What would be a good response to the Paris attacks?

[warpus]

what?

Senior Western official: Links between Turkey and ISIS are now 'undeniable'

...

Documents and flash drives seized during the Sayyaf raid reportedly revealed links "so clear" and "undeniable" between Turkey and ISIS "that they could end up having profound policy implications for the relationship between us and Ankara," senior Western official familiar with the captured intelligence told the Guardian.

source

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Okay, but (a) the reason fundamentalism took over in Iran was that we deposed a democratically-elected government in favor of a corrupt monarchy, and (b) our open support for Saudi Arabia is one of the primary reasons Al Qaeda came into being, so...

EDIT: Snarky comment unnecessary.

a) That was a long time ago. Muslim countries have changed, back then before the Shah most muslim countries tended to seculariazation and modernization, not anymore.
b) Naturally most fundamentalist ideologists and a good bunch of terrorists come from SA since it is the epicentre of Islam, but it would be even worse if it was governed by some democratically elected religious nutcase.

 

[warpus]

b) Naturally most fundamentalist ideologists and a good bunch of terrorists come from SA since it is the epicentre of Islam

That's not the reason, the reason is that they're exporting a fundamentalist and very extremist version of Islam to the rest of the planet - Wahhabism.

And we let them!

 

[red_elk]

You don't have to directly censor internet websites ala China. You can also deny journalists access to sites of recent terrorist attacks and jam the internet and telecommunications locally on a temporary basis. This also may prevent further attacks at the same spot, since groups like IS rely on the internet for communication too.

I think it won't work as expected. It could be possible to do in XIX century (and I think this even worked in USSR to some extent, before internet), but now the info about the incident will leak anyway, and censorship will only make it worse. With lack of truthful coverage, hearsays and conspiracy theories start spreading, which will make "informational echo" of terrorist act only worse.

Although frankly, nobody has the guts to after the chief benefactors of IS and the Syrian rebels: Saudi-Arabia, Qatar and UAE. Russia knows that if those countries are attacked, the US will come along.

Even assuming that Saudi Arabia will not have US political support, what Russia can realistically do alone? Launch cruise missile barrage against their oilfields? That won't stop terrorist threat from the region, only make it worse. Economical measures, such as oil trade embargo against Saudi Arabia, Qatar et all, might work, but it requires cooperation between at least UNSC permanent members. But again, this will require serious changes in US foreign policies, rapprochement with Russia and China. If it didn't happen even after 9/11, it won't happen now either.

What will not work is attempting to engage terrorists directly by conventional means. Something Obama, Assad, Netanyahu, Hollande, Putin and pretty much any world leader hasn't figured out yet.

Depends. I think everybody can agree that the terrorist nest on the territory controlled by ISIS at the moment, must be destroyed - and it can be done by methods of conventional warfare. About terrorism in general, yes, of course just using army will not prevent it. Complex measures are required, in the first place proper operative work of special services.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

That's not the reason, the reason is that they're exporting a fundamentalist and very extremist version of Islam to the rest of the planet - Wahhabism.

And we let them!

Well SA Monarchy is not the ideal kind of monarchy i was thinking on for a long shot. I was thinking on Jordan for example. Anyway, Saudi monarchy is Wahhabist, export Wahhabism to the rest of the muslim world, but on the other hand it is most hated and want to be overthrown by the most extreme forms of wahhabism like al-Qaeda or ISIS. I admit SA is way too complex for me.

 

[warpus]

The point is that by building Wahhabist mosques outside of Saudi Arabia and spreading the ideology on such a lage scale, Saudi Arabia are introducing extremist islamic elements to cultures and societies that might otherwise not contain such elements. And since the world is 20% Muslim (1.6 billion) this has an impact not only on Muslim majority countries, but also places where Muslim might emigrate to, such as parts of the west.

They are essentially trying to convert every single Muslim society on the planet into a more conservative, fundamentalist, and extremist one. Even if they are only 2% successful, this is going to lead to the creation of MANY extremists, even if they only make up a tiny portion of all of some community (let's say 500 crazy extremists in a city of 5 million moderates)

The result is a more extremist Islam on average, and many hotspots for potential extremist violence. It's basically a creator and catalyst for extremism and islamic fundamentalism and terrorism.

And we let them do it because political reasons.

Then islamic extremists blow up a mall or train or whatever and our leaders get to say "Look at those crazy people, we're going to have to spend more money on our military and lock down our society a bit more so that we are more vigilant and so that this never happens again."

And we let them.

If you want to fight global terrorism, you need to kill the relationship between the West and Saudi Arabia and you need to destroy Wahhabism at the source. That won't do it completely, but it's a necessary start - you don't fight a flood without first taking care of the leak. But that isn't going to happen for a while.

 

[REDY]

Expel France from EU until they will deislamise

 

[Kyriakos]

Expel France from EU until they will deislamise

Germany has more muslims, so expel them instead (but only after they receive a few more million)

 

[Ryika]

Germany has more muslims, so expel them instead (but only after they receive a few more million)

We may have more Muslims, but less of them are radicalized.

Not that I'd have a problem with being expelled from the EU.

