Whether we like it or not,
the one justification for the existence of all religions is death,
they need death as much as we need bread to eat
--Death with Interruptions,
Jose Saramago,
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be;
and that which is done is that which shall be done:
and there is no new thing under the sun
--Ecclesiastes 1:9
When people show you who they are,
believe them the first time
--Maya Angelou
______________________
Subtitle: Chicken Little, or, The Lone Wolf
The media reported yet another Lone Wolf Islamic gunman took hostages at the Lindt Chocolate Cafe in Sydney; two hostages and the hostage taker were later killed. But how -- or does -- this situation differ from hostage situations that preceded it?
Instant analysis provided by hasty experts lead to the speedy disappearance of any discrete event from the headlines in favor of the next shock and awe event, and any lessons to be found in commonalities are lost in the relentless quest for the new. So what's new and what's not?
All hostage taking is criminal behavior, and law enforcement exists deal with such events. The laws already exist in the legal codes of all civilized nations. Motives, tactics and response times may differ, but there is always a police response that is appropriate. Sydney is but another in the ignominious history of the hostage taking event. While there is no comprehensive list online, one can begin ticking off the scores of events in recent memory:
Moluccan separatists (Holland, 1977); DFLP Ma'alot massacre (Israel, 1974); numerous aircraft hijackings, beginning in the 1930's; Mumbai hotel (Lashkar-e-Taiba, 2008); Chechen theater takeover (Russia, 2002); Grozny (Caucasus Emirate, 2014); Beslan School Siege (Chechen, 2004); Grand Mosque seizure (Mecca, Saudi Arabia, 1979); Munich Olympic massacre (Palestinian - Black September, 1972); OPEC ministers (Carlos the Jackal + German and Arab terrorists, 1975); Iran embassy takeover (1979); Iranian Embassy siege (London, 1980); Raid at Entebbe (Uganda, 1976); Norrmalmstorg robbery (Sweden, 1973) -- origin of the "Stockholm Syndrome", etc.
"Lone Wolves" are nothing new. The "shoe" and "underwear" bombers were also lone wolves. Anyone who attempts such an illegal and audacious action is by definition a lone wolf, even if representing a larger group. Most lone wolves are backed by a much larger transnational support system facilitating their operations.
Our negligence allows these people to slip through the cracks and fly under the radar. Since the agencies tasked to ensure our safety are often no more than theater, look for the attacks to continue. The people leading these agencies often lack a police or security background
The police operate on the belief that all life is sacred, including that of the hostage-taker; but if intel indicates the hostage takers will execute hostages, then police must end the situation by assault. The police assault differs from the military one, however.
When the SEALs entered Yemen their assault was a predetermined, essential part of their plan. In contrast, a police assault should be effected only to prevent further loss of hostage lives. As the police assault phase is fluid, hostage lives always hang in the balance. In Sydney, the police had no option as all intel indicated the hostage taker was intent on killing his hostages.
The only critical observation in the Sydney scenario is that the police may have used too much firepower when they employed fully automatic fire. Prudence in the civilian setting may call for less rounds fired in select single fire mode to avoid accidentally killing hostages. A police response should always be measured, but it is always a judgement call for those on-site.
Hostage barricade situations are not going away, but the Western world has levels of security which can address any criminal activity, to include terrorism. The Euroterrorism of the 1960-90 era was effectively neutralized by good police work, intel and counteraction efforts, without governments crossing into authoritarian mode. The same comment will be made 30 years from now about today's "Lone Wolves".
Today's Lone Wolves do not differ much from their predecessors: they want to broadcast a message, and they often seek to gain ransom for further operational funding. Individually, they seem to be nihilists who do not value their own lives. However, their actions continue to support the viability of their group (=the Islamic State), even if they were not directly affiliated with the group to which they claim fealty.
As an aside: what hath the media and its mandatory political correctness wrought by feeding us the line that Islam is a religion of peace? It keeps us in a state of unknowing, children who must act shocked each time we put our hands on the stove and it burns. Certainly there are good Muslims, but the intermittent terrorist act will continue to erupt from that unsettled pool, and we must be stoic in our application of established police protocol.
To deny that there is a large swath of "bad" Muslims who rejoice in their 10th century ethos is to be willfully blind to a movement taking over large swathes of the Middle East and Asia. To paraphrase Sam Kinison, it's called The Islamic State, people. "Bad" to us is "good" to them, and never the twain shall meet.
