Peace for Paris pic.twitter.com/ryf6XB2d80
— jean jullien (@jean_jullien) November 13, 2015
Today, terrorists attacked Paris. In a series of well-orchestrated assaults, they killed over 153 people in a series of locations including restaurants, a concert hall and the soccer stadium, in which the French president was watching a match between the French national team and Germany. It is one of the worst such attacks in decades in France and possibly the worst terror attack in the west since 9/11. There is little doubt that for France, today is 9/11. The breadth of the attacks, the coördination required to execute them, the lethal weaponry used, the well-trained commandos who mounted the assault, and the massive death toll–all will combine to leave an indelible impact on the nation. There will also be cries for accountability: how could a sophisticated national security apparatus have allowed a squad of terrorists to infiltrate a massive cache of weapons into one of the most likely terror targets in Europe? How did these terrorists plan and orchestrate this attack under the noses of security forces who have already faced multiple earlier attacks?
I only hope that France will not make the massive error that this country made in response to its 9/11. This AP headline does not bode well in that regard: Hollande says attacks were ‘an act of war.’ I hope it will not fall prey to the same nostrums offered by Bush and Cheney. For the war on terror was one of the worst policy choices made by a U.S. president since the Vietnam War. It sent us down the road to two wars over more than a decade, which cost the lives of thousands of American soldiers and the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Afghanis, and others (Yemen, Somalia, etc.). Luckily for the French, they have neither the resources nor the military capability of getting themselves into as much trouble as we have. But that doesn’t mean that bad choices made now won’t have even worse consequences for France over the coming years. Given a series of terror attacks mounted by Islamists over the past five years or more in Paris, Toulouse and elsewhere, it appears likely that the perpetrators were Islamists. Though no one appears yet to know whether they are affiliated with ISIS, al Qaeda or another movement. Further, survivors of the concert attack heard the killers shouting Allah Akbar and heard them speaking about conditions in Syria and Iraq. With many caveats, I’d hazard a guess that if the killers were Islamists, they were likely affiliated with ISIS. It is this group which has been put on the defensive by allied attacks over the past six months. Today brought news that Kurdish forces had recaptured a town which had been a major symbol of ISIS’ original advance, Sinjar. Observers have begun talking about an assault on the movement’s headquarters in the Syrian city of Raqqa; and a possible military assault on Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, one which ISIS captured with embarrassing ease at the outset of its campaign. These victories would not have been thinkable a year or two ago as ISIS scored its shocking series of successes and swept through hundreds of miles of Iraqi and Syrian territory. As Russia and Iran stabilize what had been a tenuous hold by Syria’s Pres. Bashar Assad on power and territory, and other Islamist groups in Syria fight back against ISIS, the latter is, if not on the run, then on the defensive. That may be why, I believe, it chose to mount an attack on a Russian civilian airliner over the Egyptian Sinai (though I also believe that local Islamist rebels likely provided local logistical help in penetrating the airport). That attack left 224 Russian travelers dead.
After Russia sent troops, war planes and advanced weaponry to Syria to bolster Assad in his fight against the Islamist rebels, it seems almost axiomatic that the latter would seek to strike back. Attacking a Russian target in Egypt would kill two birds with one stone: it would avenge Russian attacks in Syria and the Egyptian military’s massacres against the Muslim Brotherhood. An ISIS strike against France also makes sense from this point of view: France is one of the allied powers seeking to roll back ISIS gains in Syria and Iraq. It also has the largest Muslim population in the west, which offers fertile ground for recruitment.
What terror seeks is to provoke hatred- and thus, they will recruit the hated ones, the marginal, the desperate into their ranks. — Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) November 14, 2015
How will France and other western nations respond? There can be no doubt that there will be renewed resolve to eradicate ISIS. It is likely that there will be successes in such a campaign. They may identify the masterminds of this plot and kill them as they did Osama bin Laden and other key al Qaeda leaders.
