In the month after the November terrorist attacks that killed 130 people in Paris, the French government launched airstrikes against ISIS targets in the Middle East—responding with all the ferocity of an irritated sleeper slapping at the alarm clock to get it to shut up.
The alarm had rung before: in the March 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people; in the July 2005 London attack that killed 56; in the January 2015 assault on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo that killed 17. Europe has swiped at the snooze button several times in recent years—but why, really, should the Continent wake up? Why should the Island of the Lotus-Eaters ever rouse itself from dreams?
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