Exilian
Art, Writing, and Learning: The Clerisy Quarter => Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza => Topic started by: comrade_general on November 14, 2015, 02:43:44 AM
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I'm sure everyone has heard about France. :(
Seems the refugee thing has finally backfired. I don't mean to sound heartless but we all knew something like this was going to happen.
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I don't want to be argumentative about something as evil as this. However, we don't yet seem to know anything about who did this or where they were from. It could easily have been "home-grown", as the 7 July 2005 attacks in London were. I expect the French authorities will have some answers quite soon - could we wait for them, please?
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I think you folk probably know my views without me expressing them by this point.
Suffice to say that I'm sickened by the killing, and we should definitely assess whether we're doing enough to counter radicalisation as a result of it. I'm also on the other hand terrified that western Europe is going to continue shedding, in fear of terrorism, the very openness and liberties that are what really differentiates us from the fundamentalists.
I also think that linking it to "the refugee thing" is spurious at best, and indeed is probably high on the list of aims that IS had here in the first place. Sowing fear and division and hatred is precisely the aim of these sorts of attacks, alienating and reacting against western muslim communities and refugees (the large majority of whom are only in Europe because they're fleeing Islamic fundamentalism) is a major win for the terrorists here.
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I'm sure everyone has heard about France. :(
Seems the refugee thing has finally backfired. I don't mean to sound heartless but we all knew something like this was going to happen.
On phone so I'll be brief. /agree.
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It's just too perfect of a Trojan horse. Everyone is welcoming these refugees with open arms, so easy for ISIS to slip a few guys in there, especially since reports say the majority of the refugees are males of fighting age. Don't be so naive. Everyone except Obama KNEW this would happen sooner or later. And how useless is he? The morning BEFORE the attack: "durr ISIS is contained". Maybe now everyone will quit portugaling around and destroy them like the cancer they are.
Sorry I don't want to start an argument. We shouldn't be fighting amongst ourselves when we have a common enemy. Just angry. :(
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I'm not disagreeing that we should ideally have done a lot more to stop IS sooner, though bombing campaigns won't work and I'm unconvinced that a ground war would be successful in the long run either unless you guys are up for occupying half the middle east for a couple of decades minimum. Islamic extremism won't die because we keep shooting it, any more than any other ideology does, and I don't think we're doing enough to counteract people getting radicalised in the first place and stop the flow of fighters to IS.
As for refugees, I'm pretty sure IS could get people into France regardless of the refugee crisis. I mean, sure, it's always been likely that with the rise of IS they'd manage at some point to get a terror attack off, but I don't think that realistically there's an obvious correlation between terrorism and refugee numbers - if there was, we'd expect IS to be making more attacks further east where refugee numbers are vastly higher for one thing. France has taken comparatively few refugees compared to Greece, Germany, or Sweden, for example. I don't think there's a good argument for us being less humane to refugees as a result of this; not least because the other option is probably cooping refugees up on Aegean islands until they die in filthy and underfunded massed camps, which would be a complete gift to IS recruitment.
Essentially I'm very reluctant to shed so much of the open-ness and freedom that is what I most value about western countries in the name of decreasing the likelihood of terror attacks; I don't think it's an effective strategy and, worse, I feel like it's letting IS get what they want from us.
I do agree with Glaurung though that it's not work deconstructing this too much before we get any reports on how the attack really happened. I mean, we know it was an IS attack, but I don't think we yet have a clear enough idea of who these fighters were, how they were trained and armed, etc, to make detailed conclusions beyond a certain point. And yeah, I appreciate/share the anger, IS are probably the most horrendous group in the world today and it's really frustrating seeing them do things like this and not having any way to do anything about it. :(
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Aye no one should lose any freedoms after something like this. These problems are all rooted in the same lack of humanity, dismal attitude, and total warping of reality in the minds of these "people".
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Vive la France! Our first and oldest ally. Helped us out when we were just rebel scum.
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Hollande apparently wants to put France in a state of emergency for three months, which seems excessive even in the face of this. Also looks like the French may be throwing more airstrikes into Syria. I have a cynical suspicion that FH may be trying to do a leftwing Thatcher (aka war -> public opinion surge -> win elections).
News on the terrorists: there's some evidence now (not unexpectedly) that a couple of them may have come in via the refugee route, notably a faked Syrian passport discovered near one of them. It looks like these were only additional manpower though, with the majority of the planning, obtaining weapons, etc having happened in Belgium and French & Belgian nationals making up most of the group.
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I'm surprised they haven't surrendered to anyone yet. What would you do?
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What would I do about what?
