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In his address to the nation on Friday night, French President François Hollande said: "This is a terrible ordeal which once again assails us. We know where it comes from, who these criminals are, who these terrorists are."

On Saturday morning he identified the source as the Islamic State, also known by its Arabic acronym Daesh. Even at this early stage we can draw some reasonable conclusions about IS just from the nature of the attacks. We can speculate equally reasonably about their motives and goals, and our wisest response.

First, this was a highly professional operation. The only recent attack like Paris was in Mumbai in 2008, when a handful of young Pakistanis, trained by Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI, assaulted a city of 12 million and sustained the attack for four days. That operation took years of planning and training.

So if IS is in fact the instigator, it has serious resources and skills. Many groups in the Middle East and South Asia have had over 30 years' practical experience in both combat and terrorist action. The Islamic State didn't come out of nowhere; its roots go back to the "Arab Afghans" who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. That it evaded Western intelligence eavesdropping suggests very sophisticated communications ability.

A strategic attack

Second, the planning means it was highly premeditated, not just retaliation for some recent insult to the Islamic State or another group -- like the Charlie Hebdo killings almost a year ago. That means it's a serious provocation, strategic rather than tactical. The attackers chose Paris not because of any particular French offence, but because when Paris is attacked the entire West feels attacked. The entire West, not just France, can be expected to react.

Third, the reaction will punish the innocent more than the guilty. A routine terrorist goal is to delegitimize its enemy by goading it into violent repression. European Muslims in general, and refugees in particular, will suffer for this attack. Some on Twitter have pointed out that the terrorists are exactly what the refugees are running from, but the tweets are already lost in the firestorm.

Anti-Muslim backlash in turn will stress all the countries now dealing with refugees, from Italy and Greece to Sweden and Finland. European racists will be emboldened to attack the refugees and their shelters. Sweden has already seen numerous arson attacks against refugees.

Those still in Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan will stay where they are, putting more stress on their hosts. Turkey alone has 650,000 refugees in camps, and Jordan almost as many. Lebanon has 1.5 million. (And we think 25,000 would be a burden.)

Fourth, we could see an international demand for a kind of world war against Islamic radicalism. With Europe, the United States, Canada, and many Muslim nations dragged into a serious counterattack, the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda would welcome the opportunity for martyrdom.

But before martyrdom they could hope to see other Muslim nations’ current governments -- all of them betrayers of true Islam, in Islamist eyes -- shaken and perhaps overthrown, from Morocco to Indonesia. That would leave ordinary Muslims with no choice but to side with the extremists or flee.

Weakening all Western nations

Not only the Muslim governments would suffer. The French government will go through a major upheaval, with a purge of its intelligence service. Other European Union and North American governments will be equally furious with their spies' failure to spot the Paris attacks.

Meanwhile, our governments are likely to stress and divide their own people, whether they punish their local Muslims or protect them. Politically divided, Western nations will be less of a threat to the Islamists.

Fifth, we'd better recognize our own part in this mess. Many books, including the recent Black Flags: The Rise of Isis, have documented the opportunity George W. Bush gave the Islamists by his invasion of Iraq and utter lack of postwar planning.

Thanks to Bush, a Jordanian street thug named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi could recruit thousands of Iraqi soldiers and bureaucrats who'd been sacked by the American occupiers. Zarqawi orchestrated the Iraqi insurgency that continues to this day, and which has now migrated into Syria as the Islamic State.

Canada, thanks to Jean Chretien, stayed out of that obvious quagmire, and Stephen Harper nudged us into it. Now Justin Trudeau wants to get us out yet again, which has suddenly become a much harder job than it was last week. When you find yourself in a stampede, you've got to move or be trampled underfoot.

Or you somehow keep the stampede from even starting. Surely by now even the most narcissistic Western governments must understand how well the Islamists have taken our measure. They know just how to drive us crazy. Like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, they can predict we'll end up on our asses.

So the right response is not to take their bait. Hunt down the attackers, interrogate the survivors, and put serious pressure on any government that in any way aided the attacks.

Ferociously suppress anti-Muslim, anti-refugee agitation. Invite local Muslims to cooperate in identifying Islamic extremism's supporters -- they are ordinary Muslims' worst enemies, after all. Find the attackers' sources of funding, and choke them off.

Then remember that revenge is a dish best eaten cold.

angora

Nov 16 2015, 07:40 AM

So, tell me, what serious pressure would you suggest?

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These are a few things that will not solve the terrible and tangled web of causation and violence in which the attacks of Friday night were spawned. A 242-ship Navy will not stop one motivated murderous fanatic from emptying the clip of an AK-47 into the windows of a crowded restaurant. The F-35 fighter plane will not stop a group of motivated murderous fanatics from detonating bombs at a soccer match. A missile-defense shield in Poland will not stop a platoon of motivated murderous fanatics from opening up in a jammed concert hall, or taking hostages, or taking themselves out with suicide belts when the police break down the doors. American soldiers dying in the sands of Syria or Iraq will not stop the events like what happened in Paris from happening again because American soldiers dying in the sands of Syria or Iraq will be dying there in combat against only the most obvious physical manifestation of a deeper complex of ancient causes and ancient effects made worse by the reach of the modern technology of bloodshed and murder. Nobody's death is ever sacrifice enough for that.

snip

....There are things that nations can do in response that do not involve scapegoating the powerless and detaining the innocent. There is no real point in focusing a response on the people whose religion makes us nervous. States should retaliate against states.


