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Who Started This “Terrorist” War? When?

After the latest tragedy in Paris, the outpouring of heartfelt sympathy from ordinary human beings and cynical posturing from political leadership, it is time for people to stop, think and take democratic action before it gets much worse. And in the short run it will get worse.

The Islamic State is a reaction to what the west has been doing to the arab-Muslim world for longer than any of us have been around, even longer than “decades” in time-meaningless media speech.

After the First World War destroyed the Ottoman Empire and Europe began creating national boundaries in the arab-Muslim world having more to do with western real estate economics than native populations wishes, the seeds were planted for the present destruction of those Middle Eastern nations and the reaction to it by Islamic fundamentalism. But western intrusion began long before then, which is why some Islamic Jihadist writings of the present refer to their enemies as “crusader-Zionists”, linking political economic cultures of supposedly different eras and religious beliefs but really as different as the two sides of a coin to the people they have dominated for far too long.

To hear the master race of self-chosen people who have ruled the world from the time of past crusades to present Israel, theirs was and is a project to civilize and democratize those with no idea how to conduct themselves as an advanced population of organized freedom loving people. Of course it may have to murder hundreds of thousands, even millions, in the process of civilizing these unfortunates, especially if they not only fail to obey their dominators but even insist on making rules for themselves, but mass murders and the destruction of secular governments are simply part of the process of building democracy and respect for life. Got that?

It should be common knowledge by now that the origins of Islamic fundamentalist warrior groups had to do with financing and training by the USA, its Arab fascist allies and its NATO lap dogs. The jihadists were originally employed to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, after they had come to the aid of a secular regime the west worked to destroy because it was seen as too friendly to the Russians, who were their next-door neighbors. If you believe you are a master race of self-chosen people, brainpower takes a back seat to killing power. When that bloody war ended with the soviets out and the fundamentalists in power, the westerners watched in blissful ignorance as a former secularly ruled nation became overtly religiously orthodox and where, among other radical changes, women once of the professional educated class were returned to servitude and obedience to men, covering themselves in public in dress codes that could seem puritanical to westerners but were at least partly enforced to keep them from looking like cheap tramps, which was how islamic fundamentalists saw many western women.

What bungling supremacist policy makers also failed to notice was that the jihadists didn’t just hate communists; they hated the entire materialist west, wanted to rid themselves of all its social contamination, and go their own way. Oops.

After 911, the terror attack that provoked the mindless assault on the people and nations of the Middle East that continues today, the first stage of the bigger bloodbath started in Afghanistan. Easily blamed, after the fact, on a president treated as a dunce by cowards – only Barbara Lee, of more than 500 “democratically elected representatives” in congress spoke against the action - it has continued to Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria and of course has seen retaliation in the USA, Europe and other points west.

The Islamic State, treated by western consciousness control as a bunch of bloody killers bent on replacing the commercial televised mayhem of wrestling, kick boxing and Fox News with actual beheadings, is, whether slandered and cheapened by being called self proclaimed or so-called, a state of Islamic people with territory, currency and trade policies, which wishes to have no connection to or relationship with the forces which have colonized, tormented and brutalized its people for so long. That their tactics are brutal and dedicated to frightening the west and creating chaotic tendencies is clear, and that they are and have been successful is equally clear. What is to be done?

Obviously, not having well meaning if silly debates over whether or not to take in helpless refugees who are fleeing bloodshed we play a major role in creating and sustaining. The biggest help we can extend Syrians escaping war is to stop making the war. The same is true for all the other nations and people we have dominated in the area and in whose affairs we have meddled by supporting oppressive dictatorial regimes which do our bidding and thus become acceptable butchers. We are presently informed – repeatedly, and by sources from the extreme right to what passes for a left in the USA – that the "horrendous Assad" is brutal and must be replaced and that is why we have helped if not created various groups in Syria to take up armed struggle against his government. Of course they now amount to nothing and foreign jihadists, from all over the arab world as well as europe, are the fighters threatening the Syrian regime, as once again the formidably armed but mentally crippled leadership of western nations sounds a collective “huh?” while it continues to destroy people and nations because, um, that’s what it does.

Thanks to the Russians awakening to potential disaster in their neighborhood and taking both military and diplomatic action to bring about peace talks to attempt solving the future leadership problem in Syria, there are signs of hope. Even Obama, who only looks peaceful by comparison to Killer Clinton and the idiot republicans, seems to see that America will lose, badly, if the warfare continues. But that is not nearly close enough to what really must be done.

