After the outpourings of grief for Paris terror victims, will the longer-term response only create more misery and death?

Such terrible savagery: hundreds of people mown down on the streets of Paris on a Friday night out, leaving more than 120 dead. The immediate knee-jerk reactions were correct: spontaneous singing of La Marseillaise; home-made banners on many streets worldwide proclaiming “We are all humans”; long queues of people offering their blood for victims critically ill in hospital; the French tricolour lit up on the Brandenburg Gate, the Sydney Opera House, London’s Tower Bridge and New York’s One World Trade Center.

The danger is that the second reactions may be counterproductive. Potential disasters include a backlash against Muslims in Europe, slamming the doors against refugees from the turmoil in the Middle East and, worst, narrow nationalism and thoughtless indifference to the entrenched problems of a troubled world.

READ MORE: Paris terror attacks

Could the Paris killings have been avoided? Where was all the expensive surveillance, snooping and spying by government intelligence agencies which failed to detect seven coordinated and near-simultaneous attacks? There was advance internet chatter suggesting some form of terrorism because the Japanese embassy in Moscow warned its nationals to stay indoors before the Paris attacks.

But warnings in Moscow are a long way from real horrors in Paris. Even leaving aside the failure of intelligence to recognise them, how did terrorists get Kalashnikovs into the heart of the French capital?

These Paris atrocities were not like that on Charlie Hebdo, which poked fun at Islam. They were attacks on ordinary Parisians enjoying their normal Friday lives: having a drink, going to a concert or a football match can get you killed under the Islamic State’s campaign, supposedly blessed by Allah.