It is long past time for the oligarchies of the Gulf states to stop paying protection to the men in the suicide belts. Their societies are stunted and parasitic. The main job of the elites there is to find enough foreign workers to ensla…er…indenture to do all the real work. The example of Qatar and the interesting business plan through which that country is building the facilities for the 2022 World Cup is instructive here. Roughly the same labor-management relationship exists for the people who clean the hotel rooms and who serve the drinks. In Qatar, for people who come from elsewhere to work, passports have been known to disappear into thin air. These are the societies that profit from terrible and tangled web of causation and violence that played out on the streets of Paris. These are the people who buy their safety with the blood of innocents far away.



It's not like this is any kind of secret. In 2010, thanks to WikiLeaks, we learned that the State Department, under the direction of then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, knew full well where the money for foreign terrorism came from. It came from countries and not from a faith. It came from sovereign states and not from an organized religion. It came from politicians and dictators, not from clerics, at least not directly. It was paid to maintain a political and social order, not to promulgate a religious revival or to launch a religious war. Religion was the fuel, the ammonium nitrate and the diesel fuel. Authoritarian oligarchy built the bomb. As long as people are dying in Paris, nobody important is dying in Doha or Riyadh.

It's time for this to stop. It's time to be pitiless against the bankers and against the people who invest in murder to assure their own survival in power. Assets from these states should be frozen, all over the west. Money trails should be followed, wherever they lead. People should go to jail, in every country in the world. It should be done state-to-state. Stop funding the murder of our citizens and you can have your money back. Maybe. If we're satisfied that you'll stop doing it. And, it goes without saying, but we'll say it anyway – not another bullet will be sold to you, let alone advanced warplanes, until this act gets cleaned up to our satisfaction. If that endangers your political position back home, that's your problem, not ours. You are no longer trusted allies. Complain, and your diplomats will be going home. Complain more loudly, and your diplomats will be investigated and, if necessary, detained. Retaliate, and you do not want to know what will happen, but it will done with cold, reasoned and, yes, pitiless calculation. It will not be a blind punch. You will not see it coming. It will not be an attack on your faith. It will be an attack on how you conduct your business as sovereign states in a world full of sovereign states

angora

Nov 16 2015, 08:19 AM

"It's time for this to stop. It's time to be pitiless against the bankers and against the people who invest in murder to assure their own survival in power. st. Money trails should be followed, wherever they lead. People should go to jail, in every country in the world. It should be done state-to-state. Stop funding the murder of our citizens and you can have your money back. Maybe. If we're satisfied that you'll stop doing it. And, it goes without saying, but we'll say it anyway – not another bullet will be sold to you, let alone advanced warplanes, until this act gets cleaned up to our satisfaction. If that endangers your political position back home, that's your problem, not ours. You are no longer trusted allies. Complain, and your diplomats will be going home. Complain more loudly, and your diplomats will be investigated and, if necessary, detained. Retaliate, and you do not want to know what will
happen, but it will done with cold, reasoned and, yes, pitiless calculation. It will not be a blind punch. You will not see it coming. It will not be an attack on your faith. It will be an attack on how you conduct your business as sovereign states in a world full of sovereign states"

I read this with a lighter heart. This, it seems is as perfect a solution as I've seen suggested.

but then I read.." People should go to jail, in every country in the world. It should be done state-to-state. Stop funding the murder of our citizens and you can have your money back"

How are we going to ensure that "people go to jail in these states that support Isis and similar 'revolutionaries'.
and
"Retaliate, and you do not want to know what will
happen, but it will done with cold, reasoned and, yes, pitiless calculation"

What does this sound like to you? It sounds like a threat of violence to me. What retaliation could we take that we have not already mentioned. The only thing I see left is violence which is what we're trying to get away from since it doesn't solve the problem.

I wish I know what to do but, even more, I wish the pundits and leaders knew what to do and would do it and have done with it.

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"In order to eliminate the likelihood of mass murders on U.S. soil, I, Barack Obama, am ordering all U.S. military personnel currently in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palistan, Yemen, Jordan and Kazakstan, overt and covert, to return to the borders of the United States in an orderly fashion before December 1, 2015. I urge other countries to do the same, but the choice is yours."

Trotsky

Nov 17 2015, 02:55 AM

Best selfish but sensible response.

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"In order to eliminate the likelihood of mass murders on U.S. soil, I, Barack Obama, am ordering all U.S. military personnel currently in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palistan, Yemen, Jordan and Kazakstan, overt and covert, to return to the borders of the United States in an orderly fashion before December 1, 2015. I urge other countries to do the same, but the choice is yours."

angora

Nov 17 2015, 03:05 AM

The economic and weaponry 'retaliations were already clearly mentioned before the threat of retaliation was made. It reads quite clearly that some other retaliation will apply.