In Paris, France last night, eight terrorists affiliated with Daesh killed 129 people and injured 352 others, 99 critically. In Beirut, Lebanon yesterday, Daesh also killed 44 people and injured 239 others, several of them critically. The entire world rightly mourns for France, but the attack in Lebanon has not been as publicized.
People are heartsick. People are scared. People are tired.
The normal human reaction is to want to retaliate, to want to kill the motherfuckers who cause this needless suffering and death. It’s entirely normal to want to eradicate a terrorist organization whose sole purpose is to crush others who don’t believe in their radical form of Islam, to use women as slaves, to kill everyone who won’t conform to their sick standards. Daesh uses their very unique brand of Wahhabi/Salafi jihadism as an excuse to murder, maim, or torture as many people as they possibly can.
They are disgusting human beings, to be sure, but they did not rise up out of a vacuum. Daesh arose out the ashes of the US-lead, illegal war in Iraq. The United States is directly responsible for Daesh existing in the first place, and people either forget that or don’t want to remember.
Daesh, in 2015, has become a huge, expansive monster of an organization. From Wiki:
As of March 2015, it has control over territory occupied by ten million people in Iraq and Syria, and has nominal control over small areas of Libya, Nigeria, and Afghanistan. The group also operates or has affiliates in other parts of the world, including North Africa and South Asia.
See? The map above is old now.
Today alone, I have seen several Kossacks argue that we should just go in and wipe out Daesh in the huge swaths of territory they have seized by force from both Syria and Iraq. I have seen this, today, on a Democratic website.
…..
WHAT THE FUCKING SHIT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?! DO YOU REMEMBER NOTHING AT ALL?!
If we don’t learn from history, we are bound to repeat it, remember?! Sure, let’s get all the NATO countries to put boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria, since the bombing campaigns in Daesh-controlled regions have not been the least bit effective. Let’s get into another quagmire in the exact same goddamned country we invaded, illegally!, in 2003, plus an all new one! Yay, that’s the ticket!
And then ten years go by, we’ve pissed off every single solitary country in the Middle East, Syria and Iraq are in nothing but ruins, and the United States has spent trillions of dollars trying to eradicate an enemy we continue to create, over and over and over again.
Because we never learn that killing one terrorist makes five pop up in yet another place.
Stop the drumbeat for war. It’s sickening, maddening, and not at all a helpful response to what’s going on in France and Lebanon right now. We cannot eradicate something that feeds off of violence, can’t you see or understand that?
There may be some nuanced and appropriate responses to these terrorist attacks, but full-on war is not one of ‘em. And I’ll have words with anyone who says otherwise.
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Update, 7:56 pm CST (thanks to commenter suejazz). Read this entire article from Charlie Pierce! This is what we need to do, stat! From the article:
It's time for this to stop. It's time to be pitiless against the bankers and against the people who invest in murder to assure their own survival in power. Assets from these states should be frozen, all over the west. Money trails should be followed, wherever they lead. People should go to jail, in every country in the world. It should be done state-to-state. Stop funding the murder of our citizens and you can have your money back. Maybe. If we're satisfied that you'll stop doing it. And, it goes without saying, but we'll say it anyway – not another bullet will be sold to you, let alone advanced warplanes, until this act gets cleaned up to our satisfaction. If that endangers your political position back home, that's your problem, not ours. You are no longer trusted allies. Complain, and your diplomats will be going home. Complain more loudly, and your diplomats will be investigated and, if necessary, detained. Retaliate, and you do not want to know what will happen, but it will done with cold, reasoned and, yes, pitiless calculation. It will not be a blind punch. You will not see it coming. It will not be an attack on your faith. It will be an attack on how you conduct your business as sovereign states in a world full of sovereign states.