Paris attacks - ongoing

I honestly don't understand (Seriously, someone explain the logic to me) what we hope to achieve by bombing ISIS. As we should have learnt from Vietnam and the various combat zones featured in the "War on Terror", groups like ISIS can't be bombed out of existence. They always slip away and pop up somewhere else, and in the process an equal amount of civilians and "innocents" get killed for no reason other than being in the way.

It's to my understanding that ISIS also thrives off of Western retaliation, it gives them a greater enemy and purpose. Something to use as a tool in their recruitment machine, it creates a mechanical cycle of retaliation and attack. From my perspective the best answer to the situation is just to pull out completely and let them fight eachother, soon enough they'll loose momentum and collapse in on themselves. As much as they'd like to shout it, They're not an actual nation. They're not stable.

There's also the economic side of it, bombings ain't cheap and the Military Industrial Complex™ is a monster that won't die.

I do understand the frustration, the rage and the desire to bomb the bastards sky high, but I think people need to calm down and take a look at things more objectively.
 
AlphaPromethean said:
I honestly don't understand (Seriously, someone explain the logic to me) what we hope to achieve by bombing ISIS. As we should have learnt from Vietnam and the various combat zones featured in the "War on Terror", groups like ISIS can't be bombed out of existence. They always slip away and pop up somewhere else, and in the process an equal amount of civilians and "innocents" get killed for no reason other than being in the way.
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Maybe this explains some of it - and it is by no means only limited to the US.

Blowback (intelligence)

Blowback is unintended consequences of a covert operation that are suffered by the aggressor. To the civilians suffering the blowback of covert operations, the effect typically manifests itself as “random” acts of political violence without a discernible, direct cause; because the public—in whose name the intelligence agency acted—are unaware of the effected secret attacks that provoked revenge (counter-attack) against them.[SUP][1]
[/SUP](...)

What we do (or don't do) can have effects even after centuries. I mean, they have people in the middle east that understand at least as much as we do, and they experience and see what happens around them. While their actions are not justifiable, they are least understandable, from a historic point of view. We have been treating the midle east like our vassals and colonies since WW1.

And at the end of the day, most of what we did in the name of freedom like after 9/11, was simply a form of revenge. It was not justice, nor was it a punishment, it was also no fight for democracy. And I have no doubts that the government of France will follow the same idea, revenge and a call for blood instead of taking a closer look on their domestic policy - seriously, how many frustrated young unemployed muslims do they have in Paris? Or even their foreign policy.
 
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Crni Vuk said:
And at the end of the day, most of what we did in the name of freedom like after 9/11, was simply a form of revenge. It was not justice, nor was it a punishment, it was also no fight for democracy.
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These kind of responses always seem mafia-like. The Don has to make an example of somebody or lose face, can't look weak, have to flex to remind everyone who's boss, that's all it is.

I would look past the unintended consequences too. Attacks like this and 9/11 are bait. OBL was not some cave dwelling savage, he was extremely rich, smart and connected. He knew the way to defeat America was to bait them into a foreign war and bleed them, morally and economically. Having a western army in the ME is also the greatest pan-Islamic recruiting tool you could have. Bush et al not only took the bait, they were took it one step further and started two wars. OBL played them like a fiddle. One hopes there is not a French translation for Rumsfeld.






Crni Vuk said:
seriously, how many frustrated young unemployed muslims do they have in Paris?
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This is a labored point at best, I don't buy it. There's already examples like the Boston Marathon bombers who were refugees afforded every hospitality. The radicalism stems from elsewhere.
I've lived overseas for many years. There's a lot of shit I didn't like, at a certain point though you have to play ball the native way, or if it's that bad you go somewhere that's more compatible. Slaughtering people at entertainment venues isn't a method conducive to improving your social conditions. Besides, is anyone demanding better paying jobs, usually it's the usual gripes about Jews, the Great Satan and worst of all, provocative cartoons.
 
"Refugees afforded every hospitality" faced with Islamophobia, poverty and other structural problems. That doesn't excuse the bombings or other acts of terror, but these people face real problems.
 
Yeah well, no one here got the idea to justify any killing or terrorist attack you know, it's just that I believe it is much better to fix the root of the problems instead of just treating the symptoms. At least in the long run.

Improving the lives of people is a much better, cheaper and more secure way - for everyone - to prevent such incidents like in Paris. We can not fight fanatism and indoctrination with prison sentences or even violence/military actions. This has proven so many times to be wrong, for fucks sake, Israel and it's situation is the best example. What you have to do, is to first understand the reasons why mostly young people join fanatic groups and following extremist ideals, which is definetly not only true for islamic extremism, this can in many cases also be directly applied to christian fundamentalism or any fanatic group really. And only when you really understand it, can you actually fight them. It is easy to shrug off fanatics and suicide bombers simply as lunatics, criminals, savages that have to be simply imprisoned or even killed. But again, that's not approaching the issue at it's root. If we want to change the situation for the better in the long run, than we have to improve the situation for the people, here in Europe and in the middle east - without military actions and the typical political power games of course.

