Paris

I’m glad you made this thread.

My thoughts are with the people of Paris, and all the French people affected.
I barely have my thoughts together a day after and 3000 miles away.

It’s really disturbing the breath this attack. The randomness and at the same time the level of coordination…

But I’m also so much afraid of the reaction. I already see it everywhere online. With the economic and cultural situation in the entire European Union and the disturbing nationalist and xenophobic feelings it engenders…..

The FN wins the 2017 election for sure and whatever the fuck is going on in Germany is gonna get worst… up here in Canada they are already bitching about the new government policy on ISIS…

I remember the post 9/11 and it was really ugly really fast for muslim or muslim looking people… I’m on edge and worried for my friends, coworkers and neighbours of North-African and Middle-Eastern descent.

And I can’t even imagine the chaos in Paris right now. The grief, the terror, the anger.
Fuck…. the more I read about it the more I physicaly feel bad.
Goddamit.

Sorry

Thank you for this. As bad as the events in Paris are, the city has seen much, much worse and survived. I’m certain France and Paris will move forward towards greater peace. The principles of fraternity, liberty, and equality aren’t just words for the French. They’ll mourn, rage, argue, fight, etc.

I’ll be booking my next stay in Paris soon, probably sooner than I’d planned. I doubt I’ll visit any of the sites in the news this weekend, but I will try to make time for an afternoon in Père Lachaise. Paris is still the best city in the world. Now, it’s time to focus on the good, grieve and celebrate the lives of those who have passed.

Of course as always I would prefer not to make the above comment.

@2: “I’m going the other way. With each attack, I care less and less about the lives of Muslims in general and Arabs in particular.”

Sounds better in the original German.

Unless I’m misreading the reports, the attackers seem to have a strong Belgian connection, much like the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Which suggests it could happen in Amsterdam.

“(something something)… Muslims in general and Arabs in particular”

JH: “…Sancho’s logic…”

Not to belabor the point, but by that argument’s own terms, wouldn’t it be the reverse? As in, being an Arab is just a happenstance of birth, whereas being a Muslim is a conscious choice, and ISIS is – purportedly – informed by the Muslim faith, so the argument would be Muslims in particular?

I get that you are trying to be calm and diplomatic here JH. But still – recent calls for increasing the level of violence/hatred are not even playing lip-service to logic. Which is disconcerting, because it suggests that reasoned argument will not be an effective tool in persuading these sorts out of their positions. This is something we have seen before.

My greatest worry is the tendency by those most vociferous in their disdain for terrorism to be in agreement with terrorist actors when it comes to portraying those actors as powerful and dangerous. I understand why select individuals may have an incentive to do so, and/or act in bad faith in this regard. But, more broadly, do people really not understand that they are buying into and echoing those same terrorists’ propaganda? This is an honest question.

With each attack, I care less and less about the lives of Muslims in general and Arabs in particular.

My mother is a practicing Muslim. No, she doesn’t cover her head. Yes, she prays five times a day and doesn’t drink and doesn’t eat pork, etc. Pretty much half of my extended family fits this description. You “care less and less” about the lives of all these people—again, half of my extended family—because of what some motherfuckers who happen to be Muslim did in Paris? Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider your position? Maybe just a little bit?

@6

The main targets were large concentrations of people: the concert and the stadium. Had security not prevented the terrorists from entering the stadium, they would have had tens of thousands of targets. (The stadium holds 80,000; I can’t find the actual attendance.) I don’t think it’s necessary to look any deeper than that. It is instructive how many lives the searches that we often dismiss as “security theater” saved.

@Sancho

We also see the Kurds giving ISIS hell. And, over the last several decades, the governments of Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan, Syria, Algeria, etc., cracking down on radical movements (although the efficacy and morality of such campaigns are, of course questionable).

Online I can be somewhat, ahem, acerbic. In real life, however, I’m extremely charming and good-looking. I do raise a little hell at the yearly reviews, but I operate under a strict policy at work of if I don’t have something good to say, I don’t say it. That takes work.

My second and even more successful policy is to find something to like in everyone, and say it. That, too, takes work. So, life with me is actually one never-ending stream of Pollyanna the glass is half full optimism and compliments. It’s what I learned in business. Drives some folks nuts, I’m sure, but it works extremely well for me. I’m completely unaware of all the gossip, I have no idea who’s trashing who, I don’t add any fuel to the fire, and I never engage in professional backstabbing, unless I’ve already made the decision to complain directly to the said individual’s face.

Like it or not, we’re all in this together, left-right, Christian, agnostic, atheist, Muslim, etc. I can’t afford, personally, to indulge in my prejudices, nor do I want to. Perhaps on this one thread which John started out as a place to mourn, we try to say something nice about a group of individuals we ordinarily detest. Call it change for want of a better word.

js. provided a good start.

Re Ingrid @6: This Kieran Healy tweet is heartbreaking but very relevant, I think. It’s just so, so horrifying.

gianni @28: Look, once you’ve (sensibly) rejected the notion that “Muslims as a whole think in a uniform way about [_X_] issues”, there’s really no sense to the question “to what degree Muslims support or do not support objectionable acts” because you’re not actually dealing with a cohesive whole. Honestly, it’s kind of like asking what Christians think about motherfuckers who kill doctors providing abortion. It seems pretty clear to me that “Christians” don’t think anything about that because it’s an ill-formed category relative to the topic under discussion. Similarly, I don’t think “what do Muslims think about terrorism” is an empirical question so much as a methodological error. (This can admittedly get more complicated, but I’ll stand by this, for now at least.)

I know I haven’t been the most popular person here, but I wrote a little thing for my friends on Facebook last night that seemed to have some success in soothing and comforting naturally distraught people. As the thread seems in danger of descending into acrimony, I thought I’d offer it up here as well –

“There are no words to describe the horror of last nights events or the pain of the victims and their loved ones. Like everyone my thoughts and prayers are with them. Paris has survived some of the worst examples of humanity’s capacity for evil in it’s long history and has always come back swinging. I have no doubt it will this time too.
Perhaps it is just the circles I frequent but I have also been relieved and proud to see so many people reminding us that there’s a reason ISIS and their twisted adherents carry out this kind of attack. It’s not just to sow death and destruction. It is to turn us against each other, to make us hate and fear our fellow humans just because of the colour of their skin or the nature of the god they worship. In more simple terms, they want non Muslims to become Islamophobes in order to push more Muslims to become jihadists, to create a vicious circle of violence and misery.
Make no mistake – for the barbarians who plotted and carried out this atrocity there should be a swift and terrible retribution. But in the end the most powerful weapon we have is to treat one another with kindness, and respect and to keep our hearts and our minds open, and ultimately, to love one another. That’s how we win.”

What’s the over-under on the EU breaking apart due to the election of Nazi or Nazi-lite parties in the next 2-3 years? Anyone want to take a guess?

