The attacks in Paris were awful. They shattered any sense of security the French have felt since the Charlie Hebdo massacre and they left the rest of the western world on edge.
For Democrats, the attacks are bad news politically. The reactionary response by many Americans plays into Republican hands. Close the borders. Increase surveillance on Muslim communities. Bomb somebody, anybody, in some Muslim country. As Lindsey Graham said, “There’s a 9/11 coming.” In other words, be afraid, be very afraid.
And that’s exactly what the terrorists want. The jihadis goal is to make the West inhospitable to Muslims to increase their recruitment efforts. They also want to lure the West into a large scale war in the Middle East to bring about an apocalyptic holy war that will fulfill some crazy prophesy. The Republican response is, of course, “Bring it on!”
In the debate, Republicans pounced when Hillary Clinton refused to say we’re at war with “radical Islam.” She’s right. We’re not at war with a religion, radical or not. We’re at war with a group of terrorists who consider themselves radical Islamists. In politics, though, such semantics don’t matter.
For all of their posturing, none of the Republicans have a good answer. Graham and others believe we need forces on the ground. Since we already have special forces there, he must mean large scale deployment. That certainly should be an option, but it shouldn’t be the first one. We won’t be seen as liberators. We’ll be seen as invaders and we’ll get the blame for all of the civilian deaths. That’s the lesson we should have learned from Iraq and Vietnam.
Republicans are great with their rallying cries to defeat the enemy. They are lousy when it comes to figuring out what comes next. There is no stable government in the areas that the Islamic State, or Daesh, holds. There are numerous groups fighting with and against each other. If we put troops on the ground to defeat Daesh, who will replace them? Are we going to occupy an area the size of Great Britain with no stable government around for the next 50 years or more? Who’s going to pay for that?
Think about the groups vying for control in the region. The Russians are now in Syria supporting Bashar Assad’s Syrian government, which we are trying to topple. Assad has declared almost every group that opposes him a terrorist organization. In addition to his own army, he has the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militias supporting him. We consider Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Then there’s the Al Qaeda affiliate, the al-Nusra Front, that is fighting the Assad government and Hezbollah and also opposes the Islamic State.
Our allies in the region have tons of problems. We’ve supported the Free Syrian Army who have proven to be unreliable and weak. One general defected and turned over his weapons to Al-Qaeda. We’ve embraced the Kurds as our surrogate boots-on-the-ground, but our ally, Turkey, considers them an existential threat and won’t allow us to support them from Turkish bases.
Much to our chagrin, the Iranians have benefited most from the Iraq War. By taking out Saddam Hussein and his Sunnis, we eliminated their biggest threat. They are now more stable and wielding more influence than almost any other country in the region. They are backing Shiite militias who are fighting Daesh and supporting the Iraqi government. So does that make Iran our ally?
Paris certainly means we need to be more aggressive and the Islamic State must be defeated. It’s a matter of national security. That said, we need to have a plan for what to do once they are eradicated and it needs to include heavy input from the people who actually live in the region. While we might suffer periodic terrorist attacks, they are bearing the brunt of the instability. So far, defeating one enemy in the Middle East has only created a more vicious one. We need to stop that cycle, not perpetuate it with more reactionary policies.
If Obama’s foreign policy is a failure because of terrorist attacks in Europe, Republican foreign policy was a disaster by strengthening Iran while creating massive instability and fostering the conditions that allowed the rise of Daesh. Pointing fingers right now doesn’t do any good. Finding solutions that protect our country, preserve our freedoms and lead to stability instead of more chaos in the Middle East is what we need.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
The Paris terrorist attack has too many similarities to all the other terrorist attacks: 911, the Boston bombing and the London bombing – all of which have ignited and fueled the GWOT. In each instance, emergency terror drills were being simultaneously carried out in the area of the attack; in each instance there occurred an unexplainable failure in the intelligence security network; in each instance all the terrorist suspects were known to the respective intelligence agencies; in each instance the suspects were being monitored by the respective intelligence agencies; in each instance the media knew every detail of the terrorist attack within minutes without any investigation having been conducted and in each instance no impartial investigation was even called for. Furthermore, each attack has been used to ratchet- up the fear factor, roll-back civil liberties and pound the drums of war. Coincidence? And what would Syrian refugees gain from committing such an act when they too are attempting to escape the terrors of ISIS – which the US. UK. and France have all had a hand in creating through their reckless regime change practices in the ME. and North Africa.
Liberals can’t decide what to fear the most–Republicans, “climate change” or Governor McCory. Talk about paranoia—.
We don’t fear Republicans; we want to avert the consequences of what they can do by their determination to pack the Supreme Court and lower courts with radical anti-Constitutional ideologues, and to destroy unions, and to intensify wealth disparities, and to establish a national religion….
Nor do we fear McCrory or climate change. What liberals actually do is think liberally and critically (the definition of a liberal arts education). Our goal is to identify a problem that has negative consequences for our society, community, humanity, environment, future generations, whatever; figure out who, or what policies, are responsible for causing or intensifying the problem; and try to fix it.
That might mean defeating a McCrory in the political world, or pushing for policies that will ameliorate the climate change, or doing our best to elect Democrats who will restore balance, Constitutionality, and judgment and ethics to our courts.