But this has one huge problem. It takes time. And when you have politicans who can't think past their legislative session, than it ends up usually in bombing some camps and areas, for good measure of course. Because it is simply the fastest thing you can do. And we have always to serve justice. It's the same idea like this strange feeling that torture would be a good tool to get the truth from people or that you could even investigate something, again, most of our response to terrorist attacks, as understandable as they are, serve usually only the purpose of revenge, blood for blood, not real justice or even a try to solve problems in the long run.

Cimmerian Nights said:
Crni Vuk said:
seriously, how many frustrated young unemployed muslims do they have in Paris?
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This is a labored point at best, I don't buy it. There's already examples like the Boston Marathon bombers who were refugees afforded every hospitality. The radicalism stems from elsewhere.
I've lived overseas for many years. There's a lot of shit I didn't like, at a certain point though you have to play ball the native way, or if it's that bad you go somewhere that's more compatible. Slaughtering people at entertainment venues isn't a method conducive to improving your social conditions. Besides, is anyone demanding better paying jobs, usually it's the usual gripes about Jews, the Great Satan and worst of all, provocative cartoons.
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You think? Does it really not bother anyone that Paris and France has a large group of young people that feel not only seperated from the nation they live in but also in a constant fight whith the society and governement of said nation? And who can blame them, if even the head of the state call them filfth and want to clean the streats of said scum. Or that the number one place for recruiting people are the prisons, estimated to be 70 percent muslim. While some in Germany - succesfully - fight fundamentalism and extremism by sending Imams into prisons to talk and educate the troubled musilms.

I am not saying those are the main source of fundamentalism or terrorist attacks, nor will anything of that solve ALL our problems. But it is better than bombing people 5 000 miles from here that might or might not have a conection with the extremists here.

People arn't born as terrorists, they grow in to that role.
 
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The problem about this kind of terrorism is that it doesn't have any kind of aim in their bombings. They strike random areas killing innocents. Maybe it's to show the west what happens in the middle east as more and more innocents die?
 
Assassinating cartoonists because you're a prisoner of circumstance, sure, why not. I guess I find it demeaning to people when you strip them of all agency and assign one's actions to deterministic reasons. This is the soft bigotry of low expectations. I think people deserve more credit. If the chain of logic goes from A to B to C to "and that's why the cartoonist was assassinated", it's strained and labored beyond good reason.
 
Cimmerian Nights said:
Assassinating cartoonists because you're a prisoner of circumstance, sure, why not. I guess I find it demeaning to people when you strip them of all agency and assign one's actions to deterministic reasons. This is the soft bigotry of low expectations. I think people deserve more credit. If the chain of logic goes from A to B to C to "and that's why the cartoonist was assassinated", it's strained and labored beyond good reason.
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I don't know, people don't like their belief made fun off, just ask any Christian. Difference is, is how far they take that anger.
 
Dr Fallout said:
The problem about this kind of terrorism is that it doesn't have any kind of aim in their bombings. They strike random areas killing innocents. Maybe it's to show the west what happens in the middle east as more and more innocents die?
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ISIS actually has strategic documents explaining what they're doing, and it boils down to drawing the West into inflicting ever more violence on the Middle East and European Muslims to create a black-and-white world, with ISIS seen as the only viable option to those who are suffering from the violence inflicted by the West.

Cimmerian Nights said:
Assassinating cartoonists because you're a prisoner of circumstance, sure, why not. I guess I find it demeaning to people when you strip them of all agency and assign one's actions to deterministic reasons. This is the soft bigotry of low expectations. I think people deserve more credit. If the chain of logic goes from A to B to C to "and that's why the cartoonist was assassinated", it's strained and labored beyond good reason.
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You are confusing understanding people on their own terms as well as their motivations for excusing their actions. It is not deterministic to say that these specific people chose this path for these reasons (reasons they themselves often express), while still acknowledging that they still had other choices. Everyone realizes that. But if you want to prevent further radicalization of other people, understanding these reasons is important.
 
