Nice, france...
- Thread starter Mongo
- Start date
The French police have promised a 20 minute response time in future attacks.
My thoughts are with the French people and all people on our future troubles.
My thoughts are with the French people and all people on our future troubles.
I was just there - passed through Toulon, which is close to Nice - the week prior to the attack. Nice is an amazing town. If my travels had taken me there I would have been on the Promenade des Anglais celebrating Bastille Day with the locals. Having lived in France for a year the string of attacks over the last 18 months has been personal for me. The level of vigilance and public presence of police and military was already high before this attack. On a daily basis I passed by squads of soldiers walking through airports, train stations, and city squares carrying their FAMAS and paying close attention to everything going on. It was a stark reminder of the general atmosphere there.
True but what should we talk about? Sending "thoughtsandprayers" that do nothing?
Can't talk about Islamic fascism because as soon as you do 10 thousand whiteys respond with "but not ALL Muslims" Funny, because whenever I've heard an inbred redneck joke about the south I've never heard a pearl-clutching white ally say "but not all Southerners"
Call it whatever you want, how is that going to start solving the issue? Will that help kill our way out of this?
We will never kill our way out of this. To do so would require killing far too many and we are too far evolved as a species to stomach it.
We are going to live with Islamic terrorism for the very very long future.
You can't kill an ideology unless you wipe out, and continue to wipe out, those who believe it, support it, and passively support it, which we won't do. (we = the West)
*Yes, for the knee jerkers we will live with other kinds of terrorism, too but none of which rises to the scale of Islamic terrorism.
People think if we just give them more money, some more jobs, that this will end. Maybe some, but not all. This isn't about "religion" per se, it is about control and power being manifested on the ignorant via religion. "God Said" is the greatest motivator the world has ever known, especially when paired with "do this and you will be rewarded"
They want our quality of life, they want our toys and creature comforts, but they do not want our values.
Concur, but I also would add as horrible as things like Nice are, they aren't an existential threat to the US nor the West as a whole. France has a lot of issues to deal with but they laid those seeds in Algiers and other places decades ago and they are coming home to roost now.
That's why I don't think it matters if you call it Islamic Fascism, Radical Islamic Terrorism, or whatever-in the end the label ascribed has little real value despite the (right wing) pundits who want the current administration to use it-even though the last tended to avoid it too, for the same reasons the current one does (1.6B Muslims in the world, i.e. ~23% of the globe's population, not worth alienating with clumsy language that has limited meaning and context).
r-
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Supposed you think 9/11 was just a US conspiracy and US citizens/others abroad don't count.
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Not sure what you do for a living but I'm more than casually acquainted with 9/11's conspirators and while in theory that could have nudged up to existential in terms of threat in retrospect it was really just unanticipated success on the part of AQ; or haven't you noticed that we haven't had a similar attack since then?
As far as citizens abroad, I just spent two years working that circuit too-and that isn't an existential threat to our way of life either (and I don't, in fact, care all that much for others abroad b/c nation's have allies and interests, not necessarily in that order-'others' are someone else's problem).
So my point still stands unless you have something substantive.
There will ALWAYS be terrorism. There will ALWAYS be terror in the name of religion. We cannot and will not rid ourselves of this fact.
As I have said before - There are some humans in our species that have not evolved to the degree that "we" have. That's just fact. It's nature. Darwin wasn't a crackpot. There will be other "humans" who believe in ritual genital mutilation. There will be "humans" who believe in sex with farm animals. There will be "humans" who believe in sex with little boys and little girls. There will be "humans" who believe in stoning, in burning to death, etc. All the education, money, prayers, vigils, benefit concerts, bumper stickers, marches, and pretty little emoticon images will do nothing to rid us of these facts. We need to quit believing that somehow ALL men want peace. That all men share a common "love" for their fellow man. That we all want equal opportunities, that we all have a base moral an ethical foundation. We don't. That's a fact - an ugly and insidious fact but one nonetheless.
And yes - I have not seen an existential threat emanate from the Middle East/Islam as of yet. BUT - that does not mean there will not be one. That area of the world is ruled largely through the Hadith and thus will always be a birthplace for barbarism and ignorance. It is an evolutionary black hole. (Why we would EVER want a NATO partner there confounds me!) You want to insulate the US from a majority of this nonsense? Bulk up intelligence gathering in the M.E. and have no other interest there. I would treat that part of the world the way Russia treats Chernobyl - monitor it around the clock but stay the hell out.