Some commentators have mentioned that the Paris quarters that have been attacked have been the most multicultural, young and ‘liberal’ (in the US use of that term): what some see as the ideal future of French multiculturalism. What does it mean that those places are attacked, rather than symbols of government power or some tourist landmarks or the heart of business?

These commentators have the most incredible ignorance about French life and Islam. How on earth do you interpret an attack on restaurants, bars, and concerts on a Friday as an attack on French multiculturalism? It is obviously an attack on French culture by a culture which has a different view about alcohol and the role of Friday.

interesting stuff Thomas but I don’t see how to fit USA spree killers into your equation. One difference is of course the teamwork but Columbine had that.

jackrousseau@35.
I don’t think Nazi-style governments are likely anywhere in Europe any time soon. On the whole, the French have reacted with restraint, and there have been few overt signs of any anti-Muslim sentiment or actions. I think this is because the French people, if not the commentariat, mostly understand that the origins of the attack lie abroad, and that it was a response to French actions there. Somebody on the radio this morning was quoting the slogan which helped to bring down the Spanish government after the 2004 Madrid bombings: “your war, our dead”. All that said, the incident is likely to help the extreme Right, but not for obvious reasons. It will massively strengthen the lobby that wants to reimpose border controls and ditch the Schengen agreement: there are signs, indeed, that Schengen is starting to fall apart. Likewise, the extreme Right is generally strongly against intervention, and wants a much less activist foreign policy. If she chooses, Le Pen can make quite a lot of capital from the argument that irresponsible meddling in the affairs of other states has put the safety of the country in danger. But for the moment, there’s no sign that the (fairly small) explicitly racialist tendency in France is benefitting.
Thomas Beale @37
As I said, I don’t think that complicated explanations are needed when simple ones are quite sufficient. This is a series of attacks deliberately designed to turn the French people against their government’s policies in the Middle East. It has never been hard to persuade people to use violence against civilians for political reasons. It happened all the time in the colonial period, and in the wars of de-colonialisation, where massacres of civilians were commonplace. See, for example, Nick Turse’s recent book “Kill Anything that Moves” about the US in Vietnam, which shows how extreme violence against civilians was adopted as official (if not acknowledged) policy at all levels. Ordinary kids from the rural US, no doubt brought up as devout Christians, were rapidly turned into perpetrators of wholesale massacres, according to the US Army’s own investigators.

I dont know that we know that this was a revenge attack for French foreign policy. We have pretty clear evidence for why Al Qaeda attacks the west (1) to divide populations and recruit, and (2) to encourage western governments into counterproductive responses which would help radicalise domestic populations. ISIS , as theyre recruting from the same pool, could plausibly have this goal in mind. We also shouldnt dismiss the millenarian strains of thought in their ideology. It isnt implausible that a massive regional war is their aspiration.
I, personally, think there are some problems with how the left (at times) view these things:
(1) the idea that most of the world are just liberals/leftists who have lost their way. My understanding is that the opposite is closer to the truth, that the types of people (western educated) who staff national security beaucracies, academic depts and newspapers are actually, cognitivelyand morally, the global abberation. Most people do not hold our value system. Our conception of right or wrong, what’s desirable or not from life, is not the norm. People will kill and die for oppressive ideological systems, not because they feel unloved, or hope for power and wealth, but because they have very different views of what is desirable and what is not than us.

(2) Our solutions for global problems always approach them from the wrong angle. Abberant behaviour is the result of discrimination or poverty. The problems of development are resolvable by vague calls to institutional reform or local agency. Conflicts can be negotiated. Ideologies and behaviour is reactive to our policy. Violence is the result of pathology or criminality. People primarily care about their economic self interest.

(3) What we see in large parts of the world are groups with considerably different cognitive dispositions and fundamentally different conceptions of what makes a good moral order. ISIS is an extreme example of this, but it is a more general rule. The situation isnt resolved through institutional design, or realigned incentives, or logical argument, or negotiation, or emancipation of the people, or even changes to western policy. These are deeper differences, built into how people relate to eachother, how they think, what they want from life.

That isnt a call to military action, such a collection of claims could lead you to numerous policy positions.

” This is a series of attacks deliberately designed to turn the French people against their government’s policies in the Middle East”

I dont know. They cant actually believe it will achieve this goal (none of their other atrocities for western audiences, ie the beheadings, have achieved this aim – in fact quite the opposite – so why would they think this will)

Not that many. And it’s not only west vs the rest, there are major differences in value systems within western countries (though perhaps not as stark) It doesnt explain all of it though, (people also fight for adventure, profit, etc)..just most (imo)

@41

Ask some guy named Abdelfattah al-Sisi.

I agree a lot of my claims above were overly general (Im more looking to see if anyone can elaborate on them, or what they have to say against them) Im not sure to what extent I believe all that I wrote,and I agree it’s more complicated than the outline I gave (also, dont worry, i didnt find the pessimistic label dismissive)

Bad Jim at 18: Russia are not our allies in this. Russia is supportive of the Assad regime; the position of the American and British governments is that Assad has to go, although he might have a roe in a transitional government; the French line, at least up to yesterday, was that Assad has to go, period.

Also, there will be no Kurdish state while Recep Erdogan is alive and Turkey is in NATO.

It’s clearly a FALSEHOOD that Muslims aren’t fighting against extremism, when the Wikipedia article, “Military intervention against ISIL,” lists Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Oman, Turkey, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Lebanon, and several local forces in various places, involved in multiple coalitions led by US, France, and Russia.

As for Muslims living in the West, they are speaking out against this ALL THE TIME, but, in the era when the internet is destroying the centrality of the mainstream media, there are good and bad aspects, and one of the bad aspects is that nobody reads or hears much of any one thing, and so it’s easy to get the wrong impression about what is actually going on. Even though there are lists of Muslim organizations and their statements against fanaticism and terrorism. On the internet. Which you can find. Easily.

Of course, better information never stopped politicians such as the US Republican candidates from lathering up supporters with hate speech.

Reality is: 1. many people underestimated ISIS at the beginning (I remember arguing in these very comments a year and a half ago that ISIS posed a much bigger threat than some other commenters here believed); 2. most people, west and east, have decided that ISIS and other violent fanaticisms must be destroyed; and 3. the US-led coalition has been attacking for over a year and is gaining ground. The Kurds with help are making gains against them in Iraq too, and the Kurds just liberated Sinjar, cutting a major ISIS route between Mosul and the east. Reports this morning are that in Sinjar the Kurds have uncovered a mass grave of Yazidis murdered by ISIS. ISIS still controls Mosul, Iraq’s fifth-largest city, and one can barely imagine what they are doing to the people there.

