Beruit, Paris and the aftermath
 

Yes, ISIS is dangerous. But it is not dangerous because of Islam. It is dangerous because it is totalitarian, because it is an extremist ideology. It is dangerous like Nazism, like Communism, both of which highjacked an ideology, namely socialism, and perverted it by turning it into a cult, a religion.

There is far too much ranting by people who have small brains and short memories. It wasn't long ago that the congressional and medial air was full of hatred for the French because they didn't want an invasion of Iraq. It makes me sick to see the pious babbling, not least among the Republican presidential candidates who are falling all over one another over who loves France and God most.

It wasn't long ago that people were boycotting wine and cheese. You can find this on the Internet if you have forgotten:

I am an Obama fan, but his mention of France as "our oldest ally" was unfortunate and has set off a lot of ranting by pseudo-pious parrots.

The historic truth (if there is such a thing) is that France backed the US in the Revolutionary War in order to weaken their traditional enemy Britain. The French had just been defeated in the so-called French and Indian War and wanted to recoup their losses.

Democracy is no patent solution. Democracy will not work, as is evident in the United States today, unless it is borne up by a critical and informed populace. Democracy cannot force people to cooperate. Cooperation is a prerequisite for democracy.

Furthermore democracy cannot be imposed top down onto a population long subjected to an authoritarian government and with no or weak structures for self-rule. That opens the door to corruption. Furthermore even those who want democracy might not want the commercial trappings that seems to accompany it.

This is not to detract from the sorrow and pain left in the wake of the attack on Paris. Religion divides. Politics divides. Only our human state unites us

Less ranting, please, and less calling for a Supreme Parent, whoever he or she is, to step up to kiss the hurt and make it well by annihilating whoever we point at.

I would not be surprised if there weren't planned attacks on European soil every weekend until Christmas. This would turn many strong-hearted and weak-minded patriots against the unfortunate refugees looking for a haven. We should be aware that they are a pawn in the ISIS strategy because they have chosen to leave rather than become part of the so-called Caliphate. One of my fears is that European opinion will fall into that trap.

Warning for the faint-hearted. This may make you want to barf. http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/par...cifics-n463611

Really good article at the Atlantic. Pretty long, but worth the read:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...-wants/384980/

My thought are with Paris, Brian Allgar et al.

Ian McEwan's take.

Duncan

PS I started this thread three years ago on the 13th November.

"One of my fears is that European opinion will fall into that trap."

I find that a very odd first-order fear, Janice. So, Europe has already fallen into the trap of allowing the perpetrators wthin its gates (and let's presume, many other murderers too). Nonetheless the prescription in your mind remains clear: Europeans must 'avoid the trap' of forestalling a continued stream of jihadists. Is there a cost so prohibitive in your mind that it would disabuse you of your vision of a borderless continent? Because it's killing people and will kill a whole lot more:

"Brothers believed to be involved hours after Omar Ismail Mostefai named as dead gunman as other suspected jihadist revealed to have entered France through Serbia, Greece and Macedonia."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...ests-live.html

I'm imagining a bullet-proof, Pan-European flag flying high over a desolate, bombed-out landscape. Unperturbed, the flag-wavers claim...victory. It's like nihilism in its kumbaya permutation. Or is it that some people insist on seeing a Shangri-La where's there's only an abyss? Both can't be right. What side does this week's Paris argue for?

The cost of Pan-Europeanism is looking, sadly enough, like Europe itself --at least in something other than a militarized and surveilled armed camp. How many weekend assaults can the continent sustain as it continues in its role as a socially engineered hospice camp for unfortunate others? Surely what happened in Paris not a mere flesh wound to be sustained, week-in, week-out?

We could stem the flow of refugees, take away the root cause, by letting Syria be Syria again. However this might run counter to UN Commissioner Peter Sutherland's determination to discredit borders in all their permutations. ("I will ask the governments to cooperate, to recognise that sovereignty is an illusion – that sovereignty is an absolute illusion that has to be put behind us. The days of hiding behind borders and fences are long gone." --Oct 2015). So, love the jihadists in your midst. Hiding from mass carnage is a vestige of a bygone era. Thank you Dr. Strangelove.

The walk-back would be a bitch as it involves Western de-funding of covert regime-change activities (France is up to its ears in this) and allowing for free elections. The real sting at the moment is that Assad (to the envy of practically every other Western leader) enjoys 55% popularity. So there is a chance he might survive. There goes that democracy-thing getting up to the craziest things once again. That would make the fiasco complete --and I suspect completely untenable for the powers-that-be. Fortunately our G-20 leaders (meeting this week) will be saved from this walk-back (quite possibly) by NATO entry into the Syrian conflict. Hollande has declared the attacks an Act of War. Let's see if they kick in Article 5 this week and against whom (the CIA?):

“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked.”

