A reply to a comment I left on a Graun article poining out that the US and NATO had reduced to rubble Iraq, Libya, and now Syria, and was bankrolling Israel, and that the lads in Paris were misguided, but that it basically wasnt about cartoons: The US and NATO have basically reduced Libya, Iraq, and now Syria, to rubble... (an extract from my comment). Then the persons reply: No, France, youre not getting it. Its critically important that we maintain the fiction that all terrorism springs fully-formed purely from an ideological or theological vacuum. Muslim terrsts must be grown in large test-tubes and jump forth fully armed and programmed to act. There can be no environmental issues at hand. There can be no reference to a bitter religious war in Algeria or long-running simmering anger at the way France delinked from Algeria, there can be no sense of betrayal at the failure of the Arab Spring, there can be no reflection at the continuing rule - and support offered - for tyrannical middle-eastern oligarchs and royal families. Any sense that events in the middle east have any bearing on events now will only reflect very badly on the likes of Blair, Bush, Sarkozy, Cameron etc. And that must not be allowed. The wholesale destruction of entire functioning states? Pah, get over it! The death of tens of thousands of innocent people? Meh: People - Shmeople! The identification of Iraq as the perpetrators of 9/11 with not one shred of evidence to back it up? Heh - mistakes happen. Palestinians expropriated? Losers! There are now countries that have simply ceased to exist beyond drawings in a childrens atlas. But the narrative now being played out is that it cannot be allowed to have any bearing on the events being played out in France and elsewhere. It will be forgotten that organisations such as Chatham House have long argued that events in the middle east and the invasion of Iraq would provoke terrorism (Sorry - cannot link to the original Chatham House report from 2005). Even when that was written the then Home Secretary jack Straw was vociferous in his efforts to drown out the reports conclusions that invasion would provoke terrorism - even though his own security forces also identified such a link! This will not do: apparently its all about some cartoons, and reducing it solely to that issue means that it looks and sounds ludicrous, horrific and utterly disproportionate. And it also means we cannot examine the long-term causes.
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 20:48:35 +0000
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