Our fundamental worldviews are different ... it is not simply a matter of the West disbursing a few more palletized bundles of Benjamins, or more education or fruit juice boxes at the Loya Jirgas. We are as puppets on a string when we recoil in horror at the beheading du jour.
What's new is the environment of fear fomented in the press.
[cross-posted @ rangeragainstwar.]
As a policy wonk, I suggest that we ignore it and let the police clean up the mess if it happens.
ReplyDeleteBetter to worry about traffic safety and early childhood education.
You get (way) better bang for your buck.
(Terrorism is extremely rare and not worth spending a lot of time or money on)
I think you're tapdancing very close to a minefield you (and we) probably don't want to wander into, jim.
ReplyDeleteFirst, a couple of points;
"Most lone wolves are backed by a much larger transnational support system facilitating their operations." Or not. Not, in this case, so far as anyone investigating this crime can tell. This joker was a loudmouthed, unstable looney with a criminal past; hardly the sort of criminal mastermind any sensible jihadi would want to recruit. He had no weapons more sophisticated than a shotgun. He was a "less successful" terrorist than the genuinely-unaffiliated looney that waxed 35 people in Port Arthur in '96.
More to the point, these guys appear less likely to be actually supported by the jihadi groups than trying to capitalize on their notoriety; you're more scary if you're an "affiliate of the Islamic State" than some asshole with a loose screw and a grudge. To conflate every one of these nutters with the army of the Islamic State is to do the IS's job for them, a subject I'll address in a moment.
"The Euroterrorism of the 1960-90 era was effectively neutralized by good police work, intel and counteraction efforts, without governments crossing into authoritarian mode." You're right up to a point that it was policing that broke up the Italian Red Brigades. The activities of the Red Army Faction in Germany, however, went on well into the '90s, however, and probably would have continued had not the Soviet Union fallen apart, and particularly support of the East German STASI been lost. I don't really think that the Euro model fits well with this case or most of the other Western Islamist-connected acts of violence. The euroterror cells were actual organized underground groups; these seem to be more like "franchisees" (where there IS any actual connection between the gomers and the jihadi groups) which makes trying to track them down much more complex. Basically if you want to focus resources on snuffing out this stuff - and I agree with Ael that the money would be better spent upgrading traffic control, since auto accidents kill an order of magnitude more people than "terrorists" do - you pretty much HAVE to go into full-on COINTELPRO mode. You have to suborn and surveil every Muslim organization and group in order to suss out which member is going to turn full-on jihadi nutter before he/she does...
..."what hath the media and its mandatory political correctness wrought by feeding us the line that Islam is a religion of peace? It keeps us in a state of unknowing, children who must act shocked each time we put our hands on the stove and it burns."
The same media and "political correctness" that requires us to insist that Christianity is a "religion of peace" every time some right-wing nutjob murders a doctor or guns down a cop, or some Buddhist triumphalist in Sri Lanka murders a Tamil, or any time any other of the gajillion fruit-snacks high on Jesus or Allah or Buddha or Aum Shinrinko butchers someone.
Because the facts are that 1) religion is great for motivating butchery - just ask any of the citizens of Beziers...oh, wait, you can't, because a bloodthirsty Christian slaughtered them!...and 2) MOST people who have religion are NOT butchers.
In essence you're doing here what you're wagging your finger at "the media" for; "ignoring the violence inherent in Islam".
(con’t)
(con't from above)
ReplyDeleteBut it's NOT.
Every story on this joker emphasized his past history with politicized Islam, every one mentioned his conversion to Sunni Islam and his embrace of the Islamic State, regardless of how farcical it was and how it fed the popular paranoia about the Jihadi Under The Bed.
So. The bottom line is that this guy WAS a nut and a crook. He was also a Muslim. That implies the need to adopt a generalized attitude about the umma about as much as the need for Urban II to direct the violent energy of European feudalism outside the Christian world implied that European Christendom needed to launch nine crusades.
My entire problem with the current enthusiasm - largely amongst Western "conservatives" - for a confrontation between the West and Islam is that unless you're confident of destroying your enemy (which would seem somewhere between unlikely and impossible in this case) engaging in prolonged warfare with the same adversary has several ill effects on the polities that do so.
Warfare empowers centralization of political power and decisionmaking based on immediate military need rather than long-term political and social welfare. It tends to make the warring power less flexible, more militaristic and short-sighted.