It seems to me that the Paris attack is a desperate attempt by ISIS to forestall the end, either by instilling fear, or gaining more adherents, either to go to Syria and Iraq, or to terrorize Europe. It’s illogical because it won’t work, but then again there is a large component of religious fanaticism in these people, and disaffected individuals are always fertile ground, no matter how well educated.

Following the 7/6 attacks the UK has had mercifully few attacks. There seems to be two reasons for this.

The main reason IMHO is that many muslims in the UK are happy with their lives here. They feel both Muslim and British, have opportunities for personal advancement, to contribute in wider British social life and to build a successful family life. With that background, I believe many muslims have contacted the authorities to alert them to individuals who seem to be flirting with ISIS or other organisations. The authorities try to engage individuals to de-radicalise them when alerted, so there is an all-round effort to avoid the build up of a group of co-ordinated sympathisers.

The second reason is that it appears to be very hard to get hold of the hardware in the UK.

Touch wood this situation holds.

I have to admit, that I have to struggle to avoid Sancho’s reaction (or worse). Don’t we all at times like this? It takes real effort to feel charity towards the other when you suspect that some members of the other seek to do this to you and yours. So we have to make the effort to feel compassion to the many Muslims who have are put into a worse situation everytime something like this happens. And the many in unstable chaotic places like Pakistan, who by dint of the diversity of Islam, are at real danger of being declared by some as Takfir (a legitimate target as an “apostate”). These are not easy times to be an advocate for all humanity.

Somewhere above I saw the statement about religion, that it was by choice. But, I think this is rarely the case, for the vast majority are born into a particular religion, and choosing to leave it risks estrangement (or worse) from both family and one’s community. Its not a price that many are willing to make, even if deep down they don’t believe.

Now myself. I wish for some magic event whereby all humans wake up and realize, God doesn’t exist, and was in fact one of the worst ideas humans ever had. But, I know this is a foolish pipe-dream, and instead work to understand the major religions, for we all have a responsibility to learn to get along.

I have a good bit of time for David’s views on this, but I dont know if we can say it’s only religious in the ‘widest and vaguest sense of the term.’ Even accepting it as a tactical operation (to force the French to disengage from Syria ) it is still serving a larger ideological goal, and that goal cant be understood without acknowledging the ‘Islamic’ part of Islamic state.
You couldnt understand the PIRA without understanding the specific traditions of Irish Republicanism they drew from. That doesnt mean that everyone who joined was from birth (or ideologically coherently) an Irish nationalist, but it meant they were socialised into and expected to swear alliegance to these goals and situate themselves in this history. And the most ideologically committed (the leadership largely came from families with long histories of involvement in nationalist movements) absolutely believed themselves as carrying on the work of past generations, and they understood and represented those traditions in their own iconoclastic though defendable way.
There are different levels of this stuff; some join out of a want for adventure, some because of the security situation, some primarily to defend their group, but a lot are coherently, ideologically commited.
Of course there are hundreds (thousands) of these traditions. What casual role can they (or Islam) play when it could just be something else (Marxism, Fascism, Basque nationalism) in a different context? I think the Islamic part is important though. Everything isnt reducibe to it,but it’s also not just an unimportant added feature (and it can probably help explain parts of the their behaviour; their aspirations, their levels of extreme violence, the possibility of negotiation)
I’m also a *little* sceptical of accepting that their use of violence is solely rational and instrumental (though I wont go into that)

Ronan @59: well said. I would go a little further: I am also more than a little sceptical of accepting that the PIRA’s use of violence was (or for their dissident successors, is) solely rational and instrumental.

It’s hard to see the violence in Paris as exceptional. There are mass shootings in the US every day. There are terrorist attacks throughout the world every day; states commit atrocities by drone and missile and human army every day. The IMF causes more suffering in a day than terrorists in a year. It is all cause for grief. It does not cause me to feel French nationalist sentiment or nostalgia about Paris.

I would like investigation and information about who the perpetrators are, where they came from, and what they think they are doing. No opinion about what should happen after that for now.

js @ 31
The reason that I disagree on this is because the recruiters from these terrorist organizations themselves use the Muslim identity as both a guide to who to target for recruitment, and as a basis upon which they ground (some of) their appeals. In so far as this is a salient identity category for these actors, it remains a substantive category for our analysis on these issues. Basically, if self-identification as a Muslim has some degree of predictive power here, then it deserves inclusion in the analysis.

The content of the category ‘Muslim’ is neither singular nor fixed. But that does not mean that self-identifying as a Muslim is meaningless. The meaning may differ depending on a host of other circumstantial factors, but that is a reason to try to understand those factors (and then maybe act on them?) rather than reject the basic category as not substantively interesting.

Mind you, this is not just something that I think is true about Muslims. I think that a similar sort of enterprise would be useful in identifying potential white supremacist shooters, for example.

If I were a betting man, I would wager that the FBI currently has people working on both of these questions. Sometimes, like with the NYPD, this is done in a ham-fisted and potentially even counter-productive manner. But rather than insist – in response to these sorts of failures – that the entire enterprise is incoherent or never capable of increasing public safety, I think we should be pragmatic about things and engage these tactics on their own terms.

Part of this stems from a recognition that the national security state is, at least in the medium-term, here to stay, and that Liberals/leftists/etc who choose not to engage with it are only ceding the argument to those who are not really troubled by the use of simple discrimination as a strategy. Not being pragmatic enables others to be actively counter-productive. Another part of my sentiment here is informed by the fact that one of the best ways to combat anti-Muslim sentiment is to create a system that is effective at preventing terrorist attacks.

You are right to be troubled by this sort of pragmatism, but I am not convinced that treating Muslim self-ID as a relevant variable is a ‘methodological error’. If anything, I would expect the data to show the opposite. But I am certainly willing to be convinced otherwise.

I think a lot of them are. Certainly among Dem admins and in staff positions, advisory roles etc, in NGO’s and consultancies.
They generally arent pacifists (or socialists) but Id comfortably say a good deal are liberals. (their belief sytem in domestic politics anyway is certainly ‘liberal’, we could argue over what that means in FP, but they view the world through a liberal frame.)

gianni — I agree with a lot of that. One problem is that something like “Muslim identity” is self-reinforcing. That is, the more we analyze the (objectionable) actions of particular Muslims through the lens of “Muslim self-identification”, the more we help create/sustain a sort of globalized Muslim identity which can then be appealed to for purposes of recruitment, e.g. I’m not quite sure what one’s to do about that though.

Edit.
“The idea that the French government would use this attack just to crack down further is wrong.”

One of the claims of “sophistication” was the use of suicide explosive belts. Someone probably in Belgium manufactured these for the attack. The explosive used was a form of acetone peroxide, which is allegedly powerful, but very sensitive, and not too hard to produce (but risky). here are
the relevant portions from wikipedia:

acetone peroxide
Acetone peroxide is one of the few high explosives not containing nitrogen. This is one reason it has become popular with terrorists,[8] as it can pass through scanners designed to detect nitrogenous explosives.

