I have to ask, and please excuse my ignorance here, but what are we supposed to do?<p>If men, armed with guns and explosives, kill scores of civilians and injure hundreds more in the name of a particular ideology what are we supposed to actually do? When I hear the thought that &quot;responding with knee-jerk Islamophobia&quot; is exactly what they want it begs the question: should we do nothing? Any response is going to be deemed Islamophobic because the response is going to single out Muslims. Is that really a crazy thing though? The shooters sure weren&#x27;t Shinto.<p>If we do literally nothing then what? We wait for another deadly, and possibly more spectacular attack. Are we supposed to do nothing then too? At what point are we supposed to act? I feel very torn on this because I have at times thought that as crazy as some may be Islamist extremists sometimes have a point about Western interference in the Middle East. However, I cannot get behind the idea that when they gun down civilians at restaurants and concerts that the response should be anything but severe.<p>I also take issue with people who label Western aggression in response to terrorism &quot;Islamophobic.&quot; We in the West are not the ones making it about Islam. The terrorists are. They are the ones showing up with guns screaming about their God. They are the ones using their religion to recruit and justify their actions. And so when governments go after them then YES, they are going after Muslims. That is the bed they made and unfortunately we all have to sleep in it.