At the same time it has a Darwinian effect on the enemy; if its not quickly effective it tends to winnow out the weak and the losers and bring to power those more doctrinare and rigid as well as those who are better at fighting. The Israelis have been doing this for generations, finding that destroying the PLO just empowered outfits like Hamas and Hezbollah who are better at what they want to do. By the same logic siezing Jerusalem in 1099 set off a long war that ended up with Ottoman Turks at the gates of Vienna in 1529 and 1683. If the Rennaissance and the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution had been centered in Damascus rather than Rome, Paris, and Vienna the Holy League would have been in some deep shit.
So, frankly, I'd recommend that you let this one be what it is; some random asshole who had a grudge and wanted to air it out, who wanted to scare the proles by hitting all the right notes. If you want to join the purple press in making this the Fall of Constantinople, well...I'm just sayin' that might not end well.
fdc refers to "the current enthusiasm - largely amongst Western "conservatives" - for a confrontation between the West and Islam", but this not our point. We have been against the farkling about smartly in the Mideast since the inception of this never-ending war on terror.
ReplyDeleteI think the point is, just don't be so horrified/surprised when the next Muslim (convert or otherwise) pulls another attack. Follow established protocol and don't be so wide-eyed. Everyone knows the convert has the bright-shiny zeal about them, and you match that with their dyed in the wool counterparts on station and you have a very potent, very heady steam behind the anger directed at the West. This will be the source for our newest pool of hijackers-hostage takers-terrorists; the Palestinian terror network will no longer dominate the world terror scene. Welcome the new kids on the block. And welcome them, we did.
We could look at the Islamic State as spinning off the latest nihilist-hostage takers, but perhaps we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss their actions as those of the "rotters", Rumsfeld's "dead-enders"; maybe, their actions seem just right (for them). Woe be it unto us, but this all pretty predictable stuff.
General Katana has been tasked with understanding who these people are (after a decade+)
... good luck with that. I'm sure everything will be much better after a DoD report is filed.
RAW's point is simply: assiduously apply intel and police work to any threat, and if the tenets of Democracy are valid, then the rule of law will persevere and be a successful check on this "new" behavior.
--Lisa
RAW's point is simply: assiduously apply intel and police work to any threat, and if the tenets of Democracy are valid, then the rule of law will persevere and be a successful check on this "new" behavior.
ReplyDeleteThe difficulty is getting the general population to accept that the rule of law grinds slowly. US culture is one of instant gratification.
"fdc refers to "the current enthusiasm - largely amongst Western "conservatives" - for a confrontation between the West and Islam", but this not our point."
ReplyDeleteThen why the scary Islamic puppet cartoon (not to mention the usual Bill-O'Reilly-level-idiocy of "Mallard Fillmore") and the warning that Islam is not a "religion of peace"? Why not treat this nasty piece of work as what it appears to be; an IS wannabe/franchisee trying to get "the media" to do just what you're doing - broadcast scary warnings about how every week or so a jihadi is going to pop out from under the bed?
"RAW's point is simply: assiduously apply intel and police work to any threat, and if the tenets of Democracy are valid, then the rule of law will persevere and be a successful check on this "new" behavior."
Only if democracy and the rule of law are, in fact, able to operate in the open. Perfect example of how exactly this sort of scary-foreign-connected-enemies-booga-booga connect-the-dots works is the one I cited in the comment: COINTELPRO. The FBI ran covert domestic ops on all flavor of "enemies", from the SLCC to anti-war hippies for almost 20 years. There is a substantial body of evidence that suggests that, as the Wiki entry concludes: "Overall, COINTELPRO encompassed disruption and sabotage of the Socialist Workers Party (1961), the Ku Klux Klan (1964), the Nation of Islam, the Black Panther Party (1967), and the entire New Left social/political movement, which included antiwar, community, and religious groups (1968). A later investigation by the Senate's Church Committee (see below) stated that "COINTELPRO began in 1956, in part because of frustration with Supreme Court rulings limiting the Government's power to proceed overtly against dissident groups ..."[34] Official congressional committees and several court cases[35] have concluded that COINTELPRO operations against communist and socialist groups exceeded statutory limits on FBI activity and violated constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and association.[1]"
This skulduggery was only exposed because a bunch of dirty hippies broke into an FBI office and got the goods on the spooks. Even in 1971, when skepticism of the government and rebellious sentiment amongst We the People was at an all-time high, it took an enormous effort to get that information published and some sort of official sanction against the simple outright subversion of "democracy" and "the rule of law" by the supposed agents OF that law enacted.