Due to the low cost and ease with which the precursors can be obtained, acetone peroxide can be manufactured by those without the resources needed to manufacture or buy more sophisticated explosives. When the reaction is carried out without proper equipment the risk of an accident is significant.

Organic peroxides are sensitive, dangerous explosives; due to their sensitivity they are rarely used by well funded militaries.

So a certain degree of sophistication, but not a terrible high one IMO.

That is, the more we analyze the (objectionable) actions of particular Muslims through the lens of “Muslim self-identification”, the more we help create/sustain a sort of globalized Muslim identity which can then be appealed to for purposes of recruitment

Furthermore, each time a horrific act of terror is committed and endlessly displayed, the potential for yet another anomic young man to envision going down in an outburst of violence and to act accordingly increases. Radical Islam and jihad as a way to structure anomie is unfortunately a more and more common career (in the Becker sense) for youths of some European countries (as witnessed by the high proportion of recently converted among the perpetrators of past attacks, and also this one apparently). A related phenomenon is, it seems to me, also at play in mass shootings in the US (albeit for a different kind of anomie).

“I can’t speak about other countries, but the idea that the French government might use this attack to crack down further misquote wrong.”

Already, in the U.S., various politicians are calling for an active ground campaign to destroy ISIS. One Republican presidential candidate (Rubio) demands that the president invoke the NATO charter and organize a war against ISIS. Even the most dovish Democratic candidate feels compelled to cite the need to ‘destroy’ ISIS. Intelligence officials are blaming apps using encryption (when they aren’t blaming the feckless French) and calling for access to those apps. All on the theory of the danger presented by these ‘sophisticated’ terrorists. Of course no one knows they even used these apps, but so what? In the UK, there are calls to accelerate the expansion of surveillance. So no, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to anticipate a serious overreaction.

So that NYT piece cites, as evidence of ‘sophistication’ in the attacks, the fact that when one of the attackers was shooting the other was reloading. Other evidence given is the use of popular cell phone apps to coordinate in time and space.

Now, I don’t have any special knowledge on these attacks, so I am not going to strongly argue that they were not sophisticated…. but still, these are not data in support of that hypothesis.

Any 12 year old American boy who has played a bit of Call of Duty and owns a cell phone grasps both of these concepts and can execute them with a nerf gun or airsoft. I have seen this level of tactical ‘sophistication’ performed by 5th graders playing laser tag with walkie talkies. Yes, there is the handling of explosives and the keeping of secrecy at work here as well. But I see (not just in the NYT) some very odd arguments made in support of this ‘sophisticated’ thesis. Terrorizing unarmed and unsuspecting civilians does not take a Napoleon, nor does the idea of covering fire require time at boot camp.

I wonder why we are so quick to accept that these individuals were much more capable than your average criminal off the street. These men were butchers, not soldiers.

http://www.thenation.com/article/france-should-stop-listening-to-saudi-arabia-on-syria/

http://www.thenation.com/article/what-i-discovered-from-interviewing-isis-prisoners/

Actually, 81 is unfair in the context of this conversation. People here didnt say the things Im responding to.
(however, I think we’re underestimating, and Im happy for people closer to the situation to correct me, the sort of physchological effect that suicide bombings and this type of brutal excutions in europe will have on the public. Context is important. Other mass killings might be similar in a lot of ways, but they dont ‘feel’ like war)

“Both countries, both Russia and the U.S. look at the Middle East and see themselves. The religion of the United States is democracy; It looks at the Middle East and thinks: “Oh, we can solve its problems by exporting democracy. Freedom will dry up the swamp of angry youth; it will dry up terrorism, which is the product of dictatorship. They believe that Jihadism and Salafism will vanish as merit-driven, young strivers embrace capitalism and self-improvement.”

http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/regime-change-without-state-collapse-is-impossible-in-syria-landis-interviewed-by-rts-sophieco-2/ (courtesy of LFC)

Maybe this is just chopped liver:

Seventeen nations, spurred on by Friday’s deadly attacks in Paris, overcame their differences on how to end Syria’s civil war and adopted a timeline that will let opposition groups help draft a constitution and elect a new government by 2017.

There were no Syrians at the table, but if their sponsors in this horrific internecine conflict were to agree to coordinate their efforts, things might get less bad. Pressing PAUSE on the civil war and uniting against the Salafists (Daesh, Al Nusrah) would be a good thing.

The Russians have been dealing with Islamic extremism for centuries. Iran has been dealing with it since its inception. It’s not a stretch to suggest that a united front could be found (though as Jessica Mitford once warned us, an untied front is always a risk).

Hidari, what can I say? It’s not the most promising beginning, but to the extent that the contenders depend on outside support, it’s something. If Russia and Iran concede on Assad, progress is possible, coalitions coalesce … or not. There could be generations of warfare until stability is reached, when territorial boundaries align with ethnic populations.

I sympathize with fissiparous minorities, Scotland, Catalonia, the Basques, the Kurds, even though as an American I’m familiar with the insanity that insular entities routinely produce, and it can’t be denied that Yugoslavia under Tito or Iraq under Saddam Hussein were less lethal territories than the aftermath of their regimes.

Egypt doesn’t seem to be stable without a dictator. Lebanon seems to manage without being stable (with notably common exceptions). Maybe it’s the model.

It’s so completely obvious to me that this attack is one of a kind with a sustained series, the majority of the victims — and the ultimate political targets — of which are Muslim, so no, I have no inclination whatsoever along Sancho’s lines. And none of my friends and colleagues deserves rejection because someone they disagree with commits atrocities in the name of an interpretation of their religion that they don’t share. As a German, I may be attuned to thinking along such lines as 1930 Germans who just tried to go about their lives weren’t much different from their counterparts in France or Britain, and to look in some essential Germanitude for a cause of the crimes of the Nazi regime is a misguided approach. (And an incomparably stronger argument for a form of collective culpability could be made then than now.)

On the other hand I’m not hypocritical enough to pretend this particular atrocity only affected me as much as the preceding and simultaneous one elsewhere. As human beings, and citizens of the world, they probably should. But I lived in Paris for 12 years, and ran around in these neighbourhoods; probably had a coffee a few times in the bar in rue de Charonne. So it’s a more personal violation, of something that belongs to the places I’ve called home. Not only the shooting, but also the idea that something like military units were needed to control parts of bd. Voltaire — it boggles imagination.

Yet, who are we to feel so privileged as to be free of what troubles the world?

