France under attack!

[Brandon Rhea]

But, what is interesting is how the socialist and left wing students at my University are now baying for blood, and demanding a full on invasion of the "Middle East" with ME telling them an invasion would be wrong!

The right may be quicker to buy into fear and paranoia, but ultimately fear and paranoia are apolitical.

I think it's not so much that people don't care what happens to innocent people in Beirut or Baghdad. But unlike Paris, terrorism is a daily occurrence (so to speak) there. That means, the media doesn't report on that as much, and even then, they report on it to a degree that it becomes just another part of the "media blur" to the Average Joe. Unfortunately. I think we instinctively shut it out as well, because we don't want to know what a crappy place the world can be. Add to that the distance from where we ourselves live, and it's rather easy to stay detached from it, because it's so far away.

You're not wrong necessarily, but a) the more frequent occurrences should make it highlighted in the media more and b) it still makes the Average Joe hypocritical for being part of the (of course) sincere outpouring of grief over Paris while turning a blind eye to Beirut, Baghdad, and all the other countless attacks that happen that claim dozens and dozens of people on a regular basis.

Needless to say, all loss of life is tragic. And all loss of civilian life is a crime against humanity. I would echo Blade's sentiments slightly. My idol, Don Johnson, posted the famous Nietzsche quote about not turning into the monsters we hunt, yesterday, on his Facebook. They are monsters - we are not. It's important to remember that, especially in the next few weeks when we decide how to proceed with a response to this.

Depends on who "we" is referring to. Western governments regularly carry out attacks that kill untold numbers of people, including civilians. Western governments financially support the oppressive governments that help create terrorism in the first place. Etc. Are those governments not monsters because they do those things while cloaked in vague notions of freedom and democracy? Are we not monsters for allowing it to continue?

The whole cycle has to stop.

 

[BLADE]

Intelligence work is surprisingly not always fascist. I'll leave it at that.

I won't leave it at that, as it seems you've misunderstood a relatively obvious point which is in reference to your previous post. Videlicet, the knee-jerk notion that these intelligence entities (some of which helped incubate ISIS/their fellow travelers) need even more powers or the sweet understanding of the citizenry whose democratic rights they trample on. That is what I disparaged.

I don't really give a shit about my browsing history (read: potty training books and educational toys for infants) being read pornomag style by some junior analyst at Fort Meade or Langley or Quantico or whereverfuckelse. But the principle matters. The abominable history of these entities (who will always abuse their power) matters. The uselessness of the expanded ambit of these powers matters.

And putting this type of thing in a cloyingly homespun confection of meaningless words --"just us er'din'ary folks shouldn'a question those smurt policemeng"-- makes this a prime example in fascist rhetoric or to be more precise fascist drivel, as all fascism inherently is. It doesn't of course mean that you are a fascist; plenty of people have lived in fascist regimes and mouthed the platitudes de throno of the powers that be without going full jackboot themselves.

Perhaps in the future, think before posting stuff like this. Advice from a friend.

But, what is interesting is how the socialist and left wing students at my University are now baying for blood, and demanding a full on invasion of the "Middle East" with ME telling them an invasion would be wrong!

In Marxist parlance these people would be Revisionists or Pseudo-Lefts. Doesn't really matter either way. With a few exceptions (and qualified ones at that) like Stop the War, the British Left is a moldering caricature of itself. You have the posh idiots at public schools who forgo the Oxbridge accent and the cashmere jumpers on their shoulders and who flirt with a bit of bohemian "radicalism" (ooh a demonstration against GMOs yah boo sucks that will show them!) before taking on jobs as junior spads. The scruffier bearded type that shoots them filthy looks from across a micropub where cruelty-free kale chips are served and then go on to wax poetic about how some superannuated relic from the Benn years will somehow redeem the morally filthy Labour Party. Puts one rather in the mind of Titus Andronicus, but unfortunately these soi-dissant Socialists don't even have the decency to kill and eat each other by end of the play (Jeremy Corbyn pasties are unfortunately stringy and kind of dumb.)

In short, these people are too pathetic to even draw contempt. The worst they do is pose as Left when they should be Centre or Right. I won't even bother with liberalism as its "left" flank is a dead ideology, twitching and oscillating, beastie-like between swinishness and abject stupidity.

Or as the Great Malcolm X put it --more succinctly and aptly than I ever could-- "the difference between [liberals] and [conservatives] is that [liberals] are more deceitful."

