France under attack!

[The Derp of Hooves]

This may just be me but this seems a lot like the beginnings of ww3

 

[Loco]

This may just be me but this seems a lot like the beginnings of ww3

I'm hoping it's just the opposite. It's not often that the US, France, Russia and Iran are all working on a common goal. ISIS could end up being great for international relations between sane countries.

 

[The Derp of Hooves]

True enough but it still feels that way to me

 

[Enzo]

Britain risks being the next target of a terrorist attack and bringing in more immigrants only risks letting in more terrorists masquerading as migrants. Re housing most of the middle east is not the answer, the countries need to band together to come up with a solution to stomp out IS and terrorism for good.

 

[Andrewza]

France is committed to "destroying" the so-called Islamic State group after Friday's deadly attacks, President Francois Hollande has said.

He said he would table a bill to extend the state of emergency declared after the attacks for three months and would suggest changes to the constitution.

France's military campaign against IS in Iraq and Syria will also intensify.

IS says it carried out the attacks on bars, restaurants, a concert hall and a stadium in which 129 people died.

Speaking during a joint session of both houses of parliament, Mr Hollande said the constitution needed to be amended as "we need an appropriate tool we can use without having to resort to the state of emergency".

Other measures he said would be pursued included:

• 5,000 extra police posts in the next two years and no new cuts in the defence budget
• Making it easier to strip dual nationals of their French citizenship if they are convicted of a terrorist offence, as long as this did not render them stateless
• Speeding up the deportation of foreigners who pose "a particularly grave threat to the security of the nation"
• Pushing for greater European action against arms trafficking and greater penalties for it in France

Mr Hollande said he would travel to meet US President Barack Obama and Russian Vladimir Putin in the coming days to discuss action against the group.

At a G20 summit in Turkey, world leaders promised tighter co-operation in the wake of the attacks.

Mr Obama said the US and France had made a new agreement on intelligence sharing but said US military advisors thought sending ground troops to combat Isis would be a mistake.

He reiterated his opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad remaining in power but said "our enemy in Syria is Daesh [IS]".

He promised more resources for the security forces and said the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier would be sent on Thursday to bolster the military campaign against IS.

On Sunday night, French aircraft attacked Raqqa, IS's stronghold in Syria. French officials said 10 jets had dropped 20 guided bombs targeting sites including a command centre, a recruitment centre for jihadists, a munitions depot and a training camp.

IS has issued a statement saying the raid targeted empty locations and that there were no casualties.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34836439

 

[The Derp of Hooves]

Imo as long as religion exists there will always be terrorism....

 

[Loco]

Honestly, refugees are pretty low on the list of threats. Yeah, one of the Paris attackers apparently was one, but another was a born and raised French citizen. There are plenty of easier ways to infiltrate a country than by posing as refugees, but for some reason people are focused on that threat just because it's so visible, not realizing they are just as much or more likely to fall victim to one of their own countrymen.

 

[Enzo]

Honestly, refugees are pretty low on the list of threats.

Disagree with you on that one. It's not the threat of potential terrorists coming in its also the increase rate of migration putting a strain on the economy and its said that most of them are not actually refugee's escaping war torn Syria but economic refugees from places like Africa looking for a better life.

 

[Algarus]

Wow, France is going street by street taking people out. Wonder how long it will be before something like this happens in America.

 

[Pureblood-Sin]

Imo as long as religion exists there will always be terrorism....

As long as there be Humans, there will always be terrorism; religion is but one of many masks to hide the inner repulsiveness of Human nature, a convenient excuse for those ugly of spirit. Even if we do away with religion, there are plenty more things to hide behind to justify acting on our inner darkness.

There be my two cents. :)

 

[The Derp of Hooves]

Hopefully we can stop that before it happens

 

[Enzo]

Wow, France is going street by street taking people out. Wonder how long it will be before something like this happens in America.

That's actually unlikely. In the US according to statistics you are more likely to be killed by Gun crime than by a terrorist attack

 

[Algarus]

Hopefully we can stop that before it happens

Unfortunately it seems hard to imagine that happening. Even if we stop one group another will always come back and reignite some tension in the world. Until people can learn to respect opinions we arent going anywhere

 

[Algarus]

That's actually unlikely. In the US according to statistics you are more likely to be killed by Gun crime than by a terrorist attack

We have alot of issues in America, im not sure how a terrorist attack will go if it were to happen here. At least in the south, many people are armed because of all the gun crime going on. Heck some people have an armory inside their houses.