I lived in France during 9/11, and my reaction — shocked, but not surprised — was shared by many. Some of them were callous about it, and it understandably upset or enraged or offended Americans. I wonder, now, how many French or Europeans can see a similar pattern now. Because one half of what’s needed for this form of terrorism is a steady stream of recruitable young men at the margins of society, who already have set a foot beyond what’s legal, don’t put much hope into what life has to offer them and are seduced by the call of a higher glory … which I don’t pretend to begin to understand, but some people are working on this and need listening to (http://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2015/04/25/scott-atran-on-youth-violent-extremism-and-promoting-peace/ or http://www.patheos.com/blogs/scienceonreligion/2015/04/anthropology-not-demagoguery-is-the-way-to-understand-isis/ for example). Anyhow, there’s one part of the puzzle that’s a social problem. (Some say a French one, and some of it is specifically French, but to those who tell a myth of happy British Muslims who would never do such a thing, I wonder if they’ve forgotten what happened 10 years ago and not noticed the trickle of recruits that follow ISIL, or DAESH, or whatever they’re called, into Syria and Iraq.) I have no pat answer, no simple straight line from cause to effect, though. There’s likely one of those death by a thousand little cuts things going on. (I’m not going to tell sob stories of poor youngsters in peri-urban housing estates — we know these. I’ll mention something else. The first time I made friends with educated Turkish-Germans wasn’t while I was living in Germany. It was while I lived in the UK … and my Turkish-German co-workers were well shot of Germany, where they constantly had to be interrogated about where they’re from and assure that they are “good” migrant kids. While in the UK they were simply classified as some variant of German, which was what they felt themselves to be.)

The other half is of course what to do about the ISIL/DAESH “caliphate”. I’m not a pacifist. (My spouse is. And I’m glad there ARE pacifists. They’re important to have around. As for me, I can’t get over the “stop the Hitlers of this world before they get to the killing-everyone” bit.) So I’m good with stopping ISIL/DAESH. The problem is: In my lifetime, with the possible exception of military interventions in ex-Yugoslavia, I’ve never seen a Western country wage war in a way that a) efficiently attained the stated goal (within a few months or maybe years, <5 maybe) and b) result in a political situation that was if not beneficial then at least reasonably stable and built on democratic principles. Say, like Europe after WWII. Right now, even WWI's (disastrous) outcome looks positively good compared to what's going on in the Middle East (and parts of Africa, but let's not go there). And that's me talking as a complete ignoramus — I'm a geoscientists, for $DEITY's sake. I dabble in stuff like computing and linguistics. I don't know zilch about political science and international relations. Or other topics, like civil engineering for that matter, but if a state civil engineer tells me "I'll have us a bridge built to specifications X, and it'll cost Y and will take Z months" I pretty much trust that this is what will happen if we vote to go ahead. It'll probably be a little bit more expensive, but grosso modo, I trust they know what they talk about. Regime change in Iraq? Forget it. (And I felt that way in 2003. Unfortunately I never got convinced otherwise.) So I hear Hollande and others talk about firmness and the state of war and air strikes, but I don't see a line, not even a curvy, dotted one, from what any Western country is doing there to a geopolitical situation I can support.

And of course over the last 25 years, one generation after the other came of age there knowing nothing else.

No, I don't really, realistically fear fascist or right-wing extremists taking over the running of the French state. Though my French friends right now are very very concerned about the upcoming regional election. The most interesting and illuminating text I've seen about this aspect was this one: http://imagesociale.fr/2384 (in French). Not that I agree with every point to the degree the author presents it. I, too, shared the Sfar pictures, and I think that however unequally distributed, and however problematic in its attitude to cultural diversity, the French idea of joyfully, peacefully, living and sharing happiness together *is* a valuable one. But I share the author's concern about the rhetoric of "preserving our mode of life" — in a nutshell, the author raises the spectre of France (or, I say, Western Europe) going the way of Israel, firm and persisting from a conviction of its own legitimacy and value system, yet unable or unwilling to address the problems within the realm of one's responsibility which, unaddressed, become a never-ending source of on the one hand injustice, and on the other violence and revenge.

Valls has said on RTL this morning that the operation was “organised and planned” from Syria. Partly, no doubt, this was said to justify the air attacks, partly it was to prevent a backlash against Muslims in France, but mostly it was said because it’s true.
That being so, I think we should put to one side, as needlessly confusing, all the clash of civilizations stuff, or the idea that these attacks grew out of alienation of young Muslims from French society (though that certainly exists). The attackers were of a type, seen in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, for example, ready to die for a cause in which they believed above everything else, even life.
On the other hand, there have been a number of arrests in France and Belgium, suggesting that, as expected, there was a large support network in place, made up of sympathizers prepared to store and transport weapons, vehicles, explosives etc. But you always get this, in any complex conflict. “My country right or wrong” is never a universal view, and a small proportion of those who believe that their country is wrong will be prepared to act violently against it; I suppose the Weathermen would be an example. So in the end, it doesn’t have a lot to do with culture, way of life, values or even injustice. But it’s tough for any political elite to recognise that it’s foreign policy may be perceived as so unjust by some that its own citizens will use violence to change it.

Peter T
“like a gorilla on aid ” ???
Is aid some new designer drug?

Ze K
The problem is that Assad has become a symbol, like Saddam, Milosevic, Castro, Gaddafi, any number of national leaders we take a dislike to, not least because they are the only leaders whose names we can remember. Having taken such an advanced position, it’s now hard to move back without looking silly.

David @ 97 I don’t agree. To create suicide bombers/killers, you have to work on the human mind. We don’t know yet, but there’s every likelihood that some of the Paris killers are French-born. We know for a fact that French, British and other European (and Western) -born ‘Muslims’ are being radicalised in their countries of origin, by a combination of hate preachers and internet grooming. These young people are then travelling to ISIS territory and obtaining training, either for committing atrocities there, or back home.

Doing the latter is an expressly stated goal of ISIS. How do people get radicalised? They already have to be seriously resentful and marginalised. That partly happens because they live in what are effectively Muslim ghettos (this is well documented in the UK and France) and are brought up in a different value system (to be clear: not all Muslims in Europe live in this mode). I have observed with my own eyes the on-going victimhood and tension in Grenoble for example between Arab areas and adjoining areas. There most definitely is a problem of clashing value systems, it’s well known in France.

We have to also consider that a significant number of ISIS fighters match the above description of disaffected youth, are radicalised, and come from places like Egypt. This appears to be the case of the recent Tunisia bomber(s).

Other ISIS fighters, the pro-active ones needing no radicalisation have simply been fast-tracked through the disaffection / hate / extremism / training stages by living in what turned into sectarian war zones, but they weren’t born as murderous ideologues. They get convinced by those in charge of propaganda and brainwashing (maybe just their parents), who know how to focus generalised anger at specific foes, justified by a specific ideological worldview. It may be an eschatological one, but I doubt if that’s strictly necessary to convince people to kill themselves in an act of terrorism.

