The implications of the Paris attacks

[Shryke]

Let them advocate it, who cares. Any smart Muslim would recognize that it's a BS what ISIS is saying. If he doesn't then Europe (or the World, really) doesn't need him anyway. If a person chooses religious murder and rape than it's only his choice and only he is guilty of it and no one else. 

Anyone who actually wants to understand the situation and how to deal with it? Anyone with even the slightest bit of intellectual curiosity about this tragedy?

And there's certainly people who won't think it's BS if, say, France starts cracking down hard on it's Muslim population. I mean, ISIS recruits all the time after all.

[Altherion]

What's the point of threatening 'war without mercy' but then carrying on with the surgical air strikes BS?

Hollande was already rather unpopular even before these attacks. The point is most likely to salvage what support he still could. It's also possible that he was genuinely angry and only realized that France is not in a position to act on his words after he had already spoken them.

[TerraPrime]

The idea that if we bomb the radical Muslims hard enough, if we kill enough of them, they'd abandon their hatred for western countries is utterly irrational. Yet, so appealing. I've read it so many times these part few days, from so many different places. They hurt us, so let's kill them all.

[Fragile Bird]

I suspect that what we are going to see for a long time, and by a long time I mean 20 or 30 years, or 40 or 50, is a state somewhere between peace and war, where there will be terrorist campaigns in various countries, which will draw wrath in the form of retaliatory bombing, followed by uneasy peace, followed by more terrorist acts.  Followed by retaliation.

Think of the Irish troubles, but on a bigger scale.

Right now no one has the desire to put the proverbial boots of the ground in Iraq again.  And I think it will stay that way, unless something spectacular, like 9/11, happens again.   I think people want to see the inhabitants of the countries surrounding the ISIS (or ISIL, or Daesh or whatever you want to call them) face the problem and solve it themselves

[Shryke]

The idea that if we bomb the radical Muslims hard enough, if we kill enough of them, they'd abandon their hatred for western countries is utterly irrational. Yet, so appealing. I've read it so many times these part few days, from so many different places. They hurt us, so let's kill them all.

I think there's more to it then that. There is an implicit idea from many people that all these problems with terrorists and bad people can actually just be solved with brutal violence. And the only reason it hasn't happened yet is because we, as the good guys, are simply too moral and upright to take that path. But if we just took the gloves off and became anti-heroes, we'd easily be able to finish this once and for all.

It's not just angry and the desire to hit them back, it's the idea that brutal violence and indiscriminate killing actually work and everyone knows this and we just didn't do that before because we were trying to be nice.

I think it's perhaps more comforting and simple to believe that then to accept that we don't actually have a solution at all.

[Malik Ambar]

I'm also curious to know how much more 'War' is left to be waged. There was the whole ground combat thing, there were airstrikes. What's left ? To make matters worse, there is no sovereign nation to wage a war on; these people are spread all over the Middle East and beyond. 

As for 'isolating' them, you're kidding me right ?

Finally, all these war mongers (and many posters here ) are West-centric. It's as if only poor Christian White  West is being rampaged by these terrorists. Would this have been the same response if this happened in Indonesia ? Or where was this vigor when 26/11 attacks happened here in Mumbai ? I'm sorry to say this, but unfortunately this scale of response would not have been visible.

[Malik Ambar]

I think there's more to it then that. There is an implicit idea from many people that all these problems with terrorists and bad people can actually just be solved with brutal violence. And the only reason it hasn't happened yet is because we, as the good guys, are simply too moral and upright to take that path. But if we just took the gloves off and became anti-heroes, we'd easily be able to finish this once and for all.

It's not just angry and the desire to hit them back, it's the idea that brutal violence and indiscriminate killing actually work and everyone knows this and we just didn't do that before because we were trying to be nice.

I think it's perhaps more comforting and simple to believe that then to accept that we don't actually have a solution at all.

This obsession can be seen in pop culture too ; look at the TV shows that have sprung around the 'Badass Anti-Hero'. Of course, said shows are almost always cautionary tales to show what taking such path down can lead to. Not that it matters to  the insatiable hunger to 'go badass' I guess. 

[Commodore]

Raqqa is ISIS home base, their resort city where they throw parties and have parades, the heart of jihad, where they throw gays off buildings and bury women up to their necks before stoning them.

the most evil place on Earth, it should not be allowed to exist

VICE had a whole special about it

you guys are probably right though, history has taught us that destroying enemy headquarters is no way to win a war

 

[straits]

I'm also curious to know how much more 'War' is left to be waged. There was the whole ground combat thing, there were airstrikes. What's left ? To make matters worse, there is no sovereign nation to wage a war on; these people are spread all over the Middle East and beyond. 

