Hebdo Shows the Common Goals of Both Sides in Terror War

[HomerRamone]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/chris-floyd/60394/conflict-not-cartoons-hebdo-shows-the-common-goals-of-both-sides-in-terror-war

Juan Cole has some insightful words on the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris. As he points out, the shooters were neither "attacking free speech" nor "defending Mohammed"; they were using a time-honored tactic of radical extremists (of all stripes): "sharpening the contradictions," hoping to provoke an overreaction that would lead to repression and persecution of Muslims in general -- thus helping the extremists recruit new members. This is what bin Laden did with such spectacular success with 9/11: provoking an endless global war, with Western "interventions" and "targeted assassinations" and drone strikes that have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people -- all of which, as our own security services tell us, have fed the flames of extremism and made the situation worse.

It would be nice if we tried a different approach, but this is not going to happen. By this time, the symbiosis between the West's military-industrial-security complex and the extremists it purports to fight is virtually complete. The MISC holds the commanding heights of society now, and it is utterly dependent on a steady supply of terrorist attacks (and the constant production of new terrorist entities to fight) in order to keep its power, privileges -- and profits -- going strong. It is probably not too far-fetched to say that the modern American system -- a militarist state protecting the interests of a small, rapacious elite -- would collapse without terrorism. "Security" is the only "legitimacy" this system has. Its power rests entirely on the belief -- the completely unfounded, hysterical, hallucinated belief -- that only the System (with its wars, its death squads, its torture, its mass surveillance, etc. etc.) can protect "us" from terrorism … the very terrorism that the System itself foments and creates with its depredations. And organized terror depends on the System feeding it recruits. (And of course, in many cases, feeding it directly with arms and money when it suits the System's agenda, as in the stoking of jihad in Syria, just to take one example.)...

While putting this together, hoping to add a few more thoughts, I ran across Tom Englehardt's latest piece, which deals with these same themes: the way the "War on Terror" is producing more terrorism -- to the benefit of our powerful national security profiteers and terrorist organisations … while the rest of us have to live with the growing chaos, insecurity, lack of liberty, depleted treasuries and broken economies this deadly symbiosis keeps producing. Rather than reinvent the wheel, here are some excerpts from his article that underscore and expand upon many of the points I was making above. The frame of Englehardt's piece is imagining how a visitor from January 1963, just months after the Cuban missile crisis, would confront the bizarro world of today. He writes:...

"From the point of view of the national security state, each failure, each little disaster, acts as another shot of fear in the American body politic, and the response to failure is predictable: never less of what doesn’t work, but more. More money, more bodies hired, more new outfits formed, more elaborate defenses, more offensive weaponry. Each failure with its accompanying jolt of fear (and often hysteria) predictably results in further funding for the national security state to develop newer, even more elaborate versions of what it’s been doing these last 13 years. Failure, in other words, is the key to success."

[NYC_SKP]

1. Wow. Were the Hedbo cartoons inadvertently used by the extremists to recruit new members?

Shit. That's no good.

Juan Cole has some insightful words on the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris.

As he points out, the shooters were neither "attacking free speech" nor "defending Mohammed"; they were using a time-honored tactic of radical extremists (of all stripes): "sharpening the contradictions," hoping to provoke an overreaction that would lead to repression and persecution of Muslims in general -- thus helping the extremists recruit new members.

This is what bin Laden did with such spectacular success with 9/11: provoking an endless global war, with Western "interventions" and "targeted assassinations" and drone strikes that have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people -- all of which, as our own security services tell us, have fed the flames of extremism and made the situation worse.

If so, then this is all the more tragic.

It's a bit like the bully who baits the victim into doing something provocative and then blames the victim.

[msongs]

2. like the NYPD behavior recruits new criminals? nt

[NYC_SKP]

3. No, more like Ferguson Police behaviors might incide riots.

I know, it's complicated.

[Marr]

4. I've no doubt the attackers would be very happy with such a response.

And it's worth pointing out to, perhaps, reduce the traction that their right-wing analogues would love to seize upon in the aftermath of an attack like this.

However, it says nothing about the legitimacy of the satire.

[randome]

5. Or maybe the murderers wanted 72 virgins.

Maybe they were insane. Maybe they were searching for a reason to kill someone for a long time.

There doesn't need to be some coordinating motivation, especially when one is developed after the killers are dead.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]A ton of bricks, a ton of feathers, it's still gonna hurt.[/center][/font][hr]