Today? In the current climate of, as Al points out, hysteria, ignorance, and the fear of the Eeeeevil Dusky Devils at an all-time high?
Yeah. That'd work.
So I'm sorry, Lisa, but I don't see what you've posted as a dispassionate cry for calm and the "rule of law". Perhaps that's what you intended, but what you wrote would be perfectly at home over at Powerline or Little Green Footballs; it reads like a warning that the jihadis are coming to kill you while you sleep...
"We have been against the farkling about smartly in the Mideast since the inception of this never-ending war on terror."
ReplyDeleteBut the farkling doesn't really date to the phony war on terror.
It has been brewing since at least 1948, and probably really since 1945, and there's the rub. Because of the dual fucktardry of anti-Communist finagling and Israel-supporting the U.S. has built itself a big ol' heap of fuck-you-ism amongst the less-cash-dependent parts of the Muslim Middle East. That well has been poisoned.
Throw in the general hate-on against the fleshpots of Western liberal society and the bottom line is that the back-to-the-11th-Century crowd is going to try and take a whack at the West when they can, and short of doing a take-back on 60 years of history we can't change that...
But...we CAN decide not to make things worse by declaring every nutter a finger on the hand of the arm of the Great Islamic Jihad and thus play into the mad desire of a very toxic element of our own population that wants a Tenth Crusade.
Now...there may well be a fruitful discussion of "Things that Western governments and populations could do or try to help defeat the "back-to-the-11th-Century" jihadi crowd. But using this lunacy as a starting point seems designed to go a wrong direction to a very bad destination.
Chief,
ReplyDeletei'm a tad confused as to your comments. i'm not talking about war and crusades, but rather the rule of law and using existing police functions to handle Hostage /Barricade scenarios wherever and however they occur.
jim
Chief.
ReplyDeleteAs Jim stated, this is a piece on how to confront these scenarios when they (predictably) arise.
I see no need in censoring my observations so that I may not incense a potential nutter, or be banished the world of Little Green footballs. Truth is not always either pretty or politically correct, nor does any one group or person have a patent on it (me included). But to observe the reality is not to create, inflate or extend the problem being observed.
By writing, But...we CAN decide not to make things worse by declaring every nutter a finger on the hand of the arm of the Great Islamic Jihad and thus play into the mad desire of a very toxic element of our own population that wants a Tenth Crusade. you imply that my statements create the nutters, or that I should be responsible for how my words might be twisted by others.
Ael,
ReplyDeleteYou're right, of course. I understand the FBI calls the attempt to prevent these attacks a "BFWAT" -- "Big f***ing waste of an agent's time", as David Gomez wrote recently in ForeignPolicy.com.
"...you imply that my statements create the nutters, or that I should be responsible for how my words might be twisted by others."
ReplyDeleteI'm not implying anything, Lisa.
I'm saying straight out; your post reads like something that would show up on one of the right-wing sites, warning of the danger to the West of radical Islam and wagging a finger at the "media" for their usual disclaimer about the harmlessness of religion after some religious whacko kills people.
(Except Christians, since the default news agency position is that "Christianity is a religion of peace" regardless of whether an abortion doc gets whacked or some hardcore bible-banger recommends cleansing the unrighteous with fire...)
Despite your and jim's claims I don't see anything here that addressed this incident any differently than the alarmist media coverage you claim to deplore, since in your own post you emphasized the criminal's Islamic pretensions and his claim to be part of the Great Jihad.
Had this obviously been a jihadi operation like the Mumbai attacks, say, or the Bali bombings there might have been a faint excuse for hitting on those connections. Here - at least so far as anyone can tell- there are none.
You are not responsible for how your words may be twisted. But you ARE responsible that your words are clear and straightforward. If you wanted to talked about police work and the rule of law there was no need to include the scary-wraphead cartoons or wag a finger at the media for their usual disclaimer about scary wrapheads. If that WAS your point, the baggage about political Islam pretty much walked all over it.
And that's important for the "rule of law".
Because if this and every other religious nutter (or nutter claiming to be religious...) attack are truly connected, then there you have the foundation of the sort of conviction that extraordinary measures - secret operations like COINTELPRO - are needed to combat them.
If it's just the usual criminal asshole, then regular cop work and the "rule of law" should suffice.
But if the problem is "...a large swath of "bad" Muslims who rejoice in their 10th century ethos...(that b)ad" to us is "good" to them...our fundamental worldviews are different..." then it's time to call out the winged hussars and the FBI and the CIA and start surveiling mosques, right?