I still believe that the best decision paths available to Europe / the West right now rely on recognising the multi-factorial nature of causality here. That means:

* ‘fixing’ the ideology – a growing Muslim left is doing this, and needs encouragement – there is a recognition than an Islamic ‘enlightenment’ is needed.

* doing something about the sources of generalised disaffection. This is not easy, and different strategies are needed in the West versus majority Muslim countries and elsewhere. It’s partly dependent on the first point in Europe.

* finding and dealing with the radicalisation – various active approaches are underway (some not well designed or executed, e.g. UK ‘Prevent’ strategy); done properly this should starve Daesh of willing raw human resources.

* dealing with the battle training and hardening, which mostly happens in Daesh territory (+/- al Quaeda territory). That probably means being far tougher on returning youths who have travelled to Syria (do we really believe they can be easily de-radicalised or left alone?), and ultimately (now), doing something military on the ground at the source.

I would think to be successful the last will need some broad coalition of Western and ME on the ground combat forces (and Russian, why not?), not ongoing remote control bombing by a few states.

We have more than one control point here, we need to understand and use them all.

@94 Thank you for this. Most of what is happening now is noise – meaningless bombings – think Clinton and Sudan, arrests, dragnets etc. The principal reason I do not fear mass conflict in France is that a very large number of Muslims in France are stake-holders in the French economy. Yes, unemployment rates are higher, but much of what will happen was already in place – border controls, state surveillance, increased scrutiny and suspicion of immigrants. That’s a European phenomena at the moment. The good that come out of this, and there is much, is that the anti-interventionists are going to have a stronger voice, not just in Europe, but in America.

It will be more difficult from people from Africa and the Middle East to enter Europe and the US, but hopefully these people will have less reason to leave their homes. Ironically, the attacks may actually make the EU stronger. The free movement of peoples, one of the main points of contention is almost certainly going to go by the wayside, and the UK, France, Germany, and the Scandinavian nations at least are going to want their security services to work much more closely. The Euro is a separate, but obviously not unrelated issue. The fantasies of regime change are just that. A succession of governments in the UK, the US, and France have a great deal to answer for, imho. I’m a very long way from a pacifist and would support the use of massive force, but only when absolutely necessary. Border controls are not an expression of xenophobia, but responsible government as the French, Belgians, and others are discovering. Drawing red lines in the sand over the bad behavior of regimes a long way away is an extremely poor way to draw up policy and the reason Syria is not at the table is because Cameron, O, and the rest partnered up with cranks who ‘refuse’ to sit at the same table as Assad.

We are now learning some hard truths about the limits of force projection and of our ability control large masses of people well outside our own borders, as well as within our own nations. There are enough adults in all the countries concerned to make this work. We may not, however, be able to limit the impact of terrorists in the ME and pry the Ukraine from the Russian orbit. This is very much not the end of the world. We’re simply getting right-sized the hard way. As usual, innocents are paying the price.

I don’t think there’s any contradiction between talking about “value systems” and “cultural” reasons for (or manifestations of) violence, and also noting that violence is generally (always?) instrumental and political. The individual motives for violence (correcting perceived wrongs, defending the group) can be different from the groups (specific, tactical) aims.
I think the problem with arguments like huntingtons clash of civilisations isn’t that it was Completly wrongheaded , just that his interpretation was stupid. I do think political scientists (afaik anyway, though I’m prob overstating it) tend to overlook the importance of values, culture or moral orders , perhaps because they look at the mid level (institutions , organisations , states) rather than the individual. Anthropologist like Atran (linked by merian) are probably better placed to get into the individual motives and causes of violence.
That’s my layman take anyway

Faustusnotes @104
“A year later, they’re being bombed and they’ve lost sinjar and suddenly suicide bombing of civilians is all the rage. I wonder if this is a sign they’re getting desperate?”

Then getting desperate is one possibility, but it seems to me that as an act of desperation it is completely counterproductive (they are now being bombed more). What I actually suspect is that there are now power struggles with the organisation, perhaps between the Iraqis and the international brigades who have little regional attachment and are happy to leave Iraq and Syria and turn to underground terrorism.

reason @110
Just to expand on my thoughts, it could be signs that all is not well with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. ISIS is no longer a tightly run organisation.

@reason.
From a practical perspective you may well be right – Hollande is breathing fire and brimstone at this very moment – but that may not be how they see it. The mindset of the people behind the military side of IS is not ours, but rather of a region where violence is a language used to negotiate. You car-bomb me, I car-bomb you. We reach a compromise of some kind, or, if I can continue to use more violence than you, I win. I doubt if they have a very sophisticated understanding of European politics, and especially the influence of public opinion.

David @144
I think that is borderline racist. They know what happened in Afghanistan (and Iraq).

I think this apparent puzzle is easier to resolve if we accept that the attacks were about them, not about us. We are not always the centre of everyone’s universe. That’s to say that they have no particular long-term strategy for Europe, and don’t really care what happens here. Their priority is survival, and their horizons in the foreseeable future are limited to holding, and if possible expanding, territory in the Levant under their control. It’s true that some of the political leadership harbor fantasies of world domination, but the former Baathist officers who control the military capability are far more realistic. On the other hand (and I’m sorry if reason was offended by this) those same officers are not very familiar with European political systems, and may well have made what proves, in the end, to be a strategic error. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, Hollande has finished speaking, and has announced the creation of 5000 posts in the police, more in customs and justice, and the continuation of the state of emergency for three months.

reason
Oh, yes, I agree. The Russian attack was against another participant in the war, and the Beirut attack was against Hezbollah, who have been fighting them for some time. We can debate which is strategy and which is is tactics, but it’s clear that they have decided that foreign intervention is hurting them, and they want to discourage it. But of course it’s a response to our own various strategies: I’m not sure they would waste effort like this otherwise.

In May 2014, the first wave of ISIS attack on Ramadi was around 20 suicide bombers driving explosive-laden vehicles. And this was a typical MO at the time. A great many of the foreign nationals who join ISIS are used as suicide-fodder in this way.

Juan Cole has a good article: http://www.juancole.com/2015/11/modern-raiding-pirate.html; although the analogy plays down the ideological currents under ISIS.

If there is any rationale behind particular ISIS actions, it’s hard to discern. They have attacked their declared enemies (Shi’a, Kurds, Christians, Yazidis), their possible allies (an-Nusra), sympathetic neutrals (Turkey, Saudi, Kuwait), irrelevant bystanders (Bangladesh). The thinking at the core seems to be more “let’s blow everything up because that will hasten the rapture”. Of course, around that core are all sorts of groups with other motives (Sunni tribes, ex-Ba’athists, Boko Haram, Taliban…), although all seem happy to adopt extreme violence as a badge of belonging. So parsing the motives behind Paris is probably pointless.

