This kind of thinking is exactly why Mid-east is in its current state and that is exactly the reason why ISIS was born.
ISIS high command mainly consists of Iraqi ex-officers, who were rendered jobless and aimless by USA's 'liberation' attempt. Al-Qaida was a result of a 'liberation' attempt by Soviets and then consequently another 'liberation' attempt by USA. Guess how the French 'liberation' will result at the end.
The invasion of Iraq was stupid, reckless and selfish. It was a for-profit war that destabilized the region and allowed ISIS to take on its present form.
I'll have you remember that France staunchly opposed this war.
Now the US and the brits have left us with a veritable cesspool, and we're bearing the brunt of the consequences.
This isn't a liberation attempt or a preemptive strike. This is responding to an immediate threat. And again, it would be foolish and disastrous to only respond militarily, but it's just as foolish not to protect ourselves from immediate threats while we counter persistent threats through non-military action.
Yours is a false dichotomy.
You made a strong point without being harsh, and answered a more heated rebuttal with an even stronger but nevertheless respectful comment.
I'm not sure I agree with you, but thanks sincerely for contributing a point of view in this manner.
USA can pull off its invasive politics via a) pouring insane amount of resources both militarily and politically b) by getting along pretty good with other Muslims while bombing some (like Saudis, Turks, etc.) c) by being an ocean distance away from the very people they drop bombs on.
How will France do all of that with a) much more limited resources b) while being uniformly disliked by almost all Muslim nations due to historical reasons and c) while being a boat ride away from tens of millions of agitated Muslims?
I believe, with this attack, France is pulled into this already extremely messy situation by the powers that be. And I am afraid things will escalate to a much worse situation.
If France doesn't care about who takes control of the territory afterwards, as long as they aren't terrorist supporting Islamists then it does have the capacity to seriously damage IS. Will it lead to world peace and happiness, no. Will it lead to an awful lot of Syrians continuing to die, yes. Will it marginally improve the lives of those suffering under IS rule, I believe so. Will it degrade IS' ability to recruit and inspire terror attacks abroad in the long run, yes.
Given a lot of poor choices you need to find the best one. Doing nothing is a conscious choice that may not be the best option.
I have no doubts France has the capability to "seriously damage" Daesh, but what about Daesh's successor - which is likely to be just as bad (or worse)? Unfortunately, it seems like democracy (with it's 4-/5-year election cycles) is incompatible with long term planning. It's a mirror-image of the modern-day corporate world, with CxOs who damage the organisations they lead in the pursuit of short-term gains (and the resulting bonuses), except that election stakes are higher (keep/lose the job).
Now there is the interesting concept of the rise of the "lone wolf" or individual cells that don't really have central co-ordination. Would Western intervention in Syria cause more of them? Would their rise be countered by reducing or removing the ability of IS to generate attacks? There's a debate to be had.
How many ground troop would it take to occupy all these cities ? This would be a repeat of the second Irak war, or Afghanistan, with the endless terrorist attacks, IEDs, etc.
Even if you have contributions from Kurds, Irak regular army, or Hezbollah, they would not be welcome as savior in Sunni's territory.
Like in most conflict, the military option can be used to create conditions for a political resolution, but you have to provide some sort of long term plan for Sunni population : you can't just tell them they will go back under Assad rule they despise in the first place. Currently, I don't believe there is a clear political solution. In this condition, the military option is doomed to fail.
I'm not saying it is good, but is it better than a pretty shitty situation. Do the other groups regularly crucify civilians and hurl homosexuals off buildings? If we acknowledge we can't impose a new government can we create a new normal whereby we smack groups which get out of line but otherwise stay out of the way. It's actually fairly similar to the old Roman system on the outskirts, and the same approach the British initially adopted in the early days of Empire. It's what the Americans sort of did in Afghanistan before the invasion of Iraq effectively dragged them into a civil war.
Not sure in which way Syria would be significantly different.
