By Stephen P. Pizzo
Will this week’s Paris attacks become just the latest in pop-up
terrorist attacks where we mourn the dead and move on, until the next one?
Likely.
But … and this is becoming a bigger
and bigger “but” with each such event ... maybe not. Maybe
this time someone will come up with an actual effective response.
After all, since these fundamentalist,
nihilist groups thrive in their 10th-century throwback religious,
cultural venues, they will not be going away. Instead they will
continue their barbarian-like crusade(s) against those they decide
are unworthy of liberty or life.
Sure developed societies have more
economic vim and vigor, superior infrastructures and large modern
military machines. These jihadists can pose no genuine strategic
threat, right?
Actually, no. They can. And, in some
ways they already have. And, if they continue pulling off stunts
like 9/11, Madrid and London train/subway bombings, Mumbai attack,
the downing of airliners and now Paris, they will succeed. They will
not succeed in taking over developed nations, but rather ruining
them, destroying everything that makes them worth fighting for:
freedom of speech, freedom of travel, freedom of assembly and the
machinery of “business-as-usual” that lubricates the very gears
of of all that in free societies.
For example, if airliners keep falling
out of the sky, filling TV screens at home with the latest horror,
how many ordinary folk will still want to fly to Orlando for a week
at Disney World? Will happy newlyweds eagerly climb aboard a plane in
Newark to honeymoon in Hawaii? How many business travelers will put
up with wasting hours of their valuable time standing in increasingly
intrusive security checkpoints at every port or entry or exit?
Airlines, which almost always operate
on the thinnest of margins, will not be able to raise fares to make
up for the dramatic plunge in revenues. And once all checked in
luggage will have to be searched, all ot it, not just the 5% that are
searched now, you and your luggage may never meet again, at least not
at your intended destination.
It would not be more than a decade of
this and the only remaining airline would be nationalized just to
enable developed nations could cling to an ever-shaky claim of
normality, that “the terrorists aren't winning.”
Planes will not be the only form of
public transport affected. Buses, trains, urban subway systems, each
offer terrorists the most bountiful of killing grounds. Imagine a New
York City where working folk are too terrified to go to work because,
to get there, they have to literally risk their lives underground
locked in a metal tube every day. How many will take that risk just
for a paycheck?
And so-call public venues will become
increasingly un-public venues as attacks on large crowds chill such
gatherings. The “public square” Americans are so found of
celebrating... well forget about that too after more public squares
run red with public blood. Rock concerts, campaign gatherings,
protest marches; each suddenly takes on the potential of becoming
fatal, causing even the most hardened activist to rethink their
activism; “Yeah, I know I have said I am willing to die for this
cause, but I'm sure as hell not willing to die for that, whatever the
hell 'that' is.” And so once vibrant democracies become less
and less vibrant.
No business venture is more fraught
with risk than the restaurant. Even in the best of cases, restaurants
come and go like buses at a bus stop. Once terrorists shoot up or
bomb enough restaurants, those who do dare dining will be seated at
tables far from windows or doors, to make them less attractive
targets. And al fresco dining? Forget about it. Who wants to eat an
meal while feeling like a sitting duck in a carnival shooting booth?
(“Please pre-pay for your meal in case you have to flee before
finishing.”)
Little by little, unchecked, terrorist
attacks on all things modern, Western, democratic and financial, will
force one developed society after another to become less and less
open, less and less efficient, less and less risk-oriented, less and
less fearless, less and less free.
So, if what you ever wondered if
terrorism could ever pose a genuine strategic threat to modern
societies, there it is. It is not a process in which modern cultures
reach down raise backward cultures out of darkness, but one in which
backward cultures reach out and pull modern cultures , down into
their familiar darkness, their sectarian and social dysfunction, down
into their hell.
I began by asking if the latest Paris
attacks would spark a fresh response, or just more of the same. Well,
I don't know. I tend to doubt this particular attack will result in
any spectacular changes. It may take more before every nation
affected understands they are the fogs in a classic “boiling-a-frog”
process, as I described above.