But it seems just as likely that as al Qaeda morphed into ISIS, that ISIS will morph into yet another Islamist movement whose mission will be avenging the alleged crimes by western nations against Muslims and Islam. No counter-terror campaign can eradicate an idea once it takes root so deeply in an entire population. You can’t defeat a grudge and the deep emotional scars that it leaves. You can beat it and bomb it and drive it underground or back into someone’s heart. But you can’t eradicate it.
I come back to an idea I’ve expressed here often, far too often it seems (given how many terror attacks I’ve mourned here): counter-terror is a tactic, not a strategy. It is a stopgap. A placeholder given the lack of a real constructive policy of engagement. If we want the Middle East to stop producing terrorists, we must offer hope and change to those most disaffected. As an aside, the tweet above was published by Guillermo del Toro, the Hollywood director, in response to the terror attack. His father was kidnapped, threatened with death, and later freed after paying a heavy ransom.
We must do everything we did not do during the Arab Spring. Then, we stood back and watched in awe as the youth toppled the old men: the generals and tyrants. Then, when the Old Guard struck back we stood by and did nothing. We’ve now reengaged with killers like al-Sisi and the Saudi royals who aided in the massacres of majority Shias in Bahrain and now in Yemen. We offered no message, no hope, no example.
There is one possible small bright spot. Pres. Obama has presented a constructive option in relations with Iran. The nuclear deal could be a stepping-stone toward a fuller process of détente with that country. Negotiations could, if things go in the right direction, bring understandings about broader issues including Syria and Lebanon. But only if the U.S. can bring Israel to heel and compel compromises that that country’s rightist leadership will resist mightily.
There must be a third choice between the Islamist suicide bomber and the western drone strike. A choice that affirms hard bargaining, mutual compromise, and negotiated solutions.
Finally, there is a terribly irony that no western journalist will point out: yesterday, ISIS planted two bombs in a Beirut neighborhood that is a Hezbollah stronghold. 43 Lebanese died. Neither is this the first or second or even third such explosion orchestrated by ISIS against Lebanese. Will anyone in the west weep as much for these dead Arab victims as they are justly weeping for the dead Parisians? Whose dead are worth more? Or are Arab dead worth anything??
Apologies: My web host’s server went down earlier today for just over an hour. I apologize for the inconvenience any of you may’ve suffered who tried and failed to access the site.
“If we want the Middle East to stop producing terrorists, we must offer hope and change to those most disaffected.”
Richard.
Some people just like to watch things burn, and no offer of hope is going to change them.
@ Hopper:
I know a few of them. THey burn churches, mosques and little babies in the beds. They’re called Israeli settlers!
Making invidious comparison between ISIS and Jewish settlers is a diversion.
The question, which you haven’t addressed, is whether ISIS or Al Queda can be brought to negotiate with offers of ‘hope an change’.
If they will negotiate, what are their demands, and what should be offer them?
“We must do everything we did not do during the Arab Spring.”
Secretary Kerry just said Tunisia’s democracy was “a shining example to those who claim that democracy is not possible in this part of the world.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/13/us-usa-tunisia-idUSKCN0T22DH20151113#1QPUh6tMVWZxxL14.99
Now, four years after revolt toppled autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia has completed its transition to democracy with free elections, a new constitution and compromise politics between secular and Islamist parties.
Yet security forces in Tunisia are still battling militants, including Ansar al Sharia, who recently slaughtered dozens of tourists in Tunisia, and just the other day, beheaded a rural shepherd boy and sent his head back to his family in a bag.
So. What more are ‘we’ to do now?
Absolutely nothing. Stay out of Tunisian politics and stay out of the occupied territories. Got it?
@ Hopper: Decades after the American Revolution we had the Shays Rebellion in which George Washington had to kill Pennsylvanians who revolted against federal authority. In Israel, Ben Gurion commanded that Begin’s forces be routed in the Altalena. Of course, there are growing pains when nations are founded. Is that a reason to assume they will ultimately fail? Or that they must never have problems or violence in the process of establishing themselves?