In this dissipated age, those lies are aimed mostly at themselves but the difference between right-liberals (there's really no such thing as conservatism) and left-liberals, pseudoleft post-Trots, Maoists, Pabloites, Guevaraists, Greens, Social Democrats, etc. is that I can at least respect Conservatives for being quite honest about what they'll do.

Your coeds on the other hand deserve nothing but scorn.

@Vulpes: Not much to add. You are entirely correct. Western narcissism/racism/orientalism is the culprit here. I will say that these attacks don't differ much from Left-Wing actions back in the 70s, so the notion that Western Capitals are uniquely impervious is really just triumphalist nonsense. For all the expansion of the panopticon --or synopticon in France's case, since the claimed number of people under surveillance is considerably smaller than the French intelligence apparatus (and they would never lie to us about that would they?)-- intelligence agencies don't have a particularly good track record at staving off these sort of attacks.

 

[BLADE]

Double Post but:

Again, how to help.

In France:

http://time.com/4113275/paris-attacks-how-help/

In Lebanon:

http://www.actionagainsthunger.org/
http://www.rescue.org/irc-lebanon
https://internationalmedicalcorps.org/

And so on.

 

[Eccles]

Perhaps in the future, think before posting stuff like this. Advice from a friend.

I just wrote I don't know how many words arguing something that's completely irrelevant to this thread and only really repaired my wounded pride and intellectual ego. Now I'll admit I shouldn't have written it, or at least not in that matter-of-fact style, and I blame it largely on my limited ability to express my opinion in english and the urge to rush posts on forums. However, I'll have to disagree with your fierce stance and share that I didn't quite appreciate the quoted sentence as much as I perhaps would have at the end of a discussion.

Either way, people suck, politicians suck, religions suck and even Buddhists are hypocrites. All I can do it suggest a speech Ben Ferencz gave at my university last year.

 

[Kath]

I find all these attacks absolutely barbaric. At my University, we have multiple students who had family in the area of the attacks in Paris and to see there grief was absolutely heartbreaking. I know that these acts are a constant in the Middle East and other places around the globe and it needs to stop. Religious extremism of any sort has no place in the modern world, but what can we do to stop it? No matter what there will always be fanatics that kill innocents in the name of some higher cause.

I find it hard to believe that the human race will ever come together and learn to live in peace. We have too many different ideas among us all, too many people who "know" what is right. These attacks will continue. I hope that at least some countries of the world will step up their efforts to wipe out Daesh, but how long will it be until a new group takes their place? I agree with Brandon, the cycle needs to stop, but I doubt it ever will.

 

[Brandon Rhea]

I find all these attacks absolutely barbaric. At my University, we have multiple students who had family in the area of the attacks in Paris and to see there grief was absolutely heartbreaking. I know that these acts are a constant in the Middle East and other places around the globe and it needs to stop. Religious extremism of any sort has no place in the modern world, but what can we do to stop it? No matter what there will always be fanatics that kill innocents in the name of some higher cause.

I find it hard to believe that the human race will ever come together and learn to live in peace. We have too many different ideas among us all, too many people who "know" what is right. These attacks will continue. I hope that at least some countries of the world will step up their efforts to wipe out Daesh, but how long will it be until a new group takes their place? I agree with Brandon, the cycle needs to stop, but I doubt it ever will.

We can't end all violence in the world, but we can…

1. Stop funding Saudi Arabia, which in turn funds the ideologies that create these fundamentalists in the first place;
2. Stop funding and supporting dictatorships that oppress the people and lead to radical backlashes against those oppressive governments and their western supporters;
3. Actually invest in alternative fuel sources so we don't have to continue supporting Saudi Arabia and other dictatorships for their oil;
   and, this being the most obvious one, stop bombing and meddling in the Middle East.

Everything I just said is, admittedly, reductive, and it misses a lot of other elements that go into the problem. It's very hard to take a complex situation and boil it down into a forum post, which should come as no surprise. But we shouldn't be saying that there's nothing we can do when western imperialism is a fundamental element of why these attacks occur. These aren't random acts of evil. They're backlashes, and we either have to accept that that's inevitable in war (and that the west is not immune to the same types of atrocities we carry out against the Middle East on a daily basis) or we need to stop fighting the war altogether. My preference would be the latter.