So, quite possibly a face-saving (for them) doubling-down --the fog of World War Three could yet prove to be their salvation. Hooray for them. Our salvation is less certain.

Steady on the taunts of nihilism, Norman; your own contribution would seem distinctly competitive in that area! I assume that Janice, who can certainly answer well enough for herself, was both warning that to abandon Europe's inclusivist stance and to join the hyping up (here you seem to agree) of making 'war' will only make matters worse - both by doing more recruitment-inducing damage in the Middle East and by further undermining the civilised values which the free culture of Europe is meant to enshrine. I agree with her.

The root causes, as I'm sure from past posts of yours you also believe, lie in the aggressive hyping up of Western wars and surrogate wars over a very long period of time - perhaps culminating in the illegal war of aggression against Iraq. Until the West changes its foreign policies and begins to attempt to apologise for and repair the damage caused by its past, the future does indeed look bleak. On our Channel 4 news this last week (Thursday or Wednesday evening, I think - and you can catch it up on the net) there was a remarkably blunt and clear-sighted commentary provided by a refugee worker on one of the refugee deluged Balkan frontiers. Speaking initially of the refugee situation, he said, "This" he gestured to the refugee crush on the frontier barrier, "is what we deserve." That is of course a long, long way from the appalling events in Paris - and the even worse ones perpetrated against fellow Muslims in the Middle East on an apparently unending basis - but they are words, belonging to their own context, that have been haunting me this weekend.

I think the situation is past the point where that would be much of a solution. I don't think this war is about the progression of the physical across a border as much as the progression of an idea crossing thresholds in individual psyches. The conversion point is not in combatant successfully arriving in the enemies territory but rather the conversion of the citizen into enemy, into self-sworn combatant in-situ.
I understand that it is becoming a bordered, physical division as well but how do you keep "them" out when "we" are the raw material of the "them". Maybe I miss your intention in this note. There is an appeal in this ideology that is beyond a simple reaction to hypocrisy or injustice or any action of the "Other". A subset of the population needs this, whatever it is. But it is not a subset that can be separated out by last name or last known residence, right? Or maybe not...

So, you don't live in Europe, but you know exactly what's going on because you google the tabloids. Should I laugh or cry?

Firstly, the refugees are FLEEING from ISIS. They are not a stream of terrorists.

Secondly, it is the considered opinion of analysts here that the Syrian passport trail was fake and intended to make people think exactly as you did. Are you so foolish as to believe that this terrorist spent months walking to France from Greece to join up with his cronies on a preset date so they could perpetrate mayhem? Talk about a whacko conspiracy.

You see, Norman, ISIS wants us to distrust the refugees and treat them badly. It is win-win for ISIS if that happens. They are already on the ISIS shit list because they fled rather than join the caliphate, many with children, with elderly relatives, with pregnant wives. So, reasons ISIS, if they are mistreated on the trek, they are getting their just deserts.

Secondly, if they are treated badly--as some inevitably will be and have been in the long journey--maybe they will be driven back to the arms of the waiting ISIS caliphate.

Thirdly, it is not a good idea to form a political opinion (or any other opinion) from tabloid news. Especially, the tabloids, but even the more trusted sites can get it wrong in the heat of the battle for a scoop.

When the attack was ongoing, I was following along in various ways. Checking the internet and sources in both the US, Britain and on the continent.

The Swedish death report on the national radio (a medium I trust more than any other, I totally revere them) continually reported the death toll under what the hysterical media elsewhere was reporting. Even the BBC had inflated figures.

And you know what, the Swedish radio, always cautious and always fair to give both sides of any story, were correct. When things began to stabilize, the other media had to backpedal from 150 and 153 etc. and it turned out that the lower figure, 120, presented by our radio and television reporters was correct. Sadly this later rose to 129 and I think it is now 132, but that isn't the point.

I really feel insulted by your warped pontificating. We have fewer murderers "within our gates" than you blithely assume.

Here are homicide rates for 2012. USA 4.7, Sweden 0.7, Norway 2.2, Finland 1.6. UK 1.0.

If it hadn't been for the terrorist attack by the white supremacist and so-called Christian Anders Behring Breivik , the homicide rate in Norway would be at 0.6.

Sweden has a long tradition of immigration from many war-torn countries including Iran, Iraq, Bosnia, The racial murders, assault and harassment have been by extremist white Christians and neo-Nazis and the victims were immigrants, gays, Jews, Muslims, Romani, and other minorities.

I think this from the Wall Street Journal speaks volumes. http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-pres...ees-1441396786

At a very low estimate of 1500 a day, Sweden alone has that many arriving at their borders in only 43 days. But the current figure for arrivals is higher than 1500.

