General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDelusional to think there's a solution.
ISIS and AQ can't be "solved." 8 guys took out hundreds. Europe will get fed up, will then increase illegal surveillance methods, find sympathizers, and then "deport" them, legally or illegally; it won't matter. They will suspend any and all privacy laws (and the citizens will welcome this), will send the sympathizers back to wherever and let them kill their own in a civil war, and then have to go fight an actual war when the civil war has produced a fierce enough army and threatens the oil supply. Borders, borders, borders will be the name of the game. And we'll see a deportation of actual citizens who have demonstrated sympathy with enemies. All of this is very easy to accomplish, but I imagine all of the West will blush when it violates every Liberal (in the classical sense) tenet it has ever believed in while doing so.
underpants
(182,839 posts)I just curious.
ithinkmyliverhurts
(1,928 posts)8 attackers dead. Even if there are 50, that's pretty scary that so few can do so much damage. And if there are 50, then 42 escaped.
PatrickforO
(14,578 posts)and have a bloody tee shirt from it. Now its Europe's turn.
But, hey, Halliburton is gonna do SO well!!!! Can't you see them slavering over their profits???
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)The War on Terror in a nutshell. Such a world can be so easily engineered to profit a few greedy
assholes, at the expense of everyone else, that it boggles the imagination.
ithinkmyliverhurts
(1,928 posts)But then what? Keep doing the West, but crack down on the anti-Westerners? Get them out?
The irony is that privileged College-goers in the US want to suspend all sorts of civil rights for the sake of sharing their feelings. "Terrorists" in the US (on whatever side) use rhetoric and microagressions; terrorists otherwise blow shit up. So . . . I've lived on both sides of the Atlantic, and both sides are weak in their own respects. I'm assuming that Europe will respond to this vigorously. We in the states will either pray or sympathize or bomb the shit out of someone's innocent family.
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)We know whose funding them. It's time to build a coalition of criminal investigators and shut off the money.
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Abandoning the Enlightenment values that produced democracy will not plumb the depths of the vestigial authoritarian impulse that resides in us all, the wish for kings, the desire for order, to be governed, and not to govern. Flexing and posturing and empty venting will not cure the deep sickness in the human spirit that leads people to slaughter the innocent in the middle of a weekend's laughter. The expression of bigotry and hatred will not solve the deep desperation in the human heart that leads people to kill their fellow human beings and then blow themselves up as a final act of murderous vengeance against those they perceive to be their enemies, seen and unseen, real and imagined. Tough talk in the context of what happened in Paris is as empty as a bell rung at the bottom of a well.
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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.
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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.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a39727/paris-attacks-middle-eastern-oligarchies/