Clearly we are going to have to just agree to disagree about this post. I don't see a virtue in wrangling about this any more.
ReplyDeleteBut...I think that your post does raise a genuine question about the West and Islam.
Clearly the combination of electronic media and modern transportation has produced a greater connection and collision between the liberal technocentric West and the rejectionist elements in the Islamic world who want to shut out - and destroy, if they can - those Western ideas (and Western armies and fleets) they'd like to be shut of, at least. At worst (for us in the West) there are wanna-be Umayyads who'd like to push the bounds of the umma to the ends of the Earth...
I agree that this is will be a challenge for the West in the 21st Century. What I honestly have NO idea about is how the West can meet this challenge.
The old joke is that the West won the Cold War because nobody in Poland wanted to wear Soviet sneakers and nobody in the Soviet Union wanted to listen to Polish pop music. But there is some truth that the old Communist bloc largely fell under its own weight...
Is there some way to duplicate that "victory" over Islam? Can the West somehow encourage an Islamic Rennaissance, a devolution of religious fervor in the Islamic world that parallels the decline of religious fervor in the West (outside of the Bachmann household, perhaps...)?
If, as you say, "...the intermittent terrorist act will continue to erupt from that unsettled pool..." of Islamic fervor...how does the West "drain" that pool?
Now,,,THAT conversation might produce some interesting ideas.
FDChief: " But there is some truth that the old Communist bloc largely fell under its own weight..."
ReplyDeleteI would offer that there is more than "some". Gorby accurately told the Satellites that the USSR no longer could afford to subsidize them, no less provide armored forces to quell popular unrest, ala Hungary in 56 or Czechoslovakia in 68.
"wrapheads" making someone's point today in Paris.
ReplyDeleteno one
Al,
ReplyDeleteyour first cmt is a fine point.
we live for the live news feeds,or so it seems.we are looking for instant justice,as if life were a tv /ncis episode.
when we revel in killing rather than capturing and going to trial then something is seriously wrong.the obvious conclusion is that justice is no longer key,and legality is no longer an objective.we have settled for a weak gruel of vengeance.
here in the US we are slipping to direct action by police/gov't agents.in several recent incidents the barricaded individual has been killed even when life has not been endangered. this is true when even when making a simple arrest, or what should be a simple arrest.
our pwot has been a magnificent screw up, and we can no longer rely on anything that used to be policy.the first victim was the concept of the sanctity of life, theirs included.
jim
to all,
ReplyDeletei must be living in an alternate universe.i thought that i wrote an essay on hostage barricade, and it reflected my belief that all hostage takers are criminals and the as such they should be dealt with by tried and true police methods.
it's immaterial what motivates them.it doesn't matter if they take hostages for ransom,nor does it matter if they are crusaders or crazies.
all hostage scenarios fall within federal guidelines as to how we should react. HB situations are not warfare.
isn't that pretty clear???!
so it boils down to the following-if the hostage taker in Australia wasn't a wild eyed towel head(not my words) then why in heck did he ask for an isis/isil flag?
DUH!!!
this in itself should have alerted the police that it would be legal and reasonable to assume that the hostages were in extreme danger and that a violent end would be how this situation would play out.
it's just and legal to assault in this case,even knowing that hostages are gonna most probably gonna die in the ensuing incident.
in all my thinking and essays i always get back to F. Hackers book=CRIMINALS,CRAZIES and CRUSADERS.
this pretty much summarizes the situation,except now the crusaders may also be crazy as well as criminal.
jim
But had there been no alternative, Al, I suspect that the Communist world might have managed to lumber on. It took a combined push and pull to help the old Commies topple; the "push" from having to compete with the more efficient Western economies...and the "pull" from the visibly better-off populations in the West on the people in the Eastern bloc who had to contrast their lot with the people on the other side of the borders...
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure - in fact, I'm dubious - that the same sort of ju-jitsu would work with the Islamic world. But it raises the question.
"wrapheads" making someone's point today in Paris."
ReplyDeleteAnd there you have it, Jim; our village idiot arrives to make my point. As of the moment we have no - ZERO - idea who the hell shot up the French magazine offices. Is it likely to be some IS wannabe or some sort of angry Muslim?
Possibly. In fact, probably.
Does that "make the point" that all violent assholes are connected through a shadowy Islamic conspiracy fueled by a coordinated Islamic assault on Our Freedoms?