Only disingenuous fools like you make such arguments.
Shay’s Rebellion, and the Whiskey Rebellion were minor insurrections carried out by men with legitimate political grievances. These American ‘rebels’ were neither nihilists nor terrorists, and they certainly didn’t bomb, slaughter, enslave or decapitate innocent civilians. In fact, I don’t think hurt anybody.
Your comparison comes up short.
Hopper. Try our Civil War. Better?
In my view, any list of massive terrorist attacks in the middle east (or anywhere else — Paris 2015 and New York 2001 come to mind) should begin with the USA’s attack on Iraq and the USA’s cleanup of Faluja and shoukld include Israel’s attacks on Gaza and south lebanon. I know, I know, American official-megaphone media call USA’s and Israel’s efforts “war” and call the other folks’ efforts “terror”. But the knowing and deliberate killing of large numbers of civilians, and the purpose for doing so, seem to me — am I wrong ? — the same.
Absolutely right, pabelmont. The major paper Le Parisien headline “Cette fois c’est la guerre” (This time it’s war) expresses the opinion of the political leadership here in France, but of course as Olivier Berruyer (http://www.les-crises.fr/la-france-est-en-guerre-ben-oui-depuis-longtemps-cretin) points out this war started years ago with French bombings in Afghanistan, Libya, Mali and Syria and hasn’t let up since.
Perhaps the fact that President Hollande early this week renewed bombing in Syria and also sent France’s aircraft carrier to the Middle East to make easier the escalation helped motivate the Paris attacks. It is no secret that Hollande has wanted for years to overthrow the current Syrian government (he conspired to send arms to Syrian rebels in 2012 in violation of a EU embargo as he stated to the author Xavier Panon (http://www.editionsarchipel.com/livre/dans-les-coulisses-de-la-diplomatie-francaise).
All this helps to make it clear why France is a target for retaliation, and not Denmark, Germany or Italy for example. Too bad that innocent people are the victims of the disgusting attack in Paris last night, but the responsibility for their deaths is shared by western leaders. Let us mourn these victims, aslo mourn those of Beirut earlier this week, those of the attack on the Russian plane last week, and those of the actions that pabelmont mentions here.
“All this helps to make it clear why France is a target for retaliation, ”
But for the military interventions by France and the United States, ISIS would probably have already rolled through Syria into Lebanon, and minorities, like the Alawites, would be sold in slave bazaars in Damascus.
Vive la France! Vive la liberte!
En tant que citoyen de France, permettez-moi d’ajouter :
Vive tous les peuples de la Syrie, quelle que soient leurs confessions.
You mean “Liberte” for the few, not for all.
ISIS would not even have been born had it not been for the US- paid and supported Saudi intolerance impregnated tino the minds of Afghans and Pakistanis (Taliban), which gave birth to Al-Qaeda…which led to ISIS.
Now, the West that has bene responsible fo almost all the oppression, dictatorships, tyrannies and intolerant thinking, would like to destroy what they created, with the largest hammer they can find. I believe a better choice woyuld be for the West to draw together and support POEPLE (“Liberte!” remember?) and means for them to eat, find peace, shelter, education and jobs
THAT, will destroy ISIS, Al-Q et al but that is a long-term (although lasting) solution and the West does not like long, drawn-out solutions.
So we are destined to be in this “War!” that nobody wants…on any “side”.
But for the military intervention of the U.S. 5,000 American youth would be alive. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans & Iraqi victims of war & occupation would still be alive. Western colonial intervention in the Middle East (and its proxies like Israel) are pernicious and noxious.
“But for the military intervention of the U.S. 5,000 American youth would be alive ”
No doubt.
And but for the military intervention, Saddam’s killing machine would have continued unabated.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-180704/Mass-graves-Iraq.html
@Hopper: Who made Saddam? WHo supported him in his insane war against Iran? Don Rumsfeld & Dick Cheney, my man. Just like your pal, Gen. Sharon dipped his hands in Lebanese blood in Sabra & Shatilla helping his proxies massacre 3,000 women & children.