 

[Andrewza]

One has to wonder what ISIS planed to gain from this. France are far from the white flag surrender monkeys that they proclaimed to be. They will demand blood and other European nations will probably join them. Hard line presidents will win election. Out come all Islamic people will suffer. Maybe that was ISIS's goal, get there enemy to target those whose fled the terror. So i hope the French and other western nations release that there enemy is in Syria not fleeing it.

 

[Brandon Rhea]

One has to wonder what ISIS planed to gain from this. France are far from the white flag surrender monkeys that they proclaimed to be. They will demand blood and other European nations will probably join them. Hard line presidents will win election. Out come all Islamic people will suffer. Maybe that was ISIS's goal, get there enemy to target those whose fled the terror. So i hope the French and other western nations release that there enemy is in Syria not fleeing it.

They gin up anti-refuge and anti-Muslim feelings, further exacerbating the issues within the European Muslim community. They also create the conditions for western retaliation. Both of those are helpful to ISIS.

 

[Andrewza]

i fear you are right. ISIS it's self may get bombed a bit more but other than that nothing.

 

[Nor'baal]

...and the bombings only serve to justify further attacks in the eyes of ISIS and its supporters.
However, we cannot just let them continue to attack, so bombing is the solution*, which leads to more attacks, which leads to more bombing, which leads to more attacks....etc etc


*according to some

 

[Andrewza]

1. Air power alone can never win a war so the bombing all achieves nothing. But all it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing. So maybe just maybe reconise ISIS and declare artical 5. Or join Russia in support of the lesser of 2 evils

 

[Nor'baal]

I agree something should be done yes, but bombing civilians in Syria is just as cruel as shooting them in Paris.

 

[Loco]

I agree something should be done yes, but bombing civilians in Syria is just as cruel as shooting them in Paris.

There's a big difference between accidental/collateral deaths when hitting legitimate targets and mag dumping into a crowd of concert goers.

 

[Nor'baal]

Of course there is, but both are just as wrong - especially agiven the USA and UK's track record of civilian casualties in the middle east. In the past the USA and UK have knowingly bombed Civilians to hit a suspected target.

 

[Andrewza]

There's a big difference between accidental/collateral deaths when hitting legitimate targets and mag dumping into a crowd of concert goers.

not to the dead

 

[Nor'baal]

Anyway, that is me done here, I'm off back to the forums.

 

[Andrewza]

I agree something should be done yes, but bombing civilians in Syria is just as cruel as shooting them in Paris.

not talking about bombing i am talking about waging war.

 

[Loco]

I'm not excusing anything, I'm just saying there is absolutely no moral equivalency once you bring intent into the equation.

 

[Brandon Rhea]

I'm not excusing anything, I'm just saying there is absolutely no moral equivalency once you bring intent into the equation.

That's just pointless moral grandstanding. Even if you have good intentions, if your tactics and strategy are wrong then that doesn't excuse the results of your actions. The solution to Syria is political, not military, so every civilian death puts blood on our hands.

 

[Loco]

That's just pointless moral grandstanding. Even if you have good intentions, if your tactics and strategy are wrong then that doesn't excuse the results of your actions. The solution to Syria is political, not military, so every civilian death puts blood on our hands.

I think morality is an important part of the argument- there is no perfect solution, but there are solutions that arw better than others, and i think civilians dying on the fringes by accident while you try to do something about the situation is better than murdering them wholesale on purpose. And while it's pretty hard to kill your way to peace, at the same time you can't just lay down arms and let people kill you. Does that make anything better or less tragic? No, but there's no happy ending here no matter what happens.

Personally, I don't think there is any political solution that is acceptable for ISIS. We're talking about a group who has declared open war on everyone in the world who doesn't fit their own personal mold of radicalism. How do you negotiate with that? Even if we got them to stop lashing out across borders, do we just stand by and let them commit genocides like they have been doing? When they're done killing everyone else do we just stand back and let them tear eachother apart until they realize maybe they didn't have the best plan?

I do think this whole thing was absolutely avoidable, and a result of a long history of terrible policies and poorly conceived interventionism. We created this mess, and now we dont know what to do with it, so we're sort of just doing nothing except occasionally make things worse. People tend to forget though that we get what we ask for. It's the politicians that the people elect that drive the rhetoric and run these wars. The blood is on the hands of everyone who has ever voted or chosen not to vote.