The Paris Attack Debate Thread

[Syt]

 

[Liep]

You see, "the women are part of the system that hides the barbarians."

[Liep]

In a newspaper he said: "We're too gentleman-y, we never bomb where there are women and children. We can no longer accept that."

[The Brain]

Worked for FDR.

[grumbler]

Yeah, that's how it seems to me - which is one of the problems of actually whipping the West into a real frenzy. They'll find it difficult to maintain their state in the face of that.

Rationally, you are correct.  But these are not rational people.  They believe in divine intervention.

[Tamas]

I think IF this attack was sanctioned by whatever high command ISIS has,, it is not about some grand long term scheme of conquering everything - it is about gaining brownie points with their present and potential supporters.

It is, in essence, the same as if a Western politician kisses a baby on camera, or promises to create jobs.

[Josquius]

What are the chances of the British government doing something about it, seeing how it has been probably most shameless in palling around with the Saudis?

If there's one thing you can rely on the tories for its not doing the right thing. 

[OttoVonBismarck]

Egyptian President Al-Sissi delivered a great speech earlier this year. He talked about Muslims banding together to halt the push of radical Islam, how it was so wrong, that sort of thing. A real important speech coming from a major Muslim national leader. But it seems as if that speech was made in a vacuum and not much really done by others to follow up. Maybe US and European leaders should have picked up on that speech and expanded on it, emphasized it, and supported/encouraged other Muslim leaders in the Mid East to take the same attitude. That kind of thing and keeping it up would seem to help galvanize nations and people, at least as powerful talking points.

Part of the issue there is he's a military dictator, and I think there's a long history in the West of not paying attention to the speeches of military leaders like that. It's assumed since he doesn't rule based on Democratic consent he doesn't have anything worthwhile to add to the discourse.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Yeah, it is not time for reformation (ISIS is the muslim Calvinism already) but secularisation.

Which, as others pointed out, in the Christian West required brutal force. And, coming to think of it, this is what Hussein, Qaddafi, Mubarak and the Turkish army used to be doing...

I don't think that's entirely accurate. Britain didn't really follow this path. There was discrimination against Catholics by the establishment for generations, and it also resulted in relatively minor uprisings by the Jacobites, but by and large Britain never had to violently suppress religion to become a secular state. Neither did the United States.

[Martinus]

Yeah, it is not time for reformation (ISIS is the muslim Calvinism already) but secularisation.

Which, as others pointed out, in the Christian West required brutal force. And, coming to think of it, this is what Hussein, Qaddafi, Mubarak and the Turkish army used to be doing...

I don't think that's entirely accurate. Britain didn't really follow this path. There was discrimination against Catholics by the establishment for generations, and it also resulted in relatively minor uprisings by the Jacobites, but by and large Britain never had to violently suppress religion to become a secular state. Neither did the United States.

I disagree - Britain suppressed all churches not directly controlled by the state quite heavily, and much earlier than continental Europe did.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I think the "rational liberal" response should be to:

1. Help the refugees, within reason.
2. Acknowledge that whilst most muslims are not terrorists, islam does breed more terrorism than any other contemporary religion or ideology.
3. Dedicate resources to policing and investigating muslim communities (despite cries of racial profiling).
4. Crack down heavily on any illiberal crimes and behaviour - both from islamophobic thugs (mandatory prison sentences for attacks on immigrants) and from fundamentalist muslims (mandatory deportations for stuff like domestic violence or "sharia patrols" etc.).
5. Crack down on foreign funding coming from nondemocratic muslim countries, such as Saudi Arabia.

This may be one of the few times I've been in complete agreement with Marti. These are all reasonable approaches. I'd probably add a 6, though--heightened promotion of moderate Muslim interest groups and government partnerships with them. The United States government has been working with groups like CAIR and OIC for years to promote more healthy relationships with domestic Muslims.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I disagree - Britain suppressed all churches not directly controlled by the state quite heavily, and much earlier than continental Europe did.

But they never suppressed religion itself, as the French Revolution did. And it wasn't that long after it went after the non-State Churches that both non-Anglican Protestant Churches and Catholics were "suffered" with disdain, but not violence, by the state.

[OttoVonBismarck]

And yeah, ISIS won't go underground. Al-Baghdadi was already part of al-Qaeda (in Iraq), and the reason he split his group away from the AQ umbrella is because he fundamentally disagrees with the strategy of being a terrorist group that spends all its time hiding and plotting "spectacular" attacks. He believes control of territory is essential, naming himself Caliph is part of that belief system.

I think the recent wave of attacks against established Western powers is being done to shore up support. Their offensive has been stalled for a year now, and they've had parts of their territory taken away as well (sometimes they recapture it, but sometimes not.) Baghdadi's vision will fall apart if something doesn't change. The only reason jihadists are leaving AQ affiliated groups like al-Nusra front and other jihadist groups that aren't aligned with AQ for ISIS is because ISIS is successful. Not being successful will eventually cause it to collapse and fragment back into independent jihadist groups, and al-Baghdadi doesn't want that. I believe the game plan is by "poking the bear" of the West, they reenforce their legitimacy. His hope is that this will sustain them until such time as they can consolidate their territory and start to make more territorial gains in Iraq and Syria again. I believe they view our commitment to helping the Kurds and Iraqi Army against them isn't a fight we're committed to long term and eventually we'll go away. Once we're gone, they'll start winning again.

I don't think he wants NATO troops on the ground--he was in the Iraqi Army and I doubt he's dumb enough to think that ends anyway other than disaster for him. Instead he's wagering that terrorist attacks like this won't change the status quo--we're already bombing him, but bombing can't destroy ISIS. It takes ground troops to do that, unless we're willing to commit ground troops then nothing is fundamentally changed for him or ISIS. It's still just the waiting game, and by poking the  bear he's solidifies support. Any jihadists who are starting to think "man, ISIS is looking weak, it's not taking territory any more and they're just hunkered down getting bombed all the time" will now instead be thinking about the bombing of the Russian plane or the attack  on Paris.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I suspect these attacks have been planned for months, so I don't think it was specifically timed in response to the news of Jihadi John dying and Sinjar being lost, but from an ISIS perspective look at how fortuitous this is. The news aren't talking about the loss of Sinjar or the death of the ISIS mouthpiece anymore, they're talking about the Paris attacks. Maybe just lucky, but maybe they were clever--perhaps the order was to wait until some setbacks in the Middle East then execute the attacks as quickly as possible (but they'd obviously be predicated on a concert being at the Bataclan and a soccer match going on at the same time, but I suspect that's not a super rare occurrence.)

[Barrister]

Guys while I agree that Islamic-inspired terrorists are the #1 suspect, we don't actually know who has done this terrible attack, or why.  Let's wait for facts before we start debating what to do next.

Okay, so now it does look like Islamic, probably even IS-inspired terrorists are responsible.  Would it really have been that terrible to wait until Sunday to start discussing what France/the West's response should be?