ONce again, my man, you’ve violated the comment rules by going off-topic. I have a certain limited amount of patience, but this is yr 3rd warning in the past week. You are on notice. I do hear the jet engines revving for your departure from Ben Gurion on Hasbara Airlines…
Where did I gone off topic? The nucleus of ISIS is made up of Saddam’s Baath Party dead enders.
Salut l’ami !
I guess you’re the James Whitney that sometimes comment on Rue89.
The terrorists at Bataclan clearly stated that this was a response to the bombings of Syria and Iraq (their positions of course).
It seems the terrorist State of Israel is proposing its help to fight terrorism in France, isn’t that ironic ? And Manuel-I-am-eternally-linked-to-Israel-Valls is probably eager to accept.
Sigh ….
Salut Deïr Yassin !
You are correct, except that since Rue89 has more or less been captured by NouvelObs (although I respect some of its contributers), I comment now more on Olivier Berruyer’s http://www.les-crises.fr/, although not often, and also read Le Yeti and Jacques Sepir.
I see you understand how things work in Europe and the Middle East.
Amitiés,
James
Pabelmont. One must actually go back much longer namely to the betrayal of Arab leaders by Wilson, Clemenceau, and Lloyd George at the Paris “Future-Wars” Conference of 1919 followed by the ruthless exploitation and suppression of the Mandates by France and Great Britain.
We have covered this before, the lunacy of Charlie Hebdo.
Je Suis Charlie … Non!
The cartoon appears on the magazine’s back page and shows parts of a plane and a passenger falling from the sky onto a bearded, armed militant. The commentary reads: “Islamic State: Russian aviation intensifies its bombardments.”
“The Charlie Hebdo journalists danced on the memory of people who died in that terrible air crash. These caricatures will deliver a hard blow at the image of France and Europe where such things are possible,” said Vyacheslav Nikonov.
Tass news agency:
“The magazine’s actions are designed to foster terrorism which is shameful and insulting for France,” Irina Yarovaya, the deputy head of the Russian State Duma Committee for Security and Counteraction to Terrorism, said.
“The caricatures fall short of human ethics,” Boris Reznik, secretary of the Russian Journalists’ Union, said.
○ Russians outraged after Charlie Hebdo cartoons ‘ridicule’ Sinai plane crash | RT |
Yes, these two cartoons are disgusting (The first one with Air Cocaïne refers to a scandal involving Sarkozy),
https://twitter.com/yurybarmin/status/662567239154028544?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
I wonder if Charlie Hebdo is going to mock the Parisian mass killing in the same way, and how the French public and politicians are going to react if they publish something as disgusting as this.
They clearly have lost all talent (Charb was very talented, best of his generation), and only have pure provocation left to gain attention.
@ Deir Yassin: I wrote you an e mail which you may not have received. I am glad to see that you are well. I didn’t know if you lived in Paris or elsewhere in France.
@ Richard
I also answered it yesteday 🙂 as soon as I woke up (in the afternoon after a sleepless night) Thank you so much again.
Yes, I live only two stops on the metro from two places where nearly 20 people were killed, among them many young Muslims (just to point out that the lunatics from Daesh make no distinction between Muslims and none-Muslims but want to annihilate everyone who doesn’t rally their f***** ideology).
Paris attacks could have been much worse, appears arms – eight AK-47s, grenades and explosives – were intercepted from a Montenegrin in Bavaria on Nov. 5 …
○ Bayerische Polizei fasst möglichen Komplizen
○ Bavaria arrest raises suspicions about links to Paris attacks | Deutsche Welle |
This fellow Hopper seems to be so deeply invested in “defending” Israel, that he appears to want to spread as much hate and fear against Mulsims as he can; he is the reflection of the people who wish to spread as much hate and fear against Jews as they can. Together these two forces of evil WILL destroy the world…with a little help from their like-minded Christians.