The USA must get out of the empire business, end its warfare economic entrapment and stop slaughtering people to allow the minority corporate rich and their cowardly minority politicians to use other people’s lives and money to feel like macho women and men who rule the world. If we don’t take democratic action to stop them, we will pay a heavier price in future than we have paid in the past. And it won’t just be financial.

We need to get out of all the places in the middle east – and the rest of the world - where the people don’t want us, stop performing as Israel’s servant and insist they stop butchering Palestine by cutting off all financial and especially military aid until they do so, and only attempt to help others when they have truly democratic rule – so far evading us! – and ask for our help, and then only after we have seen to it that all our people have homes, health care and jobs. In our very near future, we’ll either have real democracy or unbelievable barbarism. What’s your choice?

  

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Further French Brilliant Foreign Policy

BREAKING NEWS

France Is Conducting Air Strikes In Syria

Sunday, November 15, 2015 4:12 PM EST

That'll show 'em!   Exactly what some of the attackers said they were avenging in the murderous  events of the previous night.

Charlie Hebdo Massacre Reduced to a Footnote

Last night's horrifying bloodbath in Paris reminds us yet again of the urgency of a change in Western policy in the Middle East. Until and unless that happens - and it can't happen unless an aroused and informed public makes it happen - more massacres are inevitable.

ISIS has taken responsibility - proudly - for the attacks that killed well over a hundred people out for Friday night fun, and promised more and worse to come. Before we get swept up in jingoist hysteria, let us recall that ISIS is not self-begotten, but emerged from the murderous chaos that followed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Recall as well that the U.N.'s Humanitarian Coordinator Denis Halliday accused the U.S. of genocide in Iraq five years BEFORE that invasion as a result of the crippling sanctions imposed after the 1991 Gulf War. In other words, the West's systematic destruction of Iraq for an entire generation has given birth to a terrorist movement dedicated to killing as many Westerners as possible. Hideous? Yes. Surprising? No.

Not a single leader on the American scene has offered an intelligent policy response. Self-righteous posturing and threats of retaliation are the order of the day. France is planning bombing raids in Syria, which at least one of the terrorists involved in the Friday night massacres said was the motivation for the Paris attacks in the first place.

Mourning the dead doesn't mean much if we immediately reinforce the policies that led to their deaths. Have we not had enough of slaughter? Why do we not see on TV the effects of the West's constant military interventions in the Middle East? If we regularly saw the tortured, maimed and killed on our TV screens, we would be in a better position to judge events like the hideous attacks in Paris on Friday night. These were clearly revenge attacks, as they have no military significance whatsoever. Why treat them as unprovoked attacks?

And let's stop with the idiotic questions like, "Can a similar attack happen in the U.S.?" Of course it can. Anybody remember 911? The grievances that provoked that appalling attack are still in play, as nothing was done about them. (See post for May 1, 2011 "Osama Bin Laden: The Real Story" for a review.)

ISIS would not exist were it not for the West's (especially the U.S.'s - the European powers follow Washington's lead) constant interventions in the Middle East. So why are we there? To make sure Israel can continue to colonize Arab land? What legitimate U.S. interest is there in perpetuating that? To topple Bashar al Assad in Syria? He is the legitimate leader of Syria; what U.S. interest is there in overthrowing him, which would make ISIS even more powerful? To "defend" against Iran and Putin? Iran is more influential than ever thanks to our destruction of the Iraqi state, and Putin is an avowed and active enemy of ISIS. What U.S. interest is there in opposing either of them?

Until U.S. leaders stop bad-mouthing Assad, Putin, and the mullahs in Iran, we will know that they are not serious about reducing the threat of terrorist violence. For it is the overweening arrogance of foreigners attempting to govern peoples over whom they have no legitimate authority that has bred the violence these leaders pretend to abhor in the first place.

British activist and author Tariq Ali has offered the following sensible advice on how to end the terrorist nightmare emanating from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan: "There are three important pre-requisites to re-stabilizing the region: end of Western support to the extended Saudi royal family (the source of extremist Islamic sects); end of all Western intervention in the region; a single Israeli/Palestinian state with equal rights for all its citizens."

This agenda has no traction in Washington. Serious advocates of peace need to learn how to give it some.