And I can note that persuading the young to self-sacrifice is not hard: at a certain age humans will fling themselves towards any cause that offers recognition, however doomed or silly.

I’m sorry, they may think differently to us, but I don’t believe they are totally stupid.

Why not?

Historically the actions of reactionary movements really do seem as if they’re inspired by deeply defective understandings of the motivations and likely responses of out-group members: we see that pretty clearly in Bush Jnr’s actions in iraq, and there’s no reason to expect that arab reactionary-fucktards will do any better than american ones.

Didn’t it also used to mean that?

Certainly young men went to war knowing that they could die fighting the other side’s soldiers, maybe with high likelihood, but few if any gladly committed suicide while killing the other side’s civilians.

Peter t

I just read the Amazon summary, which told me that armies marauded through Europe, 1450-1700. But it doesn’t say anything about soldiers killing themselves.

The Daily Telegraph has a poignant account of the attack on the restaurant, La Belle Equipe, which nicely sums up the whole horrible business:

Also among the victims was the Muslim wife of the Jewish bar owner, Grégory Reibenberg, 46. Djamila, 40, died in front of him.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

Try this comment thread for links, then take the post above it with the requisite grain of salt, and with all that you’ll at least get what people are pontificating about.

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2015/11/what-is-isis/comment-page-1#comment-1740235

Or, short version, the people doing the killing and exploding are sincere and disposable idiots (with an apocalypse to aim for), while their superiors are likely quite a bit more cynical about the religious mission. Naturally those enthused about their jobs might take some initiative now and then, so discerning what the political animal is doing vs. what its jittery trigger finger is doing is hard.

Agreed js.

DHM Carver

That was one guy murdered by one guy, both quantitatively (obviously) and qualitatively (not orchestrated by a terrorist organisation) different. I don’t know much about Amsterdam, but it didn’t seem to have the festering banlieus like Paris, the La Haine thing, and so on.

But then, or so I thought, neither does Brussels, and it seems to be alienated putative young terrorist central.

ZM brought up an interesting question: why is Daesh apocalyptic, focused on the end times? The same question could be asked of half the Republican contenders and a substantial fraction of the American electorate. The simple answer is that the holy book tells us that judgment day will happen within our lifetime. It’s been wrong for two thousand years, but it continues to be convincing because it’s right there in the book! The end is nigh!

Except, the end of the play is the line “Eh bien, continuons”.

@reason and others.
I don’t want to harp endlessly on this point, because inevitably much is speculation. But let me lay out what I think the situation is, so that those who disagree can see what they are disagreeing with.
First, it is not disputed that the military and political wings of ISIS are separate, and that the military wing is headed by former Sunni Baathist officers looking to capture and hold majority Sunni territory. They are supported by an infrastructure of junior officers and NCOs, mostly from the old special forces and intelligence organisations, who were in turn part of the Sunni militias after 2003. The foreign volunteers are cannon fodder.
Second, it is not disputed that the political wing is separate, but not dominant, and has its own agenda and more importantly its own modes of expression and propaganda. The communiqué was almost certainly written by them, and reflects their interpretation of the nature and purpose of the attacks, and their millennialist outlook.
Third, it is overwhelmingly probable that such an attack would have been planned and conceived by the military wing, or at a minimum would have been stopped if they did not want it to proceed.
Fourth, France can be argued to be the ideal target. It was not the only state attacking the IS, but it was within Schengen, had a large Maghrebian population in which to hide and find sympathisers, and areas in the suburbs which are effectively outside the control of the state, where the police do not go. The IS communiqué also mentioned France’s “war on Muslims” as a factor, so revenge is also an issue. Finally, the attacks would also serve as a warning to other states hostile to ISIS, but which were difficult or impossible to operate in.
Fifth, as noted by several people, suicide bombings are not new. From the point of view of the military command, conventional actions against France were obviously pointless, so some kind of special operation was the only option. Because of the risk of operatives being captured and divulging useful information, this had to be a suicide mission. (There’s an analogy with 1914, where the assassins of Archduke Ferdinand were ordered to commit suicide after the operation. Several tried, but not very competently). In the present state of alert in France, military and official targets are too well guarded for attacks on them to be feasible, so soft targets would have to be chosen instead for practical reasons, though we can speculate about other motives as well.
Sixthly, my understanding (though I wasn’t there) is that these were very much the tactics employed in the communal wars of 2006-7 won by the Shia: massacres, car bombs, assassinations, suicide bombings etc. They are also tactics used in Lebanon -eg the recent IS car bombs in Beirut, which don’t seem to have been directed against Hezbollah’s HQ itself (probably too well guarded) but against the local population that supports them. It’s a message, just like the Paris attacks. The MO, as others have noted, would be familiar, and was anyway probably the only one feasible for an attack on a foreign capital.
Finally, the IS political leadership is pretty unsophisticated, and in fact I don’t think it’s capable of conceiving some of the complicated political tactics others have suggested. Even the military wing probably has a limited understanding of western politics. They will recall that the Shia won in 2007 by beating and blasting the Sunni into submission, and probably think the same might be done with the West. In any event, as I said, I think we should privilege simple explanations, rather than complex ones, especially given the kind of people we are dealing with.
Happy to be told that any of these assumptions are wrong, by those who know more.

@144

Most political leaders in the West are very well-educated in the conventional sense of the word, but woefully lacking when it comes to political sophistication in relation to Middle Eastern affairs.

Maybe the issue of sophistication is a bit of a rabbit-hole. My (limited) experience in the region suggests that most people are actually pretty sophisticated about issues of life, death and politics, and that at least some of the local leaders are quite well educated (though my impression is that’s not necessarily true for the IS).
But we’re really talking about knowledge here, or more precisely applied knowledge. Just as western decision-makers, some of them highly educated and intelligent, had no idea of the realities on the ground in the Middle East, so it seems logical to suppose that the IS leadership, whatever its level of intelligence or sophistication, would have little understanding of the dynamic of western politics. Younger, foreign recruits who might have a better understanding don’t seem to be in positions of authority. So whilst the military side of IS is pretty militarily sophisticated, and the propaganda elements etc; are also sophisticated, their understanding of western politics is as deficient as ours is of them, or as was the Japanese in 1941, or the US in Vietnam or any other example you care to name. If you accept this argument, then Occam’s Razor comes into operation, and complex eschatological explanations are not necessary.
There’s also, as kidneystones mentioned, the issue of statements – “propaganda of the deed” as it used to be called. Message to the West: we can hit you. Message to others: we can hit the West.