Your solution is to surrender, you old fool.
I suggest we send you over there to negotiate a peace treaty with ISIS. See where that gets you.
@GaryFouse – pls don’t drop yr calling cards here:: “old fool”.
@ Gary “Fool:” No one calls me that you ageist scumbucket. As for you, my “solution” is you are banned.
A moving tribute I can appreciate …
○ Pianist Plays Cover of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ Outside Bataclan @Paris Memorial
I don’t know ….. Davide Martello, a German pianist, also played on Place de la Republique after the Charlie attack, and in Taksim, Maydan etc, it’s not that ‘spontaneous’. He used to be working with the German army, he was in Kunduz, Afghanistan, it seems that’s where he became a pacifist.
http://www.liberation.fr/societe/2015/01/23/davide-martello-pianiste-de-crise_1187283
(I really prefer Ayham Ahmad, the Palestinian-Syrian pianist from Yarmouk who played for years there defying the siege, al-Nusra and ISIS, he’s in Germany now after ISIS burnt his piano, see him playing in front of Bataclan would have been so much stronger)
Negotiating with Al-Q or ISIS or other “Terrorists” such as Israel, is not a solution; working with the PEOPLE is the only way to succeed.
” If we want the Middle East to stop producing terrorists, we must offer hope and change to those most disaffected. ”
Is it up to us (the West) to offer people of the Middle East “hope and change”? Whose responsibility is that?
We are often fed the idea that the messed up Middle Eastern countries are the way they are, because of Western intervention, past wrongs, occupations, colonialism etc. For how long will that be an excuse? While I agree that Iraq was a US screw-up, is the whole Arab Spring-Winter the fault of the West? Arab societies have many ills that they themselves will have to overcome, including tribalism, discrimination of women, etc.
This is where I fault left-liberals with a cognitive error. You apply the sociological/societal model of crime, disaffected youth and gangs, in which Obama-style community organizing is the proposed solution. Fix the root causes of social decay at a community level, and people will stop doing bad things.
However you feel about that approach locally, it certainly does not work in the international sphere, where civilization and cultures are so vastly different, and national interests diverge. How is the West’s job to “fix” what is wrong in the Middle East?? Is it our job to stop extremism, sectarianism and discrimination? What “hope” are you talking about? Do you even know what Arabs in the Middle East really want??? What about Russia’s slide towards ultra-nationalism? Can and should the west fix that?
@Yehudah: Yes indeed it is. Western colonialism has generously offered the ME massive doses of mass murder, war, and racism for nearly 2 centuries. I include Israel as a generator of mass mayhem in the region as well.
If you start with extreme left anti-Western assumptions. ie that the Western powers are responsible for most of the world’s ills, and it is within the power of the west to fix them, then you arrive at very different conclusions than the mainstream. The weak are always the victims, and the strong are always at fault.
This is of course very different than my opinion.
My educated guess is that many of your commentors here, although they find common ground with you regarding criticism of Israel, probably don’t share other liberal attitudes such as religious freedom, democracy, tolerance of minorities, etc.
Yehuda, when you go wrong, you don’t do it by half-measures, do you?
If you are suggesting we don’t respect values such as religious freedom, tokerance of minorities or “Democracy” (whatever that means!), that is quite a presumption on your part and it would be wrong. If you would like us to believe Israel has those values, you will have to drug us first because no rational mind can possibly see those values being practised in Israel.
As for the ills of the post-colonial world. The Empires left tyrants and dictators behind so the empires could still maintain control by controlling the one person and it is a most successful model. The US entered the business of setting up Empire in the M-E after having done so elsewhere, and it propped up the most vile oppressors it could find, from Israel to the rest of the M-E. Among the the “Values” these oppressors have in common, is to not provide proper education, not provide avenues for free expression, not provide job opportunities for the oppressed and to line their own pockets (banks in the West). Then of course, when the oppressed populations explode in violence, these tyrants and dictators (including Nethanyahu) sanctimoniously blame them for being “terrorists” and people who have something to gain by the oppressions…people such as yourself…echo the proclamations.