Also, Russia is being pulled even more into Syria. So a truly international force may materialise at some point. Not that I'm advocating that's a good thing.
As person who LIVES in heart of middle east (Iran) and I have seen shia militant from very close(I know people who works in IRGC),You are completely and pure wrong , do you know what would generate another generation of terrorist ? another invasion. I am atheist and liberal with a little being gay,I am not gay , but sometime things go wrong - and believe me these are pretty dangerous thing to be in Iran and would get me killed, without doubt - but I can realize the only thing will give terrorist another opportunity is invasion of a country in middle east. This is not your fucking war.This was not west fucking war at all. They shouldn't come here in any circumstance.You know what ? because Paris like terrorism act will happen again and again and again. West should understand they were wrong all the time. What the fuck are you doing in middle east ? You know what ? no body more than me would be glad to live in secular community with secular government, but it seems politician in west do not realize , being in middle east is equal to raising radical movement against them. YOU SHOULD UNDERSTAND , MIDDLE EAST SHOULD FIGHT FOR ITSELF, EVEN IF ISIS KILL ALL OF US, this is not your fucking war.I do not remember reading if any alien did help west during the renaissance. Society should grow.
PLEASE , do for humanity a favor , understand militarism is equal to terrorism. I was talking with one idiot yesterday , and he mentioned I do not believe France invade Iraq. Yes your are right idiot . France did not . but west did . These fucking killers in middle east , do not see countries , they see Islam against West.
Do you know who fights in Iran against mullah's ? Christians ? Are you kidding me, mojahidin ? Those fucking traitors, no way.
Academia fights against mullah's, science fights, liberal people fighting against mullah's more effective than any other person in whole revolution history.This regime is almost unbeatable in political sense- because they have money and manpower and oil- but do you know they are seeing liberals in their nightmare. They even don't care about West invasion against Iran(some stupid person like G.W Bush may even consider that option).Because at the end they know the can manage harm West military pretty badly. Worse than maybe Vietnam war.BUT THEY CANNOT FIGHT WITH INTERNET, WITH TOR, WITH STUDENTS who USE TOR.
Give them internet , provide them satellite , facebook/twitter/youtube/porn , Show them fucking beautiful women in Texas(with respect to women, I just want show sexual incentives), show them there is no need to kill so many people to get those woman , you can fuck like heaven in earth without killing people. And BOOOOOM this is the sound of explosion of foundation of religion.
Ruin their stupid culture , and then you are going to see middle is will revive. and turn to into secular place.
and Do you know who is supporting ISIS ? Which countries? I would suspect Saudi Arabia ( the US closest ally after Israel in middle east).Can you fucking believe it ? This is not double standard. This is fucking fraud against humanity.At the end we all know , non of the west's politician's give fucking flying shit about terrorism in middle east. If they did , They weren't this double standard'ed against corrupted (I would say most corrupted regime in whole world) regime in Saudi Arabia.What was last time you checked women condition in Saudi Arabia.And why the hell us have this much relation ship with country which behead people like candy. This is what I mean when I am saying double standard.
p.s. if you felt I insult you , I am so sorry , I was talking broadly than talking with you.I hope respectively, you understand there was something HUGE wrong with west policy in middle east.
I have seen shia militant from very close
Most in the West have absolutely NO IDEA what the difference between Shiite, Sunni, etc sects are. We think they look the same, act the same, adhere to the same general doctrines. Most Westerners are barely aware of a difference, if at all, with no idea which is which. I mention this because it seems there is, indeed, a deep difference between the two causing a great deal of the regional conflict ... and when well-meaning outsiders seek to intervene (yes, got it, not our war, but that's not how we see it) we're likely to take action without regard to the Shiite/Sunni split - which of course doesn't help.
Those of us trying to decide how to respond to the Paris & other attacks are desperately trying to draw a line between the "bad" responsible for such atrocities, vs the "good" we want to protect. We need help drawing that line. Clarifying the difference between Shiite and Sunni would probably help.