 

[Enzo]

We have alot of issues in America, im not sure how a terrorist attack will go if it were to happen here. At least in the south, many people are armed because of all the gun crime going on. Heck some people have an armory inside their houses

The problem is no one will touch the subject of gun control when it comes up. People would rather protect their right to own a gun over the safety of the public

 

[Algarus]

The problem is no one will touch the subject of gun control when it comes up. People would rather protect their right to own a gun over the safety of the public

Thats not entirely true. Theres no right way to handle the situation, unless you've lived here its hard to understand. Its easy to look on from the outside and think we are idiots for not fixing the system, but its completely different if you live over here. I'd love to elaborate, but it would take too long and i don't think we should talk about this anymore.

 

[BLADE]

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

There isn't. The United States and (to a lesser if certainly ahistorical extent) its major allies are in every measurable metric worse than ISIS.

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

Either weaselly or a misapprehension of what air strikes actually do. We have certain degrees of intensity per AIRSEABATTLE doctrine, but the two most used are either the "precision" JTAC and HUMINT guided strikes or heavy strategic and interdiction campaigns which are in essence punitive to the civilian population regardless of their overall disposition orthogonal to the opposing forces. Without forces on the ground, neither does much (unless of course you are talking about a massive strategic destruction campaign) and would play into the enemy's PSYOPS and propaganda arms rather easily. In either case the morally insupportable civilian casualties would certainly not be "fringe."

This is of course, without disposing of the laughable notion that Western interventions are in the main (or even secondarily) about human rights.

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.

Fatalist nonsense. Lasting peace and major social victories have been won in the past in every part of the globe.

Personally, I don't think there is any political solution that is acceptable for ISIS.

What is ISIS? A medieval death cult? Sure. But as a political-military organization, what are their elements? What follows is a brief excursus into the development of Iraq and Syria, particularly with regards to the relational composition of its societal forces and how these have developed in the Syrian-Iraqi War.

Disclosure: What follows is my tl;dr of Iraqi/Syrian dynamics. It is by no means comprehensive and despite my fluency in Hebrew and passable enough Arabic, I am by no means an expert, though I have visited the region and continue to learn as much as possible about this cradle of civilization. Caveat emptor.

I. A brief apercu on Iraqi and Syrian society:

The first fact to take in is that there is in fact, such a thing as Iraqi and Syrian society. All too often Western "analysts" treat these entities as constructs of Western Imperialism, held together only by the barest remembrance of Sykes-Picot. This is not so much true as incomplete. For centuries (and longer really) there have been geographic confluences that provided a socioeconomic center of gravity to both countries: Aleppo and Damascus and much of the population strip south of the Al-Ghab Plains in Syria, and Baghdad (and to a lesser Basra at the mouth of the Persian Gulf) in Iraq. By the potency of the material forces (geography, demography, etc.) applied both of these locales (and by consequence the societies which their weight naturally governed) these countries tended to develop into what in Arabic is known as a beiyeh or tajir society (depending on your argot, orthography, etc.)

Why is this important? Because the living reification of this process --the thousands of silk merchants, of date peddlers, of seamen and spice traders-- dominated both societies. Historically neither Syria nor Iraq were ever puritanical in their applications of Islam: Damascus was always a party town with a fashion scene not dissimilar to Paris (and often as transgressive especially in the seesaw struggles between Nasserites --statist nationalists-- and Baathists --also statist nationalists-- in the 50s and 60s.) Baghdad was known and even in the grip of Western imperialism remained a formidable intellectual citadel.

II. Decay and Relative Revolution

This was not always true. Pace great historians like Hourani and Hadawi, both locales saw relative decline during the periods of Ottoman rule and Ottoman struggle with the Sefavids/Persians. Furthermore, attempted and creeping Turkicization often led to stifling and tense intellectual scenes in both cities. Neither were always fonts of tolerance: pogroms were uncommon but not unheard of in Baghdad, and one of the worst massacres of Jews outside of the Tsarist Pale was in Damascus in the mid-nineteenth century. Regardless this adumbrated period of relative Ottomanic decline and simultaneous Western ascendance saw several movements bloom in the shadow of this wax-wane dynamic. The Arabic nadha --a type of political Renaissance-- borrowed as many elements as it rebelled against the attempts of the Turkish CUP (a nationalist and centralist Turkish reform movement and party.)