As for 'isolating' them, you're kidding me right ?

 

I don't think any semblance of "war", "boots on the ground" or even "nuke them into oblivion" will work. The natural state of an organisation like this is instability, and it feeds and grows on it while devouring the civilian areas around it. 

[Hayyoth]

Hollande was already rather unpopular even before these attacks. The point is most likely to salvage what support he still could. It's also possible that he was genuinely angry and only realized that France is not in a position to act on his words after he had already spoken them.

In other words he was full of shit.

The idea that if we bomb the radical Muslims hard enough, if we kill enough of them, they'd abandon their hatred for western countries is utterly irrational. Yet, so appealing. I've read it so many times these part few days, from so many different places. They hurt us, so let's kill them all.

Of course it's possible, we're perfectly capable of wiping the entire region from the map if we so choose. Of course we won't do that because it would be a genocide, so instead a series of half measures which makes the problem far worse every time we try them. So let's stop the war thing altogether and try something else.

[Hayyoth]

Raqqa is ISIS home base, their resort city where they throw parties and have parades, the heart of jihad, where they throw gays off buildings and bury women up to their necks before stoning them.

it should not be allowed to exist

VICE had a whole special about it

you guys are probably right though, history has taught us that destroying enemy headquarters is no way to win a war

 

There were lots of innocent non Nazis in Berlin during WW2.

[Lord Mord]

Commodore, 

Raqqa is ISIS home base, their resort city where they throw parties and have parades, the heart of jihad, where they throw gays off buildings and bury women up to their necks before stoning them.

the most evil place on Earth, it should not be allowed to exist

VICE had a whole special about it

you guys are probably right though, history has taught us that destroying enemy headquarters is no way to win a war

 

I don't really know what to do with a post this disingenuous, other than to ask you to have the grace to apologize for it.

On the one hand, will you please show me where anyone said the city was ... Well, where anyone characterized it at all, really, and then especially where it was compared favorably with anything?  If not, then the exposition about how evil they are there is irrelevant, as that was not the point under contention.

Also not under contention was your facile fucking insult about what it takes to win a war.  Again, please show me where anyone characterized the conquest of a headquarters at all, and then especially those passages where it was said that's no way to win a war.

Finally, perhaps you will be so kind as to address the point that was made.  You propounded leveling a city.  You were asked what it would accomplish, and your response was not, "take out enemy HQ," and it was not, "halt a lot of evil practices"; your response was that it would send a message that there will be no safe havens.  You were making an argument that it would be a victory in the psychology of subduing the region.  When this was challenged, you decided you'd really said something else, so that your opposition must be stupid.

Can we please get back to where this point actually started?

[Commodore]

 

Finally, perhaps you will be so kind as to address the point that was made.  You propounded leveling a city.  You were asked what it would accomplish, and your response was not, "take out enemy HQ," and it was not, "halt a lot of evil practices"; your response was that it would send a message that there will be no safe havens.  You were making an argument that it would be a victory in the psychology of subduing the region.  When this was challenged, you decided you'd really said something else, so that your opposition must be stupid.

Can we please get back to where this point actually started?

It would do more than send a message. It would destroy a safe haven. It would deny ISIS their primary command and control center and recruitment hub. It would kill some jihadis in the process.

The other stuff was to make the point that beyond the strategic significance, it deserves to be destroyed as a matter of justice.

[Bonesy]

It would kill people that don't deserve killing and relocate the ISIS hub.

People. Human beings with hopes and dreams and families. Remember them?

This isn't a goddamned video game.

[Malik Ambar]

I don't think any semblance of "war", "boots on the ground" or even "nuke them into oblivion" will work. The natural state of an organisation like this is instability, and it feeds and grows on it while devouring the civilian areas around it. 

Exactly. War as a response only works when you are fighting a nation or group of nations. This is an organization we are talking about ; a fundamentally 20th century response is no longer adequate for this new problem now.

[Horza]

It would do more than send a message. It would destroy a safe haven. It would deny ISIS their primary command and control center and recruitment hub. It would kill some jihadis in the process.

The other stuff was to make the point that beyond the strategic significance, it deserves to be destroyed as a matter of justice.

ISIS recruits globally, not in Raqqa. It doesn't operate a centralised command centre in one location for very obvious reasons, and by definition you're proposing to kill many more innocents than jihadis. There is no justice in indiscriminate bombardment, and you can't even come up with a credible strategic rationale.

 

What's the point of threatening 'war without mercy' but then carrying on with the surgical air strikes BS? Either we go to war with Islamic extremism with the intention of wiping them from the face of the Earth or we do everything we can to isolate ourselves from that fucked up region including stopping millions of fighting age male adults migrating to our countries. What we're doing at the moment is obviously not working.

