadium? There are so many restaurants, completely unguarded and accessible, predictably full of people. Men with guns/explosives hit 4 restaurants in one city, not 100, not 1000.

The concert venue was another soft target, and the scene was chaotic. Many escaped. If the building were sealed up before anyone knew they were under attack, it would have been sophisticated, or if the entire building were demolished, killing everyone. But it was only men with guns rushing in, causing what damage they could, with (apparently) absolutely no plan for their own escape.

The stadium was the big target. The president, François Hollande, was in attendance. The attackers got nowhere near him. In fact, the attackers apparently scuttled whatever big plan they might have had, blowing themselves up at the gates. The huge crowd didn't even know there was an attack. Hollande slipped out and the crowd watched the game to the end.

What's scary isn't that the attacks are sophisticated, but how easy it is to hit a bunch of soft targets in one city, and how big a deal it is even when it's sloppily done and mostly unsuccessful. That's how it looks to me.