Greetings!
We join the rest of the world this week in support of the victims of the French terrorist attacks. At least 129 people were killed, over 350 were injured, a nation left deeply traumatized, and now the entire civilized world agonizes along with them. The zealots who perpetrated these attacks can’t be dealt with as rational people. The execution of random civilians as a way to advance a political, religious, or economic cause cannot be countenanced.
Sun Tzu’s famous advice, “If you know others and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles”, reinforces the essential power of understanding your enemy to defeat them. Not agreeing with them, not sympathizing with them, but understanding them.
ISIS did not spring up from a vacuum to strike Paris. Tragically, as wrong as they are, ISIS is shaped by the violence and suffering that has become an everyday reality in their world. From the CIA-sponsored Syrian Civil War of 1949 to Bush’s criminal idiocy to Obama’s collateral-damage-rich drone war, ISIS is a result of the chaos of permanent war.
The Paris massacre commands the headlines, while Wikipedia lists 74 attacks with hundreds of casualties throughout the Middle East that barely make the back page. Unemployment is staggering, economies are decimated, cities are rubble, governments are corrupt, and futures are bleak, short, or non-existent. Tragedies like the Paris attacks are all too familiar to the citizens of Iraq, Syria and other countries in the region. Their suffering somehow does not grab Western attention, nor does our hand in creating it.
If we are to defeat ISIS we must first understand the forces that drive their increasing numbers. Western actions are NOT an excuse or justification for the actions of ISIS or its jihadi brethren! However, as we contemplate more war in that region, we must understand and take responsibility for the role we have played in creating the chaos endemic to the region. Perhaps, if we understand what created and drives ISIS, we may also understand that bullets and bombs alone cannot defeat them.
Faire un grand jour!
Digging Deeper…
Tom Dwyer Automotive Newsletter Book Spotlight for November- “Power, Faith, and Fantasy” by Michael Oren
U.S. Intervention In The Middle East, Information Clearing House, June 2004
US destabilization policy toward the Middle East: A Historical perspective, The Daily Journalist, Sep 2015
1098-2004- The Middle East and the West, A troubled history, multimedia from NPR, Nov 2015
US Foreign Policy in the Middle East- Intervention Timeline, UMWBlogs.org
Iran, the United States, and a Political Seesaw, The New York Times, Apr 2012
Timeline of US Policy & Intervention in the Middle East, The End of History, Sep 2013
You Can’t Understand ISIS If You Don’t Know the History of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia, Alastair Crooke on Huffington Post, Aug 2014
It’s Paul Krugman vs. Noam Chomsky: This is the history we need to understand Paris, ISIS, Patrick Smith in Salon, Nov 2015