 

[Arwon]

Rhetoric to the contrary, but a probably accurate expression of current western strategy is "keep tolerating attacks at home that ultimately are nowhere near existential threats". That's just because the actual solution of "stopping bombing and invading the Middle East and stopping supporting regimes there and then waiting a while" is seen as either unrealistic or strategically unpalatable. And also quite a slow process.

We're still basically caught in the blowback of the Iraq war in two ways.

The first is that ISIS and the emboldening of the violent Islamist ideology more generally is a product of the chaos and power vacuum created there. September 11 was designed to get the west to engage in more wars on Muslim soil in order to polarise the world, and succeeded spectacularly. There were a few attempts to sucker us into doing something stupid before that but Bush and Blair created a rallying point, a grievance factory and an entire country as training camp. As ever, asymmetrical warfare relies on the big powerful side being dumb and hurting itself and man did we do so.

The second way it's playing out is that the Iraq occupation, the abuses of prisoners, the anti-Muslim rhetoric and security practice at home, basically everything involved in the West's strategy over the last 15 years, are a powerful ongoing source of agitation that supports the "west vs Islam" view of the world and feeds directly into the recruitment of angry Muslim kids looking for belonging and a fight. You tell young people that they're part of a powerful violent scary threat to the existing social order, and some are really gonna like that idea. Young people are weird and contrary like that.

As long as those sources of inspiration and grievance are there, attacks are going to keep happening. The trick of it now is having come this far and gotten so deeply embedded in the chaos inthe middle east, the very act of trying to defeat ISIS makes it a nore powerful recruiter in the west.

Similarly the various loopy far-right "collective punishment" proposals targeting Islam and migration and refugees is just *asking* for more angry kids who want to play righteous hero, to try to kill us. Plus it involves us destroying most of what makes western societies halfway decent in the attempt at safety.

 

[brennan]

...precisely why we need to look for diplomatic alternatives instead of military ones.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

@Arwon: Fine, but the thread is about "what to do" not "what not to do". Or you mean that the solution is "do nothing"?

 

[Commodore]

Since the other thread is an RD thread meant to focus only on the incident itself, this is a thread where you can discuss the political implications of the attack and of contemporary terrorism as a whole.

To start off, what do you think is a good national or collective response to the attacks? A poll has been included. I meant to include a poll, but somehow it didn't work, so here are some options:

1) Close borders to immigrants and refugees from Africa and the Middle East.
2) Harangue Muslims to "reform Islam"
3) Step up military operations against ISIS but not try to occupy territory
4) Full invasion of Syria to destroy ISIS
5) Increase surveillance and security, including monitoring civilian communications in order to more effectively prevent future attacks
6) Increase security measures without infringing on privacy
7) Expel the Jews and MoriscosMuslims from the West
8) Nothing much; don't let the terrorists win
9) Muhammad was a peadophile and the Nazis were left-wing

Feel free to select all that apply.

1 through 4 seem the most appropriate to me, with a caveat to option 1. I wouldn't completely close the borders to all immigrants and refugees, only the ones that couldn't verify their identity somehow.

 

[Camikaze]

@Arwon: Fine, but the thread is about "what to do" not "what not to do". Or you mean that the solution is "do nothing"?

It's possible that there is no viable solution, and doing nothing would be better than engaging in counter-productive policies which will exacerbate the problem. We shouldn't be lured into the trap of feeling like we have to do something to satisfy our moral outrage, even if that something is worse than doing nothing.

As it so happens, doing a lot of nothing in terms of foreign intervention may actually be the best long-term solution.

 

[Arwon]

@Arwon: Fine, but the thread is about "what to do" not "what not to do". Or you mean that the solution is "do nothing"?

In all honesty, "keep fighting in the middle east and keep being attacked" is probably a viable approach. I mean, it's ugly, but it is perfectly fine for governments as long as they don't get blamed and voted out - which they mostly won't, especially where policy is bipartisan. And at any rate the violent Islamist movement nowadays isn't super discriminating about what western countries get attacked now - they're pretty happy wherever franchises pop up because chaos and polarisation are good for them. So even relatively isolationist or pacifist countries can cop it now. And of course we also have blokes like Anders Breivik pushing the same conflict from the other side.

There's also an argument that having had our representative governments create so much of the chaos in the Middle East, western societies maybe now have a bit of a moral responsibility to try to stop ISIS even though we have no hope of "fixing" things now broadly and it keeps causing blowback against us.

The approach the West is actually taking of "steady as she goes in the Middle East and keep being attacked" is less fine for a lot of unlucky individuals who get killed or targeted by anti-muslim reprisals, but unless that translates to explicit ballot box punishment (which it won't for a number of reasons) it doesn't really need to matter to governments too much. Small groups using arms and bombs to attack the softest of civilian targets isn't a strategic or existential threat.

This is where we are. September 11 was era-defining in its success. 19 men with box-cutters baited half the planet into this cycle.

 

[uppi]

You don't have to directly censor internet websites ala China. You can also deny journalists access to sites of recent terrorist attacks and jam the internet and telecommunications locally on a temporary basis. This also may prevent further attacks at the same spot, since groups like IS rely on the internet for communication too.