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If you were prez?
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Oh! I'm not necessarily suggesting that air strikes are the wrong option militarily; I certainly think I'd be trying to lift the state of emergency as fast as possible to show IS they weren't going to rattle France no matter what they threw at us. If they sense that they're getting more of a reaction they're more likely to try again, so keeping things functioning and open should be prioritised. I'd also be throwing more funds into counter-radicalisation and look into community services in France's most disaffected neighbourhoods, and I'd be opening up to the Schengen area again as soon as I could, though neither of those options are showy or popular so they probably won't happen. Stemming the flow of manpower and resources to IS should be absolutely the first priority on the list though. Also, push for a more effective Europe-wide central counterterrorism unit to be set up to coordinate between different countries - again, won't happen, but it seems to be emerging that a lot of the reasons these guys weren't picked up was that they were operating across the Franco-Belgian border.
In the Middle East, airstrikes seem to be sort working over time though painfully slowly, I'm not sure how good the argument is for a targeted ground campaign; I think if a ground campaign happened it would probably have to be in Iraq mainly, to cut off the Syrian and Iraqi IS groups (the Kurds are already trying to adopt this strategy) and then take Mosul, the loss of IS' capital would be a serious blow for them. I've certainly seen it suggested that a major reason why IS is looking to move to terror attacks is that they're starting to lose ground and so it's harder for them to get recruits across the borders from Turkey (this is probably why Obama made his unfortunate remarks on containment; they're not advancing so well in the ground war, but that's sadly not the same as them being contained, as it means they're setting up terror cells instead of trying to recruit ground fighters). I'd also be trying to encourage defections etc where possible and see if IS could be broken up at all from the inside; unlikely at present but if the Caliph was taken out then I don't think there's any clear successor.
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Also this, so much this:
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I thought that was going to be a political spiel but surprisingly it was good.
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It pains me to see these attacks being used as an excuse for xenophobia, not to mention the sudden paranoia cropping up everywhere. Fear like this is playing into the hands of the people who orchestrated the attacks, and by marginalising refugees and moderates all we are doing is providing brand new recruits to the death cult. The ideology can't be beaten simply by killing, all that achieves is giving these loons martyrs to rally around and giving them slightly better PR.
As for the refugee situation, I feel like closing borders is obviously a mistake, not just for moral reasons (after all, these people are only fleeing terror just like what happened in Paris, only to a much larger scale), but also to refuse the opportunity of propaganda and resentment to be spread.
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Right, you can't physically kill an ideology, but we can't back down that only lets them think that terrorism works. Going full throttle would be so easy. US, France, UK, the portugaling Soviet Union, and all the other guys are in the fight now it should be so easy to wipe those portugals off the planet. Seize control of that whole portugaling area and put it under martial law. Boom. Done. It has to stop. Naow. Enough of this little drone armadillo - pew pew. With the combined force of manpower of the free world united I don't understand why everyone is holding back.
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This kind of move is what they are aiming for, it gives greater ground for their cause and will only fuel the fire. Yes, perhaps it would stop attacks in the short term, but it is unsustainable, and will just create more hatred for the West. The more people are indiscriminately killed or oppressed, the stronger the ideology becomes. Worse still, many of the people involved in these organisations are Western born, on some Jihad fantasy, surely further romanticising this idea by giving them a legitimate reason to join what they will see as a fight for justice is a bad idea? We probably do have the firepower to do such a move, but I suspect it will do little good in the long run.
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portugal that. It's that mentality that got us into this situation in the first place. All that political correctness crap makes us damn weak.
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I think it is the eye for an eye mentality which got us here. Violence breeds only more violence.
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Sure, let bygones be bygones. We would say "no hard feelings, bro" but they will always say "allahu akbar" *boom*. Put your hand out in good faith and they will cut it off every time.
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Of course there will always be hardline lunatics, but I don't think they will be prevented by any means. Offering a hand in good faith will discourage moderates from becoming extremists. To be clear, I'm not saying the insane people who actually bomb/shoot people should be left unpunished, we need to show that terrorism is not to be tolerated, but also that we know not all people are terrorists.
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There is a clear and unified enemy in the Middle East right now with land and cities and all the hardware of an army. That's what I'm talking about. The thing that is targeting anyone and anything that doesn't adhere to it's beliefs (other Muslims included). portugaling destroy it like a bee nest.