@147 Yes, and no. There’s actually a good deal of evidence that western governments particularly in the UK and the US has excellent intelligence on north African terrorism, and the activities of north African terrorists in Iraq and Syria up until the fateful to decision to depose Gaddafi, via the Libyan intelligence services. See the Guardian, Independent, and NYT on this topic. As a very large number of volunteer jihadis (a term I loathe) originated in Libya, the Libyans were able, it seems, to learn a great deal about what was taking place in pre-ISIS/L controlled areas of Syria and Iraq. Amid President Drone Strike’s preening one intelligence officer I remember reading observed that with Gaddafi gone, western access to intelligence in Syria and Iraq had gone dark. This genius move on the part of President Peace Prize was followed by an even stupider blunder in Syria, taking sides along with Cameron against Assad, thus opening up a whole new territory ripe for lunatic destruction. We can thank red Ed for scotching the worst of these plans, but it seems clear in hindsight that more than enough damage was done to destabilize Syria and turn it into another Lebanon. I doubt very much, btw, that any of the actors in the ME are much interested in what the west, or Russia for that matter, thinks or even does.

@150 I think is very sensible, particularly your emphasis on clan/familial bonds. Religion is the environment, or an environment. An imperfect analogy would be the very real battles fought in England, Ireland, and Scotland over the role of bishops and elders during the 17th century. However loopy those fights might seem to us today, reading Charles I’s exegesis of biblical passages to justify his government’s authority on the eve of his execution, and republished a decade later, provide some sense of the conflicts between the authority of a theocracy, and that of the state. To segue crudely to a separate but important topic, imho, the region/religion very much needs a revolution/renaissance of the sort Sancho called for earlier. That hasn’t occurred yet, for the most, except in Iran, where some studies (sorry, no links, but they’re out there) indicate that universities there are much less constrained by the debilitating effects of enforced creationism teachings than other nations. This is not, I suspect, surprising giving Iran’s history, the nature of their state and form of Islam, and the fact that the nation is in many ways much more democratic that Saudi Arabia, for example, which has immense wealth, but produces almost no patents, especially given the immense sums available to universities there. I’m guardedly optimistic that once we get our noses out of their affairs and stop bombing their populations, there’s a real chance of both religious and social reform in the ME. I won’t personally like it, I expect, as I find a great deal to object to in public executions etc., but at least the young people of the region may have something approximating a future on this earth, not the next, to look forward to.

kidneystones @ various: “Clinton…Cameron…O…Gaddafi…President Drone Strike…Gaddafi…President Peace Prize…Cameron…Assad…red Ed…”

Do you notice what I notice? Revealing, huh?

Ronan@152: wise words, but I’m not sure how far “recapturing age old values and glories” is an adequate description of the aims of fanatical Communists. I think many of them are in a different class from fanatical Christians, Muslims, nationalists or Nazis; future, not past values and glories being uppermost in their minds.

156: Umm, let me try

(Post-) Modernism/Capitalism is precisely the appropriation/repurposing/subsumption of existing or historical forms for the solution of particular and local problems with a self-consciousness of being in reaction or opposition to other existing modernisms. It is also characterized by “stagism” a universalist historicism used to assimilate other claims to particularity in a location. The use of Qutbism to resist Imperialism is formally similar to the “Return to Keynes” or Neo-Labourism.

We have always been modern, and Bruno Latour sucks.

.. What it does more , I think, is explain a specific reaction to that change that takes a particular form (but is not the only response)

Peter T @160
I read some blog that many of the ISIS would leave if they could – but believe they will be caught and executed, if they try. This suggests that there could be a substantial leakage if the organisation was decapitated. Not unlike Saddam’s army. (If only Bush Jnr hadn’t been so stupid as to disband the army without giving them alternative employment. Monomaniacal ideology can make people so blind sometimes.)

In general, I don’t see a good way out of this. I think ISIS as a caliphate is done for, sooner or later. But the result will be a more dangerous Sunni underground terrorist network, simply because ISIS has been a very good training and networking exercise for Sunni terrorists.

What can be done about the mess in the middle East, I don’t really know. Clearly, Sunni and Shia have a deep enmity, and neither Saudi Arabia nor Iran show any interest in seeking reconciliation. Of course Europe went through this centuries ago with the horrific 30 years war, plus echoes elsewhere. Eventually we came out the other side, but only at the “expense” of become a much less religious society (to some extent the fanatics were exported to the US where they continue to cause problems).

I can’t see any progress happening until both Saudi Arabia and Iran become forces of stability instead of exporting fanaticism. Ultimately, I think that is where we need to concentrate our diplomatic efforts.

And one should note that the Iraqi state was failing before Bush and Cheney rushed in. Years of sanctions plus the erosion of state authority in the Kurdish and Shi’a areas had led Saddam to fall back on an ever narrower circle, ever more repressive, ever more riven with intrigue. Professionals left the country, infrastructure decayed, ordinary people suffered. Bush and Cheney were Hindenburg and Ludendorff to Saddam’s Tsar Nicolas.

350.org had a post on Paris and the upcoming climate march and talks

“Friday night’s events were horrific, and we must clearly and unequivocally condemn such violence. Their aftermath has also been frightening though, and we should stand in equal condemnation of the instinct to meet violence with more violence. It is a cycle as old as it is ugly: after tragedy comes the rush to judgement, the scapegoating, the xenophobia and Islamophobia, the blame.

There is a real danger here that those already impacted by both the climate crisis and the wars that are so intimately bound up with it — migrants, refugees, poor communities, and communities of color — will be further marginalized.

If there is a thing we must resist, it is our own fear and short-sightedness. No government should use a moment like this to increase the burden of hatred and fear in the world — sowing suspicion, calling for war, and reducing people’s civil liberties in the name of security. This is a mistake we’ve seen too often before, compounding tragedy with more tragedy.

The Paris Climate Summit, scheduled to begin in just a couple of weeks, will proceed. The government is promising heightened security measures, which is understandable but also worrisome.

We don’t yet know what Friday night’s events mean for our work in Paris. The coalition on the ground is committed to working with the French authorities to see if there is a way for the big planned march and other demonstrations to safely go forward. We fully share their concerns about public safety — just as we fully oppose unnecessary crackdowns on civil liberties and minority populations.
…
There couldn’t be a more important time to work for climate justice, and the peace it can help bring.”

The (mildly) optimistic scenario one hears in the region is as follows. The real power in the IS is the Baathist military. When they consider that they have gained everything they can, they will turn on the political leaders and destroy them. This will lead to an effective ceasefire, with Sunni and Shia parts of Iraq and Syria, and the withdrawal of the Iranians and Hezbollah. The future will be continuous low-level crisis, with violent incidents, rather than a war. We’ll see.
It’s worth pointing out that both Iran and Saudi Arabia are essentially pursuing influence, rather than wanting to start or exacerbate conflicts. the Saudis in particular, like all absolute monarchies, crave stability above all else. They have played a major stabilizing role in Lebanon, for example.
Oh, and Hollande just been speaking. I think you can forget civil liberties and other such quaint ideas for the time being.