III. A Revolution Deferred, Delayed, Deformed, and Traded Away

We are still experiencing a relative dearth of scientific studies of this era though as I mentioned, Hourani, Hadawi, and even Khalidi (if only by circumlocution and inference) are relatively contemporary (if flawed) guides into this epoch.

We do know a few things:

--Traders, as always were vital. Reports by Bernard Lewis (a dubious source given the man's other proclivities, but acceptable enough in context) suggested that much of the capital and manpower that made up the new Arab Labour Societies, Parties, Guilds, etc. came from this relatively wealthy stratum of society. They were, by dress, by pecuniary exchange, by tastes and culture what we might call upper-middle class.

- Indeed traders also became the embryonic kernel of new bureaucratic classes --often existing in competing parallels, some in service to the Ottomans, others to the French, others still to the British. Civil servants in a sort of Iraqi Raj were relatively well paid but due to their salaries being drawn in dinar as opposed to pound sterling (the British had hitherto imposed sterling and controls in their dominions and colonial realms) were comparatively short-changed when contrasted with their Hindustani counterparts. To some degree this was salutary. Imperial expropriation though high as always was relatively low in Iraq, and funds stayed there, leading to something of a boon in the city. Whereas travelers and the Nuttal Encyclopedia had reported Baghdad's population as under two-hundred thousand souls in the early 19th century, imposed control by a more vigorous imperial center and the unexpected consequences (and we must of course credit the genius and toil of the Iraqi peoples in the main) had seen this population more than treble.

Damascus and our control cities in Syria fared about as well, though there were some stifling attempts by the French to more tightly link the Syrian economy (especially shipping and trading) to the Metropole. Still, Damascus, Aleppo and the wider Levant profited greatly from both the construction of the Suez canal and the greater importance that this (and other developments such as the unification of a hungry Italy) brought to the Eastern Mediterranean's economic and political dimensions. We would do well not to overstate these developments however in either case: much of the potential (and actual) wealth of Baghdad, Damascus inter alia were remitted to their respective imperial centers (Istanbul, Paris, and London.)

- In all of these cases, despite the vitiation of Ottoman Rule and the potential dangers of British and French power (to say nothing of Russian, German and in the future potentially American) these trader cadres did not quickly lead what we could call "civil society" towards independence --either economic or political at least not relative to contemporary movements in Indochina and in India.

Pace classic Marxist theory this was because of their class position. Elucidated by Marxist thinkers like Paul Baran (of the venerable though much etiolated Monthly Review) and touching on the querulist, acanthous and yet still (and perhaps all the more because of these qualities) magisterial works by the likes of Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky (with his national bourgeiosie) the capitalist phenomenon of uneven development (exactly what it sounds like) --which was later adopted by capitalist economists as... uneven development-- creates native classes in these countries without either the native capital (political, military, societal, economic or some admixture of the aforementioned) or the historical consciousness to challenge directly the imperialist powers and thus coordinate the goals of national revolution in a capitalist manner (without getting too sidetracked Marxists at least are fans of capitalism as a historically progressive --indeed necessary-- force in certain aspects.) Furthermore their own interests in gold, in agiotage, in reams of silk, and pounds of gold and silver are often tied to the direct fortunes of their imperial overlords, often because they act as bulwarks against revolution by either the peasants or industrial workers.

- Minorities like Jews (in the historic Palestine), Alawites in the Damascene Belt and Shiites in Iraq were able to prosper especially (and somewhat surprisingly) due to the sectarian policies followed to some extent by all the great imperial powers in the region. Some even became favored recruitment pools for the modern quaestors --auditors-- and proconsuls of their British and French maters. This was a more developed process in Syria than in Baghdad.

Regardless this was the stage set by the time of the first World War: a slow and lurching, often regressive tendency towards centripetal forces of Arab nationalism and tribalism often sheared against conspicuous (and sometimes conspicuously powerful) minorities, acting in dynamic and unforeseen fashions, especially with the tendency towards avaricious and prepotent Western meddling.

Mainstream economists like Samin, Summers, etc. have more or less made the same point if you're rolling your eyes at COMMIIEESSSSS (we're not so bad y'know.)