Or, for that matter...could it be a disgruntled ex-employee? A neo-nazi angry with a satirical article on neo-nazi-ism? Jut a random dickhead?
At this point, sure, it could be. But good luck convincing the no-one-Bill-O'Reilly-Rush-Limbaugh-tinfoil-hat crowd that. The jihadi under the bed!
By throwing the gratuitous Islamic-conspiracy-theory stuff into what you intended as a tactical discussion of police hostage-siege techniques you threw open the door to every Islamic-conspiracy-theory-nutter who can and will take your post and run with it. Thanks, "no one", for making MY point.
Uh Chief, the Paris shooters performed with ruthless military efficiency, were speaking Arabic and stating that "God is great" and "the prophet has been avenged", were armed with military weapons (France has gun control so ordinary citizens don't have these)..............if it walks like a duck..........but how is this any different than a gang violent bank robbers? Jim's point.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I can see, you, chief, have no point beyond displaying a mish mash of hyper liberal aphorisms that get us nowhere.
no one
Chief,
ReplyDeleteI believe I am misunderestimated ;)
You say: your post reads like something that would show up on one of the right-wing sites, warning of the danger to the West of radical Islam and wagging a finger at the "media" for their usual disclaimer about the harmlessness of religion after some religious whacko kills people.
I do not say that the media states religion is harmless; they would never investigate such a concept (or any concept.) Media fronts what it must to gain viewers and titillate the masses. But I believe if we do not look at the meaning of Islam and the Islamic State after all of our efforts to ensconce ourselves, then we are right fools. Certainly, to make the observation that the latest criminal behaviors of the sort discussed are coming from the IS - IS fellow traveler pool is not to say something incorrect.
Per our post, your dismissal of "the criminal's Islamic pretensions and his claim to be part of the Great Jihad" should not affect the ways in which the legal system deals with any criminal behavior; in that way, you are correct that his ideology is not relevant (which was our point, anyway.)
But given that we are dealing with ideologues, would it be good to understand the enemy's psychology, to, in fact, declare that there is a profile that might help define the new Lone Wolves and perhaps that this understanding might facilitate future HN scenarios? It's possible. Mind you, we did not refer to a "Great Jihad", and when liberals state and then dismiss such things as froth, we risk devolving to an Islamic "Godwin's Law".
Everything need not be either them (=the unsavory Limbaughians) or us (the never-profiling One-Worlders.) There is a middle ground. As individuals on a discussion site, we should not fall into the hopeless partisanship that our political class finds itself.
It doesn't matter if the next Lone Wolf is actually a product of a training camp or a wannabe, the fact that IS is so appealing might be something we should consider, without fear of being a meanie who is profiling out of racial hatred and desire to be the next guest on Hannity.
We said nothing about "gratuitous Islamic-conspiracy-theory".
___________
Now, your following comment opened up space for what could be an interesting discussion ...
"...if the hostage taker in Australia wasn't a wild eyed towel head(not my words) then why in heck did he ask for an isis/isil flag?"
ReplyDeleteFer fuck's sake, Jim...why do YOU think?
Why does the punk-ass kid throw gang signs when you give him the stink-eye? Why does Vito mention his Uncle Vinnie when he's trying to make you think he's a made guy instead of just some street-corner hood?
Because he knows that you and everybody like you is going to be scared-er of him if you think he's a Soldier of The Army of IS than if he's just, well, a punk-ass.
And, what - you don't think that if he had any real connection with the IS, if he'd been a card-carrying member of Islamic Nutjob Local 73B, that the gang down at the hiring hall wouldn't have had a fucking flag to give him before sending him off to his rendezvous with Allah?
I'm trying not to get exasperated here, but, damn...the level of Islamic paranoia is getting positively O'Reillyesque in this shebeen...
"We said nothing about "gratuitous Islamic-conspiracy-theory"
ReplyDeleteSigh. Look, Lisa. The whole POST was an exercise in connecting the act of one criminal asshole with Islam. This guy - THIS guy - appears to have been a simple violent dick who went all violently dickish and then tried to pull the IS flag over himeself to scare people like you and me. There's NO proof that the Sydney hostage-taking was "...the latest criminal behaviors of the sort discussed are coming from the IS - IS fellow traveler pool" anymore than the Boston bombers or - so far as we know - the Paris shooters were fingers on the arm of IS.
Let's get back to the basics.
Are there violent Islamic groups who will, if possible, extend their violence to the West?
