The Islamic State’s strategy is to polarize Western society — to “destroy the grayzone,” as it says in its publications. The group hopes frequent, devastating attacks in its name will provoke overreactions by European governments against innocent Muslims, thereby alienating and radicalizing Muslim communities throughout the continent. The atrocities in Paris are only the most recent instances of this accelerating campaign.
The strategy is explicit. The Islamic State explained after the January attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine that such attacks “compel the Crusaders to actively destroy the grayzone themselves. . . . Muslims in the West will quickly find themselves between one of two choices, they either apostatize . . . or they [emigrate] to the Islamic State and thereby escape persecution from the Crusader governments and citizens.” The group calculates that a small number of attackers can profoundly shift the way that European society views its 44 million Muslim members and, as a result, the way European Muslims view themselves. Through this provocation, it seeks to set conditions for an apocalyptic war with the West.
Well, I did propose some reaction, e.g. police action. — Benkei
Sometimes, if you want something to stop, you should just ignore it.
My reasons are as follows:
- The reaction France's political establishment shows now is that terrorist attacks work, which might inspire others;
- Although there is an (ideological) link between IS and the attackers, at most IS has guided this by saying "go forth and perform a terrorist attack", leaving decisions to these radicalised youths. The link is, in my view, to tenuous and in any case doesn't deal with the real problem (which in my view is radicalisation here and abroad);
- So far, military intervention has brought us more problems;
- Attacking IS does not solve radicalisation in France (it might even contribute);
- Attacking IS might be useless if recruits will join faster than we can kill them;
- Attacking IS will be useless if we're not committed to boots on the ground;
- Attacking IS will be useless if we don't have a plan for the power vacuum that comes into existence and that doesn't involve imposing Western style and statist institutions in a tribal environment;
- Money is better spent combatting radicalisation in France itself. — Benkei
Your dogs, remember?↪ssu How did you know NicK is from South Dakota?? :-$ — ArguingWAristotleTiff
Actually I think that we agree in many things... but as "philos" we don't easily understand that as we talking about different things and viewpoints on the matter.So, after all this, do we agree on anything, here? — Bitter Crank
So, after all this, do we agree on anything, here?
Is ISIS good, bad, or negligible?
— Bitter Crank
If ISIS is bad, what may, might, can, should, be done?
I would make a slogan: "ISIS wants you to hate Muslims" — ssu
Just want to add too that what unites us on this thread is far more important than what divides us. No doubt all of us would like to see the end of ISIS, and no doubt all of us appreciate the fact that we don't live in the nightmare they have created in the Middle East and the one they want to spread across the world. Sickening stuff keeps happening here and over there and I think that's thrown us all off kilter. I think the most useful approach now would be to put our heads together and ask the difficult question as to what really would work not only to defeat ISIS militarily but to remove the fuel that fires these types of movements (as you're touching on in your second paragraph above). Continuing to bang our heads against each other because of our different political views isn't going to get us very far. — Baden
I cannot "put my head together" with people who think the history of Western imperialism entitles them to say that Western society is not superior to the society that ISIS is building. — jamalrob
Just to repeat, the reason this is important is that there will never be a non-fundamentalist, non-violent, democratic alternative to motivate the young people who are drawn to Islamism unless people in the West stand up and fight for those values — jamalrob
It is a problem that European liberals are divided roughly along the lines apparent in this thread, and we do need unity, but we can't just pretend these differences don't exist. — jamalrob
The charge sheet against western policy dating back a generation is easily drafted. It takes moments to weave a tale of counterproductive geopolitical vandalism, starting from US support for the mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan, via the chaos of post-Saddam Iraq, pausing to condemn blind eyes turned and arms sold to Saudi Arabia, whence the theology of infidel-murder pullulates.
But to stop there is lazy. Worse, it takes an effort of analytical obtuseness to make aggressive western governments the initiating agent of all that is sinister, void of good intent or positive consequence, and thus explain jihadism as a symptom, with the CIA and Tony Blair as the virus. As if the Taliban should have been left to rule Afghanistan; as if the insurgency against allied forces in Iraq were a national liberation front akin to anti-colonial movements against the British Empire; as if Isis presented negotiable terms of secular grievance that can be settled at a peace conference; as if the rhetoric against “Zionist-Crusaders”, the genocide of Yazidis and the systematic enslavement of women were all logical extrapolations from a dodgy strategy cooked up in the Pentagon: extreme, yes, but explicable by cross-reference to prior western offences. — Rafael Behr
He is right that it is still unclear how British airstrikes in Syria would make a practical difference against terrorism. The memory of Jean Charles de Menezes, mistakenly gunned down by police in 2005, is reason to weigh gravely the implications of authorising a shoot-to-kill policy. Justice would have been better served if Mohammed “Jihadi John” Emwazi had been put on trial. — Rafael Behr
This undercurrent of moral relativism [contaminating] the valid points in Corbyn’s argument. — Rafael Behr
That there is a link, a connection, between the west’s military interventions in the Middle East and terrorist attacks against the west, that violence begets violence, is “glaringly evident” to anyone with open eyes, if not open minds.
Yet over the past 14 years, too many of us have “decided not to see”. From New York to Madrid to London, any public utterance of the words “foreign” and “policy” in the aftermath of a terrorist attack has evoked paroxysms of outrage from politicians and pundits alike. — Mehdi Hasan
Isn’t it odd, then, that in the case of Russia, western governments have been keen to link Vladimir Putin’s – and only Vladimir Putin’s – foreign policy to terrorist violence? On 1 October the US government and its allies issued a joint statement declaring that the Russian president’s decision to intervene in Syria would “only fuel more extremism and radicalisation”. Yes, you heard them: it’ll “fuel” it.
Moscow’s bombing campaign will “lead to further radicalisation and increased terrorism”, claimed David Cameron on 4 October. Note the words “lead to”... — Mehdi Hasan
...any attempt, by any organization, somehow to blame the West or France's military intervention is not only wrong, disgraceful, but should be condemned — Emma Reynolds, Labour MP
For instance when I point out their "universal" values, Western values, because, you know, that's what they are. — Benkei
But throughout time violent ideologies, even these particular wahhabist/salafist's ones, existed without having a meaningful following and therefore impact on others. — Benkei
Abstract
1. Western foreign policy (to the extent it is unfair or immoral)
2. Racial inequality / discrimination
3. poverty
Personal/motivational
4. Personal experience (relates to 2 and 3)
5. sense of belonging (relates to 2)
6. Lack of education (not a rule of thumb but sufficiently correlated to take seriously)
7. Above may lead to wanting revenge or status — Benkei
I don't put stock in repeating what we've been saying for 30 years because the reality is that we're not living up to those promises. — Benkei
who here went out on the streets to protest Iraq and Afghanistan? — Benkei
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