IV. Into Modernity? Or Away?

WWI came and went and made more formal the Western "tutelage" of these countries, with a new militarized class of civil servant --the junior officers-- rising. These were in essence the sons (both literally and socioeconomically) of the traders, who as a class both joined and kept separate from them. WWII was not quite as seminal in Middle Eastern history (with the exception of what I call contingent and incidental phenomena like FDR's wooing of the House of Saud.) In all aspects this class was more confident and had come into a more favorable international situation. Overt colonlalism, due to the exigencies of capitalism itself was becoming more expensive. National movements (in Kemalist Turkey and in the Indian Subcontinent) had proven sucessful. And the interwar period with French and British decrepitude ne plus ultra had seen much of the formal yoke thrown off.

The beneficiaries --traditionalist and monarchist with the occasional soft republican movement-- were judged too weak. Development was debile and sputtering.

And of course, the Cold War saw both Russian and American intelligence intervene (see comprador theory yet again: even at its most independent these Arabic movements could not fully achieve revolutionary aims, even in the more limited bourgeois sense.)

Which brings us... at the end of all of this to the Baath phenomenon. Founded by a mixture of traders, junior officers and political theorists from the new state universities (as much a legacy of Islam's Golden Age and the trading routes of the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean Sea as colonial institutionalization and industrialization) the Baathists were a curious mixture of populists (in the Huey Long sense), fascists (in the corporatist sense), and nationalists (though they tended to focus --as their Nasserite rivals did--) on a pan-Arab identity.

They called themselves Socialist and occasionally allied with working class and Communist/Socialist formations but for the most part were content to keep private property and of course their most ferocious repression was reserved for left-wingers. They were not Progressive in any sense of the word, but the Baathists did win (though more often they conceded to) important social rights. They were successful in creating important (both economically and symbolically) touchstones for their respective societies --Taqba Dam in Syria, and the Osirak Reactor in Iraq.

Overall much like contemporary movements, secular (the Nasserites) or not (the Muslim Brotherhood) they were unable to impose the tempo of their preferred programmes in either society and almost always relied on a major imperial sponsor (the Soviet Union for Syria, the United States for much of Iraq's history.) Again, the Communists (mon dieu!) were proven correct at least in this analytical dimension. There were peculiarities to each of our chosen countries: Iraq had the blessing --and curse-- of abundant petroleum resources. Syria was less repressive and paradoxically more open to international commerce (despite its autarkic sponsor in the form of the USSR.) Both regimes were minoritarian, of course, though in reversed senses and the extent of each regime's self-ideation with respect to how it treated the National Question (particularly with regards to the Kurds) were never as clear cut as either wanted. Iraq was always more mixed, with Shia and Sunni imbricated (and often melded) onto the other. Shia were oppressed though not to the extent of the Kurds (who were played off against said population) and not in a way dissimilar to the way African-Americans are treated in the United States.

The Assads' (pere and fils) claim to be palladia of minority rights was always overstated (their treatment of the Kurds, while not as horrific as the apex of Saddam's terrors in the late 80s/early 90s) and Syria was more physically and culturally atomized than its Iraqi cousin.

V. Contemporary developments and Conclusions

The contemporary history is both well-known and yet not well understood, so treat this section as a brief codicil to my prolix (and I am apologetically so) history. Rising tensions and increasing climatological pressures in Syria fractured Assad's social base (his and his father's project of increasing state exploitation of the merchant classes led to a subrosa movement of a homogenous mix of rebels) and potential (and often actual) famine deteriorated the Assad record and image of competency and security (though this is not to say that in any reasonable facsimile of an election Assad would not win power; he still remains by far the least of many evils.)

Iraq, as we know, was shattered by a demonically rapacious and loathsomely, infuriatingly incompetent band of imperial marauders.

Into both, a faction was ready to take up the ligaments and sinews of many formless classes and actors. The dissolution of the Baathist formation in Iraq, which had been a Prussian state-within-a-state and the traditional source of advancement and security for its (largely) Sunni ranksmen as well as massive humanitarian crisis gave ISIS an advantage. The idiocy of the American chosen Maliki government exacerbated what had previously been relatively mild or even unknown sectarian tensions, with all their attendant abhorrences.

Why is this important? Because ISIS' strength derives in great part from its Baathist officer corps, particularly its junior staff, which is highly competent (see repeated counter-salients on the AI highway.) Its financial strength is owed at least in part to some of the native merchant class (though this is more of a supernational phenomenon as Gulf millionaires and billionaires lurves them some bloodthirsty takfiris --a term for Inquisitorial types in the Arab World... it is not flattering which should give you an insight to the popular mood regarding ISIS, even in areas they rule.) Its fungibility derives from our old friends, a power that wants to impose its will on the region again --post-Kemalist/neo-Ottoman Turkey.