And BTW: those who do not make clear which side of the conflict they're on are likely to be assigned a side, much to their dismay.
I must, however, disagree with the notion that this isn't our war. When my countrymen get slaughtered in the streets, it is de facto my war. And to be clear, there are elements of Western foreign policy that I condemn as harshly as you, if not more.
Where I do agree with you is with regards to the fact that military action is a short-term stopgap and not a long-term solution. I think you're very lucid in your analysis: this is a cultural war, not of East vs West, but of obscurantism vs enlightenment. I'm well aware -- and indeed very reassured -- to know that most Persians and Arabs are on my side, and I on theirs.
>I would suspect Saudi Arabia ( the US closest ally after Israel in middle east).Can you fucking believe it ?
There are no words to describe how enraged I am by the state of global politics. I wouldn't dare suggest that military action fixes the larger problem, but I'm fairly convinced that killing jihadis is necessary, albeit insufficient.
In any case, I really hope to visit Iran someday (as a civilian, obviously). It's by far the Middle Eastern country that fascinates me the most. :)
The problem is, as your comment shows, the idea of a nation is far less appealing than the idea of religion in middleeastern countries. You need to first have people willing to fight for their country more than they are for their religion.
p.s. about the part about country and religious.That was my whole point. YOU simply should show them your religion is wrong, people can fuck and have sex like haven (maybe better than that) in L.A. Without killing people.
Believe me , does not matter how much you are going to try and push. I will guarantee you , there will not any nation in middle east with these people.maybe a nation will be stabilize , but it will not democracy , it will be Saddam Hussein like leader and guess what , there is another generation of terrorist who will grow in Hussein like dictatorship.
Do you want nation. like you have in Scandinavia (in long term) ? keep working on their mind with free information flow.
I'm proud of the work I and others have done to make Internet ubiquitous to fight ignorance.
- People here will realize you are normal too
-People here will understand your perspective
Don't bottle it up and 'splode once, cause that confirms their world view.
ISIS was born out of the Salafist/Wahhabi ideology that the Saudi state has been exporting from the beginning of its existence. This is why terrorism is almost the exclusive domain of this one sect.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alastair-crooke/isis-wahhabism...
As another poster said, if every disenfranchised person in the world turned to terrorism, we'd have complete and utter chaos. But most don't.
As for you argument, Mali was in the grips of an Islamist army. They aren't any more. Thanks to French intervention.
Intervening and waging proxy wars in the middle-east sent the message that sovereignty is relative and only applies to countries with "appropriate" views, hence the hate against west.
Still I wouldn't call Mali a stable country as they are constantly plagued by terrorist attacks.
I think the point you and @chappi42 miss is that being a jobless individual with no prospects in a war torn country with no end in sight is a whole different psychology than just being a jobless guy. Add this mix some religious agitation and you have the easiest job of all times as the HR manager of ISIS. I think this is the biggest contributing factor. Not the religion itself.
If you read e.g. what happened in Palmyra, the (sometimes foreign) radical muslim terrorists attacked/killed the citizians and a liberation is very much needed.
'Only' maybe the 'state-building' has to be done longer than before in Afghanistan, Irak... And a UN administratered government is needed for some time. I don't talk about 'the west' but also about the 'moderate muslim community'.
It's no good now to stand on the side and watch the atrocities. If I read correctly also countries like the Lebanon suffer from the influx of radical maslims foreigners.
Well, the problem is that according to his post, he lives "in the western part of the city [Aleppo] still under the control of the Syrian government[Under the "presidency" of Bashar al-Assad]" and the French Government has been on the side of the rebels. Which means, that if the French army is deployed, and there is no agreement between France (and the rest of the allies (mainly the US, UK and the Arab League) and Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, the French army may end up bombing Salah-Eddin's house instead of helping him.