But when the change in tactics by those
being attacked does come, what on earth could it be? After all, we've
tried bombing the crap out of them already. We tried ground invasions
and occupations. We tried lavishing billions in cash on terrorist
breeding ground regions. We tried buying off their politicians and
generals. Not only has none of that worked, but it's only made
matters worse.
So what's left to try? It's good to
remember that every time developed nations have tried to sort out
secular issues and redrawn borders “for them,” it only made
matters worse for the generations that followed. Short of killing
every man, woman and child in the entire region, what can/should be
done?
I don't know. After attacks like the
most recent one in Paris, my Sicilian genes vote loudly for the
killing the whole lot of them and being done with it. Of course, once
I calm down, I understand that is not a choice on anyone's to-do
list. (Okay, maybe Dick Cheney.)
I do think though that, if not a nailed
down solution, we can at least come up with a list of things that
need to happen, one way or another:
- Stop trying to accommodate the mass exodus flooding Europe with refugees from these troubled lands. Not because I think they pose a danger to Europe, but because letting them all leave Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan etc, is bleeding those nations, not of their terrorists, but of the very educated professional and small business classes they will need to rebuild. If allowed to continue the only people left in these countries will those who only know war, those filled with free-floating hatred of... whatever. So stop it. Yes, it will cruel to force these masses to continue living in those war zones. But they represent the future of those countries. Without them, there is no future. The other reason to make them stay is they may well prove a more effective counter-force to the ISIS types. Forced to stay they will also be forced to take stands, to fight, to organized, to resist, from within. It is, after all, their countries, their people, their wars.
- Most European countries now have large Muslim communities. These communities tend to be separate from their host countries. This is natural and expected. Immigrants like to hang with folks that speak their native tongue, have the same customs etc. And being a non-white immigrant in a predominantly white country brings with a long list of hurdles, some expected and many unjust. Nevertheless, these Muslim communities still share a responsibility to the country housing them. If they expect to stay and work and send their kinds of public schools in the hope they will have better lives they have had, then they need to start policing their own communities, They need to aggressively finger individuals or groups within their communities that not only threaten their host country's citizens, but threaten their own dreams for a better life. If they refuse to do so then they can't complain when rightwing politicians point them out as part of the problem, and start passing laws they won't like very much.
- France, England, Germany and Brussels all have long lists of their own Muslim citizens who have gone to the Middle East to join ISIS or al Qaeda, and worry about what will happen when they return home. Which begs the question; why do they have to be allowed to return home in the first place? If they have evidence that a citizen trying to return to Europe has been working at any level with terrorist groups, then refuse them reentry. Revoke their citizenship and let them figure out how best to get back into the good graces of the civilized world. Meanwhile them not returning home means the already overstretched security services will have one less suspect to keep an eye on. Finally, now stranded in the very “caliph” hell scape they left home to fight for, their online whining will serve a warning to anyone else thinking of taking a similar leap into that abyss.
- It's long past time to reel in our so-called “allies” the Saudis. Their insistence on continuing to fund its radical and violent Whabbai version of Islam has been, and continues to be, a part of the problem. Any any Saudi “prince” caught funding terrorist activities or groups, needs to be blacklisted from any and all travel or financial dealings with the rest of the world. Bang. Just like that. No more coddling that pack of spoiled wastrels.
That's a start, not a solution, but a
start. We have to be ready to try different things, things that have,
for diplomatic reasons and political correctness have been off the
table. Because if we just decide the Paris attacks and others are
just part of our “new normal,” we will not care much for the
world it creates, and not in some distant dystopian future, but
quickly, in our own lifetimes.
And, if it is allowed to get that bad,
citizens in affected developed – devolving – societies, will get
very angry. And that in turn will force politicians in those
countries to an all-out military response, ala World War II. Millions
will die, citizens in cities like Damascus will get a taste of what
it was like to have lived in Dresden in 1945. And then what?
Well, once that dust settles we'd find
ourselves back in 1918, when Britain, France and Germany decided to
divide up the Middle East to suit themselves, drawing borders where
they liked, ignoring tribal lands, sectarian divides or the needs or
wants of the indigenous populations. And all they accomplished was to
set the stage for today's chaos.
So, short of “killing every man,
woman and child” in that region, we need to figure this out, and
soon. More of the same just ain't gonna cut it.