There are other contradictions, structural weaknesses, etc. within ISIS, many of which are exploitable with the right economic, social, and diplomatic approach. Even this short history does not begin to exhaust them. ISIS in fact recognizes this, having moved to continue property continuity (if with some tithing) and infrastructural coherence in its areas of control. It is by no means Hizbullah (a subsidiarist --in the Catholic sense-- and highly competent government-cum-militia.)

This means, rather obviously, I should say, and without unnecessarily belaboring the point at the end of what is an exhaustingly long spiel that ISIS is neither internally all that coherent or invincible or not constituent of parts that we can negotiate with or exploit in other ways (even if I am content with liquidating the largely foreign and largely upper-middle class fighting sectors that make up its foot infantry.)

Furthermore even if endorsing a fight to the finish (I am not as Western intervention is always self-interested and nearly always disastrous), this does not preclude thinking about how to win the ensuing peace, in which elements of ISIS will certainly need to be included (wholesale extirpation of this movement is not exactly possible in the current political circumstances.)

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.

Most people were against the Iraq invasion, want less US involvement in the ME, etc.

Did I personally orchestrate the bloodbath at Fallujah? Did I smuggle weapons to "moderate Rebels" who were only moderate in the sense that they were Al-Qaeda and not ISIS? Did the postman? The grandma across the street cashing her pension check? Did I fund for thirty years (and give aid to the Saudis when doing so for even longer) any number of reactionary movements often in contravention of US statute and the Constitution?

We live in a farcical democracy overseen by mediocrities, mountebanks, psychopaths and charlatans. And those are the best of them. The people have not one thimble of culpability for it. Responsibility? A different matter. But voting? A pro-forma ceremony. I do it if only because not doing it gives up the terrain at least in that regard to the monsters. But if it's the least you can do (and it is) then one should treat it with the kind of irreverence it deserves and approach if with the crafty wariness it should instill. After all voting is as much an endorsement of a grotesque system than a actual marker of decision in The World's Greatest Democracy (or to wax Twainesque democracy only for those of us who are the greatest.)

In any case, I don't want this post to be taken as picking on Loco in particular, even if his quotes form the backbone of the structure I have chosen to make this post on. I saw a mixture of despair, ignorance, and analytical fuzzy-headedness in this thread, and did my best in my own particular way to reply to it in the most edifying manner possible.

Whither here?

A comprehensive solution would be far more revolutionary (given my political sympathies) and far more expansive than even this already bloated post. Elements should certainly include a wider settlement in the Middle East, the regulation of international petroleum sources as public, democratically controlled utilities, revolutionary movements in energy generation and infrastructure (both democratic and physical), and massive armed UN intervention which safeguards local resources on a democratic and communitarian basis.

Even as I write that, much of it seems utopian or farcial. Within the limned ending imposed by the escalating Russian intervention (and the shadow of an escalating American-Western one) I would suggest that the R+6 ending is less distasteful than the triumph of ISIS/Al-Nusra/etc.

Nothing here does, indeed, lend itself to easy solutions. But that does not mean there are not solutions.

I despair of giving into despair. The histories of Damascus and Baghdad and their Levantine and Mesopotamian surroundings are bloody.

But beautiful also.

No fear.

 

[Brandon Rhea]

I'm hoping it's just the opposite. It's not often that the US, France, Russia and Iran are all working on a common goal. ISIS could end up being great for international relations between sane countries.

Russia is not working on a common goal. The targets of their airstrikes have been the anti-Assad rebels, not ISIS. Whether the downing of the Russian jet will change that in any meaningful way, who knows, but Russia is an ally of Assad and that's what their interest is in Syria.

 

[Loco]

Russia is not working on a common goal. The targets of their airstrikes have been the anti-Assad rebels, not ISIS. Whether the downing of the Russian jet will change that in any meaningful way, who knows, but Russia is an ally of Assad and that's what their interest is in Syria.

That's more what I was referring to. Since more or less confirming it was a bomb that brought down their airliner, word this morning was that Russia is now hitting actual ISIS targets.

 

[Brandon Rhea]

That's more what I was referring to. Since more or less confirming it was a bomb that brought down their airliner, word this morning was that Russia is now hitting actual ISIS targets.

Whether that's anything more than a symbolic gesture due to internal politics remains to be seen.