Whereas Republicans gin up fear and create enemies out of whole cloth (like Syrian infants) to rile up their base and keep hem voting against their own interests. It’s the difference between generating emotion and promoting rationality.
But the difference is no doubt too subtle and nuanced — Latinate, French words that are banned from the GOP-ish language — for you to grasp.
Liberals are always accusing conservatives of fear mongering when they point out the threat from foreign and domestic terrorism. (Note the above post from “Nortely” to which I responded). But it’s liberals who seem to have an irrational fear of patriotic Americans like the Governor and other Republicans. Even Hillary thinks Republicans are her worst enemy.
Sorry if you think I am being “rude.” Is “paranoia” more of that “intellectual” terminology that you don’t appreciate?
“We have nothing to fear but fear itself” – FDR
“Fear, fear, fear, fear, fear, fear…” – Republicans
Not a bad notion D. Except that it is already illegal. They were flush with cash to the tune of about $2BIL way back in 2014. The smuggling infrastructure they use to get the oil out and to market is the same that Saddam used when sanctions were imposed against him. So the damage, if you can even term it in that manner, is nominal at best considering they’re raking about $3MIL a day from their oil fields.
Blowing up the oil fields and the pipelines used to transport it would be a great start. Including confiscation of the tankers used to transport it. However, they’re selling it really cheap. Some discounts as cheap as 75% off market quote. All of that background data came from Zero Hedge.
But the problem is, there is a market for what they’re selling. Not all countries are at odds with them. Even if they don’t believe in what they’re doing, business is business. If you could buy the same product for $25.00 that you normally pay $100 for, what are you going to do as a shrewd and prudent business entity? Precisely. The same thing the people buying that oil are doing. Directly funding indiscriminate bloodshed on the rest of the world while they reap a profit.
As far as the President is concerned, he’s trying. I know he’s trying. But the problem with sanctions is that it takes time to become effective. He’s trying not to escalate a nasty situation and make it worse. But my feeling about it were betrayed in my previous post. “Nothing to win, no way to win it.”
He’s damned, either way he goes politically. Strategically, I think he should opt for a phased approach. Short, intermediate, and long term objectives that meet our goals for the region. Take nothing off the table. But remember above all else that these people are not afraid to die and indeed, most are willing to sacrifice themselves. The key differential to keep foremost in mind, despite the opinions of those who seem to know the least and know it the loudest is, while they are predominately of a particular faith, it’s not the religion that is the problem; it’s the politicalization of the religion. Their religion is being used as a means for political gain.
I suggest you read Charles P. Pierce post on the Esquire politics blog today. He says–reasonably so in my opinion–that the only way to stop this terrorism is to put our foot down on the Arabian Gulf countries–SA, Qatar, UAE, etc–that give money to local muslim groups who then turn around and finance the terror groups. It’s impossible to believe that ISIL, a Sunni group, is not getting money that originally lay in Saudi coffers. CPP recommends freezing their bank accounts, ending all military assistance, etc, until the money flows drive out. It may never happen, but it sounds a lot better than bombing Syria and Iraq into dust, which may make us feel better for a second but will do nothing but spawn new generations of terrorists.
CPP might recommend it, but what is it that the Saudis, Qatar, UAE, and the other middle eastern countries have that we want and in competition with the rest of the world for? That’s right, light sweet crude. So no, the big oil companies aren’t going to allow it. The average Joe in America isn’t going to allow it. The corporations aren’t going to allow it. Because when the gas stops, when the petro-chemicals stop along with all of the products produced from them, when the houses, homes, and apartments go dark and cold, and then the worst thing of all…the cell phones fall silent. There will be no more reason or logic. There will be no more talking.
Do we need to continue as we are? Certainly not. But ISIS, ISIL, or whatever nifty name anyone has for these groups doesn’t have to win; they only have to endure long enough to outlast the opposition. They kill a few of us, we kill a few of them. Every time they bomb and kill innocent people, the outcry goes up to bomb them into the stone age (sound familiar aka Vietnam?). But how do you bomb a people back to the stone age when they are only a step or two removed from the stone age? How do you bomb a people into submission when there is no continuity of purpose or unity as evidenced by the myriad groups and associations that permeate the region? Every time the bombs fall and missiles fly, their ranks grow and our patience wears thinner with a growing frustration.
How do you propose to win when there is nothing really to win and no way to win it? You don’t stop terrorism it goes dormant, awaiting the next precipitating event. In a truly free society, no one is truly safe; it’s an illusion. We can’t stop crime, we can’t stop the influx of drugs, we can’t stop poverty and hunger; who is naive enough to think we are going to stop terrorism?
You forgot to add “climate change” to the list of phenomena we can’t stop.
If it were not for the carnage and the desire of ISIS to spread their rule (and terrorism) as far as possible, I would say stay out of this conflict. Unfortunately, I can’t overlook either but I cannot recall a more complex set of entanglements facing this country or president. I am sure of only two things at this point. One, US combat troops returning in large numbers to the area is a very bad idea. Two, the horror in Paris will cost many emigrants their last chance for a decent life in Europe or anywhere.