Of course there are.
Does every violent actor who claims to be part of these groups actually represent them?
Of course not.
Does lumping all of this stuff together - the actual Islamic hitmen and the random violent assholes - help us understand how to deal with this problem?
No. It does three things:
1. It does the jihadis work for them.
2. It clutters the area with distractors, making it more difficult for us to understand what's going on, and
3. It makes us fearful and hair-trigger; more likely to do stupid things like invade Iraq because of an enemy that wasn't there.
My objection here is NOT to your characterization of violent Islamic jihadis as violent Islamic jihadis. Those people ARE there, and they will, of they can, attack Western target.
My objection is to your using THIS guy - whose connection with violent Islamic jihadis seems to be that he just wanted to be one - as the poster boy for these mooks.
If your intel is wrong your target selection will be fucked up.
And I should note that the Guardian article (http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/jan/07/shooting-paris-satirical-magazine-charlie-hebdo) suggests that the Paris guys have no connection with IS but apparently claimed to be Yemeni Al Qaeda ("AQAP") gunsels.
I'm gonna check out of the net on this one, because I think it deserves its own post.
Chief,
ReplyDeleteif there's paranoia anywhere in my article then i submit that i'm in an alternate universe.
i thought i was saying the exact opposite.
as for nutters why not capture them for their intel potential?
i'd say it's kinda weird comparing the australian shooter to the mafia or gang memberships.the mentality of the mafia is criminal and they care only about profit and bucks in their pockets. as for gang members i defer to your knowledge as this is out of my knowledge base, but i suspect that gang members have a different thought process than a Arab of any stripe.
I'M DISENGAGING AS OF THIS REPLY as i'm pissing up a rope.
jim
FDChief:
ReplyDelete"I'm not sure - in fact, I'm dubious - that the same sort of ju-jitsu would work with the Islamic world. But it raises the question."
The USSR was a state actor with a society and economy to manage. Radical Islam has no similar structure to maintain. They can achieve their "terror" goals on a shoestring budget. The West is trying to fight a battle of ideas with guns and bombs, and I suspect the guns and bombs simply fuel and spread the ideas.
Jim - you are not pissing up a rope, you are getting through. Although I do believe you and FDC both have valid points, i think you are talking past each other, not listening. I note your reference to F. Hacker's book, I may have to get a copy if you recommend it.
ReplyDeleteNo-One: going back to the Paris shoot-up: The not-so-honorable Senator from South Carolina Lindsey Graham was on the news just now warning the media to be afraid, be very afraid. He seems to be doing the jihadis work for them. How can the good people of SC vote for such a scumbag regardless of his party?
Mike, I don't know how Graham can do that and still look himself in the mirror. It's certainly not a perspective I advocate or agree with. On the other hand, I do think that jihadists, organized anywhere on the spectrum from lone whacko to full fledged card carrying members with orders straight from the top, will execute attacks on western nations; to include the US. This will go on for years. We need to be aware and stay alert and keep our law enforcement and intelligence agencies working around the clock.
ReplyDeleteWe will have to learn to live with the occasional fatal attacks without spastic massive responses to each one. That said, there will be times when we can identify the source and should launch a limited focused military response in foreign countries.
Something that must be kept in mind is that Islam has no religious hierarchy like Christianity. Each Muslim is free to interpret the Koran and other texts as he sees it. So, there really can be a jihad of one (to borrow from the USA's confusing (to me) recruiting pitch).
A US citizen is more likely to be killed by a gang banger than a muslim and more likely to die in a car accident than either of the former combined. We need to start acting like denizens of the land of the free and the brave.
no one
Mike, one more point does occur to me though; some people are (or may be) more at risk - perhaps considerably more - from jihadist attack than others. If the jihadists are going to run around putting bursts of 7.62mm into people whose opinions they disagree with, then certain media figures, politicians, cartoonists, etc. may have valid reason for alarm. This goes all the way back to Salman Rushdie, but seems to have heated up as of late.
ReplyDeleteI think that a lot of the reaction to the attacks is based on a sense of injustice. An automobile accident is just an accident. However, getting gunned down or blown up because someone disagrees with your outlook is just infuriating and intolerable. It isn't parsed out that way and it does come off as ambient fear as it is expressed in the media and by politicians, but there is more at its heart than just that.
no one
This is why commo is so hard, period. Even wildly intelligent people hew to their corner, and in the name of standing for something disallow another voice.