All that emerges from this performance of seriousness is the policy equivalent of stale farts.

Your two alternatives here are fantasies that you indulge in to keep from grappling with the realities of power and ideas. They immediately start to shimmer the moment any serious thought is applied. You start a sentence referring to war on an ideology, but then it turns into "them" midway through, as you grapple with the problem of what it takes to make war on ideology. Your other alternative is smothered in a nice vague "everything we can", which means absolutely nothing. Assuming for a moment it means a total withdrawal of forces and a severing of all diplomatic and political ties, what do you do when ISIS blows up a US consulate somewhere else? Or starts targeting Americans living abroad? Do you close all the embassies and ban overseas travel then? If not this policy is just putting you back where you started, minus all those security relationships in the region that you trashed.

You're not prepared to think even one step ahead, because that would involved thinking about what these strange people whom you dislike and fear think. And thinking about how other people think is tantamount to politics, which involves terrible things like patience, calculation and compromise. Messy. Complicated. Unsatisfying. No, I can see why you like your answer.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Of course it's possible, we're perfectly capable of wiping the entire region from the map if we so choose. Of course we won't do that because it would be a genocide, so instead a series of half measures which makes the problem far worse every time we try them. So let's stop the war thing altogether and try something else.

Well, that, and it wouldn't actually work. Even if the entire Middle East (minus Israel, presumably) were glowing in the dark, you're left with everyone else who remains being angry and horrified (Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country on the planet, and it isn't even Middle Eastern). Which means the ideology isn't going anywhere - rather the reverse.

[Solmyr]

The attacks in Paris leave me oddly unperturbed. On the scale of terrorist attacks (in terms of casualties) they seem horrific, yet the outrage is still disproportionate to the scale of the attack. People die in terrorist attacks all over the world, rarely in the hundreds at once, but often in significant enough numbers to warrant outrage - what they usually get is a discussion in local or regional media; unless it's in a NATO country. Whenever it happens in one of those, often completely regardless of the scale of the attack, calls for bloody retribution, WW III and "nuke them into the Stone age" are not far in coming.

These reactions perturb me far more than the terrorist acts themselves. I do not fear ISIS. ISIS have guns, artillery, perhaps a few short-ranged missiles. France has nukes. So do other NATO countries. I fear a 'sane' person with nukes far more than I fear extremists with guns. And given the reactions of many people in the west, I am right to fear such.

If you honestly think that the deaths of 150 people warrant genocide, you are a disgrace of a human being.

[Free Northman Reborn]

You can really break this down to a rather simple level.

What is it that makes European countries of today more vulnerable to these types of attacks than those same countries 50 years ago? What makes the terrorists able to enter countries more easily, blend in more easily, spend large periods of time in sleeper cells without being detected, and then commit these atrocities on the citizens of said countries?

Right, now once you have answered that question, then the next question is simple: Are the ideological reasons for allowing these societies to change in the way that they have over the last 50 years more important to these countries than preventing the deaths of their innocent citizens?

If yes, then the solutions will continue to be out of reach. They will try some temporary tighter security here, a frantic focus on intelligence there, a few bombing raids in some backwater in the Middle East. Maybe even boots on the ground, which will just shift the source of the problem to a new Middle Eastern country.

On the other hand, you can abandon the vision for a New Europe, seal up its borders, abandon the EU project, have properly controlled borders between member countries again, and STOP LETTING IN MORE FOREIGNERS.

Fortress Europe.

It may already be too late, but if they don't start doing something now, it will definitely be too late.

 

[Crixus]

Here's a video from young Pakistani kids: https://www.facebook.com/PakistaniComedians/videos/1491396007857238/

 

Some important points worth repeating:

1. They unequivocally condemn the attacks; this is 1 video but this sort of message is all over my FB today. Just thought I'd point this out in response to the yells of 'Muslims aren't condemning this!'. They are, in the MSM, on social media, and offline. 

2. Don't expect us (Muslims) to apologise for the barbaric acts of a few nutters. Again, this bears repeating because it gets lost too often

3. Context: the vast majority of terror victims are Muslims. Pakistan itself has doubled down on eliminating terrorists after that unforgettable school attack in Peshawar last year. It isn't as though being Muslim makes you immune; far from it

4. The refugees (for the most part) are fleeing these same terrorists

5. Muslims aren't a robotic monolith or somehow fundamentally 'other'. It's kind of fucked up that these young kids have to somehow 'prove' their humanity and goodness, not simply through the condemnation of this shit, but through mundanities like, you know, food and sports and basic stuff.