As I have said before - There are some humans in our species that have not evolved to the degree that "we" have. That's just fact. It's nature. Darwin wasn't a crackpot. There will be other "humans" who believe in ritual genital mutilation. There will be "humans" who believe in sex with farm animals. There will be "humans" who believe in sex with little boys and little girls. There will be "humans" who believe in stoning, in burning to death, etc. All the education, money, prayers, vigils, benefit concerts, bumper stickers, marches, and pretty little emoticon images will do nothing to rid us of these facts. We need to quit believing that somehow ALL men want peace. That all men share a common "love" for their fellow man. That we all want equal opportunities, that we all have a base moral an ethical foundation. We don't. That's a fact - an ugly and insidious fact but one nonetheless.
And yes - I have not seen an existential threat emanate from the Middle East/Islam as of yet. BUT - that does not mean there will not be one. That area of the world is ruled largely through the Hadith and thus will always be a birthplace for barbarism and ignorance. It is an evolutionary black hole. (Why we would EVER want a NATO partner there confounds me!) You want to insulate the US from a majority of this nonsense? Bulk up intelligence gathering in the M.E. and have no other interest there. I would treat that part of the world the way Russia treats Chernobyl - monitor it around the clock but stay the hell out.
With you here.
Less certain of all of this; the ME is far from monolithic and moreover much of it-at least from what I have seen-is filled with people, just normal people who want normal people things. There are definitely pockets of what you speak of but it isn't the bulk of the region nor the population-at least not from what I've encountered. Moreover all that intel collection means being there b/c technical means won't get it done, so we will still need to be present with partners and many of them are doing good work right now. The Emiratis in particular are more than carrying their weight; in turn that means we're not filling up section 60 which is also good.
It just doesn't make chest beaters happy when we lead from behind and let proxies carry the load. Of course I didn't see too many of them out there taking matters into their own hands but perhaps they were too busy operating.
Islam needs to evolve, and Sunni Islam desperately needs to break the grip of the Saudi bend on it-but there are competing perspectives. Will it rush into modernity-not a chance. Guess that's job security.
I would make a distinction between the Sunni and the Shia there.
The Shia still have ijtihad which allows them to adapt their faith to modernity. The Sunni... they're trapped in the 12th century.
I didn't mention the Shia since we're not really dealing with them in the context of terror (anymore), theoretically Iran/Hizbollah could be an issue one day but they are decisively engaged in Syria and really haven't been a serious terror actor against us for decades. That's not to say they weren't malignant in Iraq or aren't playing a role with the Houthis and such, but by and large they are evolving/adapting in their own way and won't be nearly as difficult to work with in time.
Unless the Mahdi comes back of course, but in that case we're all screwed anyway.
What if he comes back at the same time as the Jesus?? Now that would make headline news! LOL
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Don't tell anyone, but I bet they are the same made up deity to perpetuate a social control mechanism!
If you believe Sunni peace is the lynch pin your mistaken. Shia-Islam will not suddenly trust millions of Sunnis' - They never have. It's believed that close to 90% of Muslims are Sunni-based. That's a lot of "evolving" your asking for! A whole lot! That hasn't happened since the 600s' when this nonsense started! Don't mistake my realistic view of the world for hate.
Sunni adaptation with modernity is a lynch pin-how that interacts with the Shia is problematic but not any more so than now (and that isn't really the driver for what happened in Nice, or Brussels, or Paris, nor 9/11; you cannot simply ignore almost 25% of the world's population (that lives in far more than the middle east).
As far as the region being reliant upon made up text; yes-hence why all three monotheistic (bullshit) religions that have emanated from there were, or are, still the predominant cause for strife in much of recorded human history. Islam just happens to be the most egregious offender at the moment but in its defense Christanity and Judaism was, and is still, more than a component of conflict too.
As far as most of them being peaceful in the region and my basis for that comment, I've spent much of my adult life there in, and out, of combat and over the past two years in particular visited everywhere from Lebanon to Sri Lanka with the exception of Syria and Iran (& I'd happily go to Iran). I certainly wouldn't have been able to do that if it was the environment you are making it out to be.
Painting with a broad brush doesn't get you sufficient detail to make meaningful policy. As far as pumping enough oil for ourselves that is an exceptionally myopic view-theoretically feasible for us (and that doesn't make the Saudis nervous-afterall they were they ones that dropped oil prices on everyone, i.e. Russia, on purpose. The globalized world economy, particularly China, still relies on that energy and so long as that is true we will have national interest there. Or we can backslide to our pre-WWII status of being a 2nd rate power, which I think some would prefer, but that's not really feasible, practical, nor desirable.
But I am part of the problem, that's absolutely true. Plenty of room for others out there, I'll save a seat.