Norman, you should be ashamed of yourself for spreading such crap.

Carthago delenda est.
 

For a hegemonic empire like America, identifying a threat can be a tricky business, particularly when it comes in the form of a somewhat amorphous terror group instead of an easily defined country with simple boundaries. For the Bush administration it was simply a matter of substituting the country of Iraq for bin Laden's Saudi Arabia, and then making Iraq a target for regime change and the institution of wonderful ideals like liberty and democracy. It was Saddam and his evil forces who had to be destroyed on the pretext that they had weapons of mass destruction, that the country served as a breeding ground for terrorists and might be a threat to us in the future. Iraq as a substitute for Saudi Arabia must be attacked; Saddam as a substitute for bin Laden must be destroyed.

This recalls to some degree the similar philosophy of the burgeoning Roman Republic and those haunting words of Cato the Elder, who would end every speech with a version of Carthago delenda est (Carthage must be destroyed). Then, it being one of those first recorded best and worst of times, with a red-hearted army ready to make history for Rome in the best way and for Carthage in the worst of all possible ways, the Roman general Scipio Aemelianus took his troops and made it so. Indeed, the Punic Wars of Rome seem to have served as a kind of harbinger for what Bush and the USA adopted as a primary tactical philosophy of pre-emption, since Carthage actually posed no threat to Rome just as Iraq posed no threat to the USA after the al-Qaeda attacks. Now ancient and recent history resonate once more as some of our more stiffbacked warmongers have been calling for Daesh to be destroyed. Daesh delenda est. And then, once it is dealt with, supposedly scorched earth and all, they might also start thinking like Scipio and want to salt the battlefield (in some modern form) for good measure.

I suppose I can be called to task for comparing Carthage to a relatively amorphous terror group, especially since Carthage was actually destroyed and Iraq -- as a substitute for al-Qaeda and Wahabbist Saudi Arabia – was irreparably damaged but not destroyed in the same scorched earth/salted battlefield sense, with the result that al-Qaeda or some branch of it transmogrified or morphed into Daesh. In a more direct sense, perhaps, Gaza might be seen as a closer correlative to Carthage, an indirectly cautionary exemplum for the USA as an ally of Israel. But, more cautionary for the USA and Europe is using the pretense of imminent threat as an excuse for attacking countries who pose no actual threat or for bombing regions where terrorists are located, when the actual problem is more of a question of economic hegemony and mercenary profiteering, a matter of cynical cui bono and never one of preserving and protecting the higher aims of liberty, equality, or democracy.

However, now that Daesh has proven to be more of an actual threat to Europe, the parallel with Rome is more apt than ever, although the idea of destroying an amorphous terrorist group that hides itself among various civilian populations seems rather irrational. Daesh must be destroyed; but the question is, where is it? And what will have to be destroyed in order to root it out? The entire Levant? The entire Middle East? Then what? All Muslims living in western countries? It gets to be a reductio ad absurdum of really sinister proportions.

Rome also exhibited too much arrogance, to the point of hubris, as over time it became an empire gradually declining, with each reign becoming more and more willful, eccentric, and decadent... until at last, Rome fell. Can we say that the warmongers, the profiteers, and western leaders are now also arrogant and willful because there are no real checks and balances to keep them in line?

I am also reminded of Nietzsche's cautionary words to this effect: beware of fighting monsters lest you become one. Sometimes I think we came out of the war with Nazi Germany and somehow turned into a neofascist monster state as a result of that engagement. Now it looks as though it has turned into a never-ending cycle, like morphed shades of a rather grotesque eternal recurrence of empire, crusade, torture, terrorism, and scorched-earth warfare against peoples living in countries we wish to exploit.

Enough.

Unfounded opinions go both ways, Janice, as this from the New York Times suggests this morning:

So, though it still needs to be verified, the evidence is mounting.

Besides, no one but xenophobic fanatics would say that most of the refugees are terrorists or would-be terrorists. The point is that anyone planning to join in terrorist acts in Western Europe could use the chaotic influx of people as a chance to enter undetected. It only takes a small number of people to devastate a city, as we saw the other night. The point is not to stop refugees, but that the flow has to be very carefully controlled, monitored, and registered. And this hasn't been happening.

This view seems accurate. http://www.danielpipes.org/16272/why...limited-impact

The trap that Europeans will fall into is believing their only choice is between jihadist massacres and an increasingly authoritarian EU federation, of which Hollande's vow to wage war against the perpetrators "sans pitié" is the first glimmer. Behind a façade of patriotic militarism, the EU partners will continue building Eurabia, outflanking the populist/nationalist parties, who do not have the governmental power to make a show of defending their populations.