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I think we need both sides to our strategy - we do need to defeat Daesh on the ground, and I'm increasingly wondering if ground intervention might not be overall worthwhile now, not least because the civilian casualties could be significantly decreased compared to the horrendous casualties involved in turning the Middle East into a blast crater. It's important to remember that IS is, in its own view, a Caliphate; it requires territory to function and is illegitimate without it, unlike al-Qaeda which is an organisation comprised of terror cells that makes no specific claim to land or supremacy. I think I'd want to hear more evidence before conclusively coming down for or against a ground war, but I certainly don't think it should be off the table.
Alongside that effort in the Middle East, though, we need to not make the mistake that IMO every intervention from Afghanistan onwards has made, and give the impression that we're only there for ourselves. Whatever the military budget needed to take out Daesh in a ground war, we need to be willing to spend as much again on reconstruction, on a massive propaganda war, on countering the online propaganda of Daesh and other extremists. Removing Daesh is important, but we also need to start the long term effort to dry up their recruiting base and hopefully ensure this ideology has little to no chance to resurface afterwards.
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'Why does it matter more that Paris was attacked rather than all the armadillo that happens daily in the middle east?' is a question being asked a lot. It's not because we (as a whole) don't care about the suffering the decent people of the middle east go through, it's because it's a far away culture. As we go further from our point of origin, things get stranger, go to France and it's recognizable, go a little further east and Hungary is noticeably different, go to Turkey and it's exotic and head yet further and it's alien. It's not that we can't tell they're human and anatomically the same as us but more that their sensibilities are foreign and not understood.
Is Islam the problem? Most people say no. Personally, I think they need to re-word the Quran to make it damn clear that killing any people is not what your God wants. Pass laws to make only the new edition allowed in Mosques. Will that generate resentment? Sure but over time nobody will notice. Hopefully this will allow peaceable Muslims to differentiate themselves from the extremists. Maybe even go the whole hog and allow women equal rights or something radical like that.
Trying to counter ISIS propaganda is ineffective in my opinion. What's more attractive for these devout Muslims, peace under laws of man or under the laws of your God? We can't make the west seem any better than it is without being China-esque. We have a free media for a reason, they report on what they find and then skew things to generate sales. Depending on which side the outlet is on, reports will be skewed one way or the other. To people that haven't lived in the west long, our endless media stream on how corrupt our government is, how everyone is out for themselves and profit, the shameless harassing of our celebrities (celebrities: (n)people to be honored) and seemingly all the hate the (generally left) media has for their own countries, I can see exactly why someone without this would find it grotesque. Are we as equal to blame for the extremists as anything else? Not a clue. What motivates people is up to them but I believe that for some at least this will be it.
One thing that people get wrong continually, killing people does not mean you have a mental illness. There are many good reasons to kill people but we've found better ways to get free of your spouse or get away from jail or inherit the country fairly but we did this over a mountain of our own dead. Claiming superiority for this reason is ignorant. To these people whatever they use as their reason will be a good reason, will be just in their own minds. It does not mean they are insane, it's closed minded to think that someone with different beliefs and way of thinking is not sane.
As to war with ISIS, it's on the cards already. We'll see when the dust settles I guess but I'd rather our forces go better safe than sorry.
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Colossus, I disagree with quite a lot of what you said (though possibly also agree with some). I've been building up to a rant for some days now, so what follows may be more intemperate than is called for. Also, I have a stack of other things to do tonight and for the next few days, so I'm only responding partially.
So, one of the things you said is this:
Personally, I think they need to re-word the Quran to make it damn clear that killing any people is not what your God wants.
The probability that "they" will reword the Quran is about the same as the probability that "they" will reword the Bible, and for many of the same reasons. In particular, I think the Quran is already about as clear and firm on the importance of not killing people as the Bible is - and yet members of both religions violate that rule every day. Al Qaeda, IS, Boko Haram etc. are killing people now; the IRA (whose members were at least nominally Christian) killed people fairly steadily between about 1970 and 1995. At one stage, for example, the IRA had a particular fondness for bombing pubs in and around London - not so different from what IS did in Paris.
More generally, there are, apparently, 1.6 billion Moslems around the world - not very different from the number of Christians, and rather larger than the total citizenship of the "first world" countries. The total number of IS/al Qaeda/Boko Haram/etc. members is 1 or 2 in a million. So the members of these organisations are no more representative of Islam than the IRA was representative of the UK, or of Christianity. Indeed, IS and others are engaged in a war against other Moslems, as witness the recent bombings in Beirut and Baghdad. Blaming "Islam" for the faults of terrorist groups blinds us to the true nature of the situation, must surely be seen as insulting by the vast majority of Moslems, and is very probably playing into the hands of the terrorists in stoking the sense of injustice felt by peaceful Moslems against "the West".