Does not work if the journalists are already on site and the bomb blast can be heard on live TV, like those near the stadium were. Everything going dark might inspire more terror than reporting the facts.

I do not think that jamming the internet would do anything to the plans of terrorists. Any group that is half-organized would just make up a time in advance and just coordinate using their watches.

 

[Zkribbler]

Second, ISIS would be significantly weaker had American forces remained in the country. But, you will have to ask Barack Obama about that.

Why Obama? It was Bush who signed the agreement to pull out U.S. ground forces. It was the Iraqi government who was insisting that these troops leave. To suggest that Obama tear up the in-place agreement and ignore the demands of the elected government of Iraq is...somewhat myopic.

You also must remember, it was al-Maliki's systematic exclusion of Sunni Arabs and Kurds from power that alienated non-Shia ethnic groups, and so when ISIS invaded, the Sunnis and the Kurds refused to fight them.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Ummm... Thinking on it, maybe the final solution are really nukes... Well, maybe not nuking mecca, but nuclear energy, even fussion.

I mean, ME is important becuase there is something there the world needs. As far as we need oil, every single countries will be involved in ME somehow, west will support the ambivalent Saudi Arabia monarchy, countries will get invaded, salafism will continue spreading, extreme salafism will follow etc, etc...

So 14)

 

[BornInCantaloup]

Since the other thread is an RD thread meant to focus only on the incident itself, this is a thread where you can discuss the political implications of the attack and of contemporary terrorism as a whole.

To start off, what do you think is a good national or collective response to the attacks? A poll has been included. I meant to include a poll, but somehow it didn't work, so here are some options:

1) Close borders to immigrants and refugees from Africa and the Middle East.
2) Harangue Muslims to "reform Islam"
3) Step up military operations against ISIS but not try to occupy territory
4) Full invasion of Syria to destroy ISIS
5) Increase surveillance and security, including monitoring civilian communications in order to more effectively prevent future attacks
6) Increase security measures without infringing on privacy
7) Expel the Jews and MoriscosMuslims from the West
8) Nothing much; don't let the terrorists win
9) Muhammad was a peadophile and the Nazis were left-wing

Feel free to select all that apply.

a) Stop the warS ;
b) Support social justice within domestic territories, starting with welfare, education and urbanism ;
c) Combat economic imperialism, so social justice can rise in foreign territories.

A liberal society cannot be enforced. A bunkerized society can be enforced.
Democracy can only live and spread through exemplarity.
When a democracy shows exquisite exemplarity, it is convincing enough to impact the ways of life of the peoples that surround it. It offers itself as a lover to the world and the world can love it in return.
When a democracy bombs territories, pillages resources and discriminates against its own population, it defeats its own purpose. It alienates itself. It offers itself as an enemy to the world.


People in the West have to accept they're part of the equation. There is no more absolute good than there exists pure evil.
People in the West have to realize their democracies are largely fraudulous and that they can act upon.
Making democracies better would be an immense step up.

 

[chijohnaok]

Edit: Also, one more thing:

Make an Imam certification, or even better, an education in all Western countries. Make it required to have a valid certificate or a credited education to be allowed to lead Muslim congregations. This would limit one of the sources of radicalization.

The same goes for teachers and administrators in religious private schools, which have also been a huge source of radicalization.

This might present some problems.

I am speaking from the perspective of the United States.
I am not familiar with how all western countries enshrine "freedom of religion" into their governing system.
Is it embedded in their state(national) constitution?
Is it embedded in national laws?
Is it as a result of judicial decisions?

In the United States, the "freedom of religion" is embedded within the First Amendment of our Constition and subject to interpretation by our judicial branch.

[Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.]

Government in the United States has generally tried to avoid legislating religions on how to practice their religion and (to my knowledge) has not been involved in legislating how a religion chooses its leaders or ministers/priests/pastors/imans, etc.

I think that you would run into the same problem were you to attempt implementing this on teachers and administrators in religious private schools. While state governments (I think) generally do set minimum standards for all teachers (public schools, private schools and parochial schools) in a state to obtain a teacher's certification they do not extend to religious classes.

So I believe that this would be a "no go" in the United States were you to attempt to do this via government law.

Now were the religions in the US to do this voluntarily, you could probably avoid the constitutional issues.

However there would be downsides to this approach.
---doing something like this would be voluntary (could not be mandated by the government)
---religious "governance" in the US is fragmented and varies widely. Roman Catholicism in the US has a number of cardinals and bishops who report to the Pope in Rome. Some other major religious (ex: Lutherans, Baptists) denominations have national boards that may help set/coordinate church policy. [But even those can be fragmented as I think you have 2 larger Lutheran denominations and then some smaller ones]). Then you have denominations of lower membership or even individual church congregations that are independent and report to no sort of central religious authority.
---how (or even if) they were to implement this would be inconsistent

And were you to attempt to require any sort of iman or teacher certification on just Muslims in the US...well, let's not even go there.

And again, this may be more feasible in some other western countries, but I don't think it would be possible in the US.