That's precisely the goal. The very best response to attacks like these would be to simply treat them as ordinary crimes but that's never going to fly in the current political climate. And so we escalate. The end-state of this is civil war, and if it keeps going for a while we'll have a re-run of the Yugoslavian wars without the added benefit of a nicely segregated population so that it can be stopped.

The kind of language I hear around me from otherwise intelligent people is extremely worrying.

I was a bit angry at the French (amongst other) government response toward the Paris attacks. Lack of wisdom and fluff sign of strength. And as you said, it giving them the credit they're asking for. We're here discussing on a website, what else can we do ? is the invisible flow of emotion flowing up to countries head too heavy ?