There is not a living person who does not wish to have his/her voice be considered in the governance of their lives. There is not a person alive, who does not wish for a genuine, Just, peace so they and their children can thrive in harmony with their neighbors.
Jafar I don’t know you personally so I cannot say what your values are, I can only guess based on your comments.
Maybe in the imaginary la la land of this blog, Muslim nations like Turkey and Iran, who are not ruled by American installed “oppressors” , are shining examples of freedom and tolerance. Or perhaps Lebanon, a pristine example of good governance? During the Ottoman Empire, before the Brits, were the people of the region free, happy and prosperous? Perhaps young and educated middle easterners would like to immigrate to Hamas ruled Gaza, another outstanding example of democracy, good governance, freedom of expression and religious tolerance.
Sorry, your narrative of oppression rings as hollow as a church bell, I don’t read anybody here on this blog calling for BDS against Iran, Turkey or Saudi Arabia because of their treatment of women or ethnic minorities. which then leaves me wondering about the reasons for the pathological obsession with Israel’s flaws.
As for Israel, let’s play a multiple choice question.
In the event that the Israeli army evacuates the West Bank, the time that it will take for ISIS , Hamas or Islamic Jihad to take over is approximately (a) 1 year; b) 1 month; (c) 1 week; or (d) 1 day.
Since Israel will obviously not allow that to happen (it would be national suicide), the Palestinians should not expect an independent state in the west bank any time in the near future. Although this is not an ideal situation, it is reality. The sooner they (and their supporters) accept that, the sooner peace will come, when they will be ready to actually compromise– and get some kind of broad autonomy or confederacy with Jordan.
Actually, I would say that Lebanon, Turkey and Iran are democracies as flawed as Israel’s own “democracy.” As for good governance, if you think Israel’s political system is an example of this then you are an inhabitant of an alternate universe.
Oy! Now you’re an expert on the Ottoman Empire?? Actually, the Ottomans were until the last few decades of their centuries-long rule, quite liberal and enlightened. And the Empire was quite prosperous.
I’m beginning to detect a narrative here. A little Islamophobia with some Arabophobia sprinkled in for good measure.
Hasbara diversionary tactic 101! Nice try. This is far off topic. This is my second warning. Once you get to three off topic comments you’re in danger of moderation.
Thank you for revealing to us your true lunacy!
Israel doesn’t need ISIS to commit national suicide, it’s already doing an excellent job of it by itself.
The sooner Israelis accept that they will destroy themselves if they don’t compromise with the Palestinians, the sooner peace will come.
Now I know that you are a lunatic settlerist. Your stay among us I project to be quite short. ANyone wanna put down bets how long: 1 year, 1 month, 1 week, 1 day?
Mossad operative Rupert Murdoch … If he were a politician, he would
be an accomplished Islamophobe at the level of Geert Wilders.
And HRC is in his pockets through political funds:
○ Media mogul in 34 tweets
A fundamental component of the 19th century socialist movement was solidarity of the oppressed and exploited around the world. That component was injured in/by WW1 and was subsequently killed by fascism. The killing has always been based on racial and/or religious differences which are cleverly exploited by the powerful. That, I take, is what Richard Silverstein has in mind when he considers any solutions in the Middle East.
“Finally, there is a terribly irony that no western journalist will point out: yesterday, ISIS planted two bombs in a Beirut neighborhood that is a Hezbollah stronghold. 43 Lebanese died. Neither is this the first or second or even third such explosion orchestrated by ISIS against Lebanese. Will anyone in the west weep as much for these dead Arab victims as they are justly weeping for the dead Parisians? Whose dead are worth more? Or are Arab dead worth anything??”
http://thenewsdoctors.com/french-security-left-blind-during-paris-attacks-dr-paul-craig-roberts/