I wholeheartedly recommend you to read the wikipedia article on the foreign involvement in the Syrian Civil War [1], to see how fucked up the situation is over there. And also, take a look at this map [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_involvement_in_the_Syr...
[1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/09/ec...
Could you expand on that? I live in Paris too and I don’t feel it has anything different from another city like London or New-York regarding security.
We've had two gunfights in the middle of Paris in two years. If you don't see how this is different from previous terrorism, then respectfully, there's really no point in discussing any of this with you.
The point isn't that things are different from a security-state point of view. The point is instead that we're facing something whose scope and scale we underestimated.
This was a terrorist attack on French soil - in Paris, the thought has weight-enough on its own, there is no need to frame it as a battle.
When trained soldiers are shooting at each other and engaging in combat-maneuvers, it takes a great deal of mental gymnastics not to call it a battle. Would you prefer "skirmish"? I can get behind that, but that's a difference of scale, not nature.
What we witnessed on Friday was a coordinated attack by members of a self-proclaimed state. If you don't want to call it a battle, you're just arguing semantics. It remains a military operation on our soil by a foreign state.
Moreover, let's not forget the explicit message behind these attacks: Daesh can visibly attack (mostly) when and where it wants. The subtext is that this is going to happen again, as it already has. So yes, the only reasonable way to relate to Friday's events is to consider them as a battle in an ongoing conflict against a geopolitical entity (or a skirmish if you prefer).
Again, and I truly mean no disrespect: denying this is so absurd that there's really no point in discussing it further, as we simply will not agree. Denying that this was a battle/skirmish is just as absurd as claiming that this has nothing to do with Islam (as, sadly, some people are already doing).
Maybe you should join the counter-terrorism forces or intelligence community instead to help your country, if that what you're actually after, not just blind revenge because you have to admit that these attacks were a big SNAFUS on the French security apparatus part and some heads got to roll over this but I was amazed to see that Hollande is going to raise their compensation and reward them even more for their incompetence.
I REALLY REALLY wish I had a job like this where they pay me more every time I fuck up and make a total mess of a situation. I really picked the wrong field and career here.
Also, I find it really amusing that the general sentiment in France towards guns and a 2nd amendment style right is negative when it is not a stretch to say that some lives could have been saved if armed persons of the populace came to the rescue and took out the terrorists instead of filming the massacre as it was unfolding helplessly.
It proved beyond doubt now that security forces can be overwhelmed when faced with ops of such scale & magnitude and it would very imprudent to have just a single line of defense to protect people, when two or three backup could make wonders and end the situation in a matter of minutes and save the lives of a lot of people.
So, maybe you should petition your government to relax the laws concerning purchasing and carrying guns to avoid such a disaster from occurring on this scale in the future and leave the ME to its people to sort out the mess.
Please, no. Liberalization of guns (that is, a tool for hurting and killing living beings) doesn't solve terrorism. It doesn't make people safe. It doesn't help.
People in USA don't understand why guns aren't sold freely in Europe just as we do not understand how guns are available to everybody in the States. Unfortunately I can't express that other than "it just feels wrong."
Don't be naive and think that making everybody a vigilante is going to solve terrorism and Middle East crisis. It goes much deeper than that.
EDIT: don't you have crazy people shooting around over there? I would argue that it's much easier given how available guns are to the populace, but the point is: gun liberalization has nothing to do with keeping citizens safe.
Here's the answer to your doubts. You know that my argument makes sense but you let your ideology and emotions get in the way of making meaningful policy adjustments.
First, I am not American and I live in a country that restricts the lawful acquisition of guns for legitimate reasons but I can see that arguments put forward by gun rights advocates make sense from a defense point of view. I think that imposing reasonable restrictions on guns is a very good position to take that strikes a good balance between ensuring national security on one hand and individual security on the other.