ReplyDeleteI feel like Basil Fawlty, simply saying, 'Yes, yes, we see your little flag. You want to go down as an IS supporter. Right then -- we'll tick off that box." To me, making the aside statement that the new crew of crazies on the international stage is affiliated with Islamic thought is just not newsbreaking, nor is it surprising.
You go whacking the hornet's nest enough, and they'll sting. Like Metallica sang, "There I am, Up on the stage / Here I go, Playin' star again / There I go, Turn the page" -- who has the media pulpit this week due to their most egregious spectacular display. Will it be they or the t.v. show "The Following" who shows the best gross-out for our entertainment market share.
No-One -
ReplyDeleteThanks for the response. I agree with you mostly. I think you are wrong on the religious hierarchy, although I am no expert on religion. It is probably true for the Sunni. But it seems to me though that the 1001 branches of Protestant Christianity have no common hierarchy either. There are other similarities between Sunnis and early Calvinism. On the other hand, don't the Shia (or at least the main branch of Twelvers) have a type of hierarchy? I realize they do not have a counterpart to the Pope, but couldn't their Grand Ayatollahs be likened to a collegeof Cardinals?
Mike, you could be right about the hierarchy. Someone who is a middle east expert explained the concept of a lack of it to me once and it made sense at the time; now not so much. Certainly, to your point, if we are going to have Sharia, then someone has to be the official word on what the Koran says and means. OTOH, the nuance may lie in that, apparently, Islam teaches that each Muslim can interpret the Koran to mean what he thinks it does and that interpretation is no more or less legitimate than the next guy's - which leaves the door wide open for some nasty outlooks. The more I try to explain, the more I realize that practically it does not seem to be that way. After all, Muslims kill each other over "apostasy" . Forget it. Whatever I thought I knew about this, I have forgotten.
ReplyDeleteno one
to all,
ReplyDeletehere are some questions to ask about the paris atk.
-was their surveillance of the target prior to the atk? it appears so since the shootings dovetailed nicely with the meeting time.this implies active support since the shooters in most T orgs. are different than the scouts. this is an opsec measure for T's.
-were the weapons smuggled in embassy courier bags , or were the simply acquired thru normal criminal sources?
-why were the security police on site doing?why were they nuetralized so easily?
-since no explosiveas were used this implies a low level organization.
these are questions that should be addressed in this episode.
jim
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/female-police-officer-injured-in-shootout-in-southern-paris-9964126.html
ReplyDeleteToday, another Paris LEO gunned down in what appears to be another Muslim act of violence.
Yes, where are the weapons coming from? Just by itself, the presence of assault weapons in a heavily gun controlled country seems to imply organization and planning and is contrary to the lone whacko meme.
no one
I would suggest that we are simply exhibiting a micro version of the scrambling going on in the public forum. Lots of questions immediately rising, but answers are much slower to develop. So folks can play "Fill in the Blanks" with speculation to get immediate gratification, or wait for the investigative bodies to dig it all out.
ReplyDeleteKind of reminds me of a reporter friend in Ft Worth, TX, Rowland, who was awakened at midnight to rush over and cover the famous Cullen Davis murder case. Although he was the city hall reporter, he was closest and most experienced. His editor said they were holding the front page open for him to fill. Thus, he was under pressure to get to the crime scene, learn all he could and then write a major piece, all in a short period of time. Rowland wrote an award winning piece.
Because of the chaos at the crime scene that night, Rowland did something one of his mentors told him about: - a "humility file". The article is placed on the right side of a heavy manilla folder, along qith a Xerox of his noted from the scene, and subsequent material on the left. If a "fact" in the article was proven, over time, to be correct, it would be underlined in green. If it was later proven to be false or inaccurate, it would be underlined in red. Facts missing from the article, but determined to have been available at the time it was written were tabulated on a lined sheet of paper. Thus, he documented the veracity and completeness of his story.
Rowland let me see his "humility file". He did a damn good job of turning his notes into the final article, but there was still almost as much red as green, primarily due to misinformation received from the police on the scene, or fellow reporters sharing inaccurate quotes, but still some red where he speculated, himself. As he put it, "Very fast breaking story, but very slow breaking facts". I knew Rowland well enough to know he wouldn't intentionally fabricate anything, and he did put in a hell of a lot of accurate background material about Davis and the other players, but what happened at the mansion was far too complex to cover with precision in just a couple of hours. And he knew it.. But then, the morning edition of the paper had to go to press with more than "wait and see".