10 Years After The Paris Attacks, What Have We Learned?

On this day 10 years ago, 137 souls in Paris, France had no idea they were spending their last moments on Earth.

In a matter of hours, the City of Light would be rocked by Islamic terror.

Explosions could be heard from the broadcast of the friendly match between the French and German national soccer teams inside the Stade de France.

The blast came from a suicide bomber who was luckily turned away from entering the stadium by security before detonating his vest.

After the first bombing, more attackers took to the streets and started shooting up restaurants and outdoor cafés filled with patrons while more explosions followed.

But the worst was yet to come.

Mere miles from the initial blast site, a live music venue called The Bataclan was playing host to American rock band, The Eagles of Death Metal, with plenty of their devoted fans in attendance.

Unfortunately, The Bataclan was also unwittingly playing host to the single deadliest terror attack in France's history.

Three Islamic extremists stormed the theater, armed with automatic rifles, and shouted "Allahu Akbar" as they opened fire.

Many of the guests mistook the blasts for pyrotechnics initially.

The band was able to escape through a backdoor, but the guests weren't so lucky.

All in all, 90 people were killed before the three gunmen either detonated their own suicide vests or were taken out by law enforcement.

The motives were familiar ones, both at the moment of the attacks and ten years after.

ISIS claimed responsibility, citing retaliation against France and other western nations for their involvement in the Middle East.

While ISIS isn't at the height of its powers like it was a decade ago, an attack like this feels all too likely to happen again in the same city these atrocities took place on that fateful night in 2015.

France has been experiencing its own version of an immigration crisis.

The terrorists who committed these atrocities were French nationals of African descent, but they were radicalized by an ISIS terror cell based in Brussels.

Europe experienced a wave of immigration from Muslim countries such as Syria around the time these terror attacks started to ramp up in Europe, more specifically France.

The more the streets of Paris and beyond are flooded with young men from these areas who show hostility towards the western world, the higher the odds are of seeing repeat attacks.

Obviously, not every Muslim immigrant is a terror threat, but even if 0.1 percent of the 12 million immigrants living in France are violent Islamic extremists, that's 12,000 ideologically charged men and women being released onto an unsuspecting populous.

One of the oldest sayings in the book is that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

With that being said, the Paris attacks happened just ten short years ago, and to my untrained eye, it doesn't look like we have learned anything.

France, along with several other western nations, must learn from its recent, bloody history, or it will be doomed to repeat it.

And that would be a slap in the face to the victims and their families whose lives were forever altered 10 years ago tonight.