Cimmerian Nights said:
Assassinating cartoonists because you're a prisoner of circumstance, sure, why not. I guess I find it demeaning to people when you strip them of all agency and assign one's actions to deterministic reasons. This is the soft bigotry of low expectations. I think people deserve more credit. If the chain of logic goes from A to B to C to "and that's why the cartoonist was assassinated", it's strained and labored beyond good reason.
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If the effects of your actions are the reason for more people joining radical and fanatical groups, wouldn't the only logical step here be, to stop your actions? The western world seems to really struggle with that concept. Much of the interaction between the western world and the fundamentalist part of the islamic world, looks to me like a very sophisticated form of vendetta. It is really not hard to understand where the hate and agression comes from when you consider that drone stikes happen so frequently or the air force of France or Britain beeing in a position where they can literaly strike anytime and any place they want, and which they also do, as how the predictable outcome of this recent horrorible attack in Paris has shown.



Children in places like Pakistan, and many other places are growing up with it. Cause and effect play a very huge role here. And there is nothing labored about it. Those are simply the reality we live in. But we are not dealing with it correctly on a political level.

Again, because I don't want to get this ignored, No one, seriously. NO. ONE. Is excusing the actions of terrorists and/or fanatics. They are criminals and they have to face jurisdiction. No matter what they believe in, or where they actually come from. No one is blaming the cartoonists or the hostages here.

There is a difference between a justification and understanding reasons and motivations. How can you ever hope to fix a problem if you don't understand the underlying situations. Even in criminal law they have (...) conditions or happenings which do not excuse or justify criminal conduct, but are considered out of mercy or fairness in deciding the degree of the offense the prosecutor charges or influencing reduction of the penalty upon conviction. Example: a young man shoots his father after years of being beaten, belittled, sworn at and treated without love. "Heat of passion" or "diminished capacity" are forms of such mitigating circumstances.

I will say this again. People are not born as terrorists. Terrorists are made. And a situation like in Paris or any other part of the world, particularly those where it happens almost on a daly basis are usualy extremly complex.
 
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Akratus said:
"Why do we kill infidels?"
"Because they kill Muslims."

It's a cycle.

There are no good options remaining, it is up to the west to choose the option that is least bad. I'm not sure intensified bombings are the answer.
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There's a bit more to Wahhabism and the motivations of ISIS then this, but basically the statement that this is a cycle is correct; violence between the west and Islam isn't a new phenomenon, and as long as there are western and eastern/christian and muslim ideologies, it isn't going to go away.

Despite the risk of complex attacks on civilians, the US intervening with ISIS doesn't suit its strategic interest. The US is the world's largest oil producer with the Saudi's supplies running dry; a destabilized Middle East disadvantages Russia and China, who purchase more petroleum from the Middle East than the US does.
 
Akratus said:
Yeah. Click on this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations#1945.E2.80.931949
And scroll down slowly.

From 1980 onward is especially pertinent.
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USA, bringing democracy and freedom to the world... That list doesn't include CIA operations though. Like the 1953 iranian coup d'état.

I don't claim to know much about the the situation in ME (I'm pretty ignorant about the subject actually, like 90% of the population. I of course know the sides of the war and some of the context behind it but not that much.), but seeing this thread is really interesting. You actually make valid points.

I'm quite afraid of the nationalism I see in comments concerning the recent events. People are denouncing the attacks on Paris civilians but when told about about what western intervention cause in ME, their basic reaction is: Who cares? It's their own problem and we're doing it for the greater good. The population is calling for blood and I can understand the desire, but I don't think intensified bombings will improve anything.

And of course, some people want to stop accepting refugees because, like they say, they're going to kill us!

We (the Western countries in general) are really ignorant. People only see extremists (not that I'm trying to justify their acts) as simple mad lunatics who hates us because of our freedom without trying to understand the reasons why someone could join these groups or the political context behind it.

I do realize that what I wroter is probably a bunch of bullshit but I'd like to inform myself about the subjects. Anyone has any great sources about the suvject to recommand me? I'd be grateful.

EDIT: This post is adressed to the forum as a whole, not just Akratus. It is probably very obvious but I'll precise it in case.
 
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Terrorists hate for all sorts of reasons, with imperialism just ONE, of those reasons

Please do not view terror groups with sympathy as besides anti-imperialism, they also pull some heinously bad shit that make them no better than the imperialists whom they blame.
 
DarkCorp said:
Terrorists hate for all sorts of reasons, with imperialism just ONE, of those reasons

Please do not view terror groups with sympathy as besides anti-imperialism, they also pull some heinously bad shit that make them no better than the imperialists whom they blame.
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Trust me, I do not view these groups with sympathy. The acts they commit are simply inexcusable. I just think that understanding the context behind their existence and the recruitment of its members important.
 
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Dr Fallout said:
If anything, the west if hypocritical. If they bomb us it's bad, if we bomb them it's fine.
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This is true to a certain extent, but there's a big difference between the West and ISIS. The West attacks despite the risks for civilians while ISIS deliberately tries to hit as much civilians as possible.
 
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