I must say that I find it interesting that left-wing people are spearheading the fight against gun rights given that weapons were a central theme in the French Revolution, October Revolution and other emancipating movements in the 20th century when they're supposed to be the ones championing the cause and fight the encroachment of the state on the people's rights.
Please note that guns are not available to everyone in the US. There are still regulations in place and also not everyone would like to be a vigilante but if people would love to volunteer to defend themselves, their family or community, we should not get in their way for the illusion of security that proved very non-existent over and over again.
If not ideology (ideals) and emotions, what else are we?
Anyway, you're wrong about me. I feel strongly about this, and I do not have nor am pushing any particular political agenda.
To me, simply, restricting gun ownership is in the same boat of restricting access to grenades, restricting access to RPGs, restricting access to plutonium to the general public. People should not be able to buy a tool that is designed for the sole purpose of doing harm. I keep making the comparison with drugs, but I'm all for drugs legalization, because the only person you are harming is yourself, and you should be free to do so if you want.
And do not think that I loathe weapons: I would love to shoot an M4A1, put my hands on an AK-47, and spend far too much time researching weapons as I come across them in games. They have a kind of forbidden beauty, but still I do not see a valid reason for the public to have them, including safety. There's no safety when anybody could carry a pistol in their handbag, IMHO.
I agree that you can stop or scare away a burglar with your handgun, but the downsides are far too big: much more people will buy guns, the percentage of mentally unstable people with guns increases, bad things happen.
EDIT:
> guns are not available to everyone in the US.
I know, but since many have guns, if I, mentally deranged teenager, want to get one to shoot people at my school, I know plenty of people to get one from.
You know how many people I have ever known with a gun or rifle? One. I don't even know where to buy one, I don't think I've ever seen a gun shop where I lived in 28 years.
ps: I'm not even against there policy, I'm just following the simple engineering rule that errors happen, and having lots of weapon everywhere are more opportunities for things to go wrong. So far nobody has the solution against violence.
I posted it further below, but the reserve corps are not what you seem to think they are. Reservists patrol cities, especially airports and train stations.
I'm not going to war; I just want to be on the front lines when the war comes to me, because someone has to be the trigger-man and I'm capable of doing it. I should add that I have no desire to kill another human being, even a daesh soldier. From what I've heard it's a burden you carry for the rest of your life. But, I'd rather do that then do nothing for a third time.
At the end of the day, someone needs to pull the trigger, sickening though this thought may be. I hope I won't have to, but I'd rather do that than watch my compatriots get butchered in their own streets. I'd rather do that then weep in my apartment like I did last Friday. I'm a few years shy of 30, I'm in good shape... if not me, then who?
I mention this in case any other Frenchmen are lurking around. I know the army doesn't have a great reputation here, but this is a way to help out that doesn't even need to interfere with your work schedule. Your employer is required by law to allow you to pursue your missions, and you're paid a small amount during your active-duty days (though this is hardly the point). I can think of no clearer example of self-defense.
>Last I checked they are begging for armor and winter gear.
I wonder how difficult it would be to collect old winter clothes and send them over...
Then again, I doubt they would accept me, given I have an arm injury that prevents a bit of motion above shoulder height.. (I'm 6'5" or ~2m tall)
Salah-Eddin's condolences mean a lot to me and I wish him all the best. It's my sincerest hope that French troops will be deployed to Syria in the near future, and that such an action will prove useful in protecting him, his family, his neighbors and his culture.
For what it's worth, I've submitted an application to be a reservist in the French army. It's one month of training and 30 days of active duty per year. I sincerely hope my small effort will be helpful not only because it puts another man in the Parisian battlefield (yes... that's sadly what it has become), but also because it allows a better-qualified soldier to (hopefully) deploy to the Middle East.
I don't presume to know whether or not my action is helpful, but I sincerely hope it is. I'm already quite busy with my dissertation defense coming up in a few short months, but this can do, so I will.
I suppose I needed to get that off my chest as well...