I meant that these conflicts relate back to British imperialism, which drew the state boundaries in the first place.

All the same I'd like to know --

what am I missing? I can certainly see how my own experience with the invasion of Iraq could be clouding my understanding. What are you proposing, precisely, that differs from the U.S.'s reaction to 9/11?

http://m.huffpost.com/ca/entry/8582482

Pretty much sums up my feeling about the whole affair (the embedded movie)

Actually I'd advise people to read is an article in the Washington Post,
which really gives clear picture of just what ISIS is going after with these attacks.

From Washington Post: The Islamic State’s trap for Europe

One quote:

The Islamic State’s strategy is to polarize Western society — to “destroy the grayzone,” as it says in its publications. The group hopes frequent, devastating attacks in its name will provoke overreactions by European governments against innocent Muslims, thereby alienating and radicalizing Muslim communities throughout the continent. The atrocities in Paris are only the most recent instances of this accelerating campaign.

And furthermore:

The strategy is explicit. The Islamic State explained after the January attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine that such attacks “compel the Crusaders to actively destroy the grayzone themselves. . . . Muslims in the West will quickly find themselves between one of two choices, they either apostatize . . . or they [emigrate] to the Islamic State and thereby escape persecution from the Crusader governments and citizens.” The group calculates that a small number of attackers can profoundly shift the way that European society views its 44 million Muslim members and, as a result, the way European Muslims view themselves. Through this provocation, it seeks to set conditions for an apocalyptic war with the West.

The real problem is that this isn't actually told to the public or basically dismissed and a naive picture is given as the reasons, like "they just hate our freedom". It wasn't either told that the real objective of Al Qaeda was to get the US to lash out and revenge the attacks. That was the sole intent for a tiny terrorist group to make the crazy claim that killing Americans is a good thing right from the start. As I said earlier, this has been an objective of other terrorist organizations also, the hope that the authorities will lash out and "show their true face".

Unfortunately I think people won't get it. This point of view will not get noticed. Because it seems that the response is just to woo the public fears with more security and answer their desire for revenge with some military attacks.

Well, I did propose some reaction, e.g. police action. — Benkei

But unfortunately this looks to general public as too lame. So no. Bomb the Middle East. "Take the fight to ISIS". And Sunni states there, those that should be our allies? Either their with us or against us, they choose. Anyway, people don't trust the Saudis, so... Basically oeople want some pictures of ISIS terrorist getting blown up by smartbombs, even if they deny it when asked.

Sometimes, if you want something to stop, you should just ignore it.

My reasons are as follows:

- The reaction France's political establishment shows now is that terrorist attacks work, which might inspire others;
- Although there is an (ideological) link between IS and the attackers, at most IS has guided this by saying "go forth and perform a terrorist attack", leaving decisions to these radicalised youths. The link is, in my view, to tenuous and in any case doesn't deal with the real problem (which in my view is radicalisation here and abroad);
- So far, military intervention has brought us more problems;
- Attacking IS does not solve radicalisation in France (it might even contribute);
- Attacking IS might be useless if recruits will join faster than we can kill them;
- Attacking IS will be useless if we're not committed to boots on the ground;
- Attacking IS will be useless if we don't have a plan for the power vacuum that comes into existence and that doesn't involve imposing Western style and statist institutions in a tribal environment;
- Money is better spent combatting radicalisation in France itself. — Benkei

Again smart things that you say. But unfortunately, the politician Benkei would be really on unpopular politician.

The problem really here is how our own political elite handles the issue. It's the American response, basically, seen to be so effective to galvanize the support (as Bush had), that will be used. You would really have to have a totally different discourse, basically not starting from that "ISIS hates you because you have freedoms", but with "ISIS wants you to hate Muslims".

↪ssu How did you know NicK is from South Dakota?? :-$ — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Your dogs, remember?

So, after all this, do we agree on anything, here?

Is ISIS good, bad, or negligible?
If ISIS is bad, what may, might, can, should, be done?

Most philos don't like bombing. Fine. There is evidence that bombing is, quite paradoxically, not very effective at destroying organizations on the ground. Bombs not big enough? That's a problem we can solve. Philo enthusiasm for boots on the ground (our boots especially) is scant. How about an Arab boot? How would that force come about--and what are the chances?

No boots, no bombing. What's left? Economic sanctions? Perhaps -- but unless IS's transactions can be identified and blocked...

Propaganda? By all means try it. Don't hold your breath of course. Maybe Brussels could pass a resolution urging ISIS to be nice.

Maybe we should have a big conference of everyone in between Casablanca and Karachi and redraw the Great Post-modern Post-Colonial map of the Middle East. I'm sure that would work out just wonderfully.

Assad has to go. Everybody seems to like that idea. And what if he just doesn't? Then what? If he does go, what's going to happen with all of the combatants in the Syrian Civil War? Assad leaves followed by a love feast? I doubt it.

And if we talked the Jews into giving up Israel and having all of North Dakota (it even has oil) or Finland, or Austria, or Ireland, or Manhattan, or Holland and Florida (until they disappear under the Atlantic) would the absence of Israel solve all that many problems?

So, after all this, do we agree on anything, here? — Bitter Crank

Actually I think that we agree in many things... but as "philos" we don't easily understand that as we talking about different things and viewpoints on the matter.

On the above issue (that Benkei and others noted) that bombing ISIS can also be counterproductive (even if bombs actually work too), I would make a slogan: "ISIS wants you to hate Muslims".

So, after all this, do we agree on anything, here?

Is ISIS good, bad, or negligible?
— Bitter Crank

ISIS is bad. But I'll make the same point here as I made with Iraq back in the day when these things were discussed -- so is North Korea. Yet we don't go to war with them just because we believe they are bad. That is a marvelously bad way of making decisions.

If ISIS is bad, what may, might, can, should, be done?

I don't rightly know. But I do know, based off of 9/11, that reactive military action hasn't exactly been very effective in defeating what's bad.

I fear it's too late Moliere: the frog and the bear are off and running to satisfy their thirst for vengeance. Putin murdered hundreds of his own in the notorious apartment bombings so that he could have free rein to kill thousands of Muslims. I don't see anything good coming of this. I was hoping for a much more disciplined approach from NATO.

I would make a slogan: "ISIS wants you to hate Muslims" — ssu

Quite possibly, and we should continually challenge anti-Muslim rhetoric and victimization. But I have another slogan that's consistent with it: "ISIS wants you to think it represents all Muslims". The appeasement of Islamism, the fear of taking sides against Muslim reactionaries, the worry that such a position is "Islamophobic", the idea that a cartoon of the Prophet is an offence to all Muslims that unfailingly triggers their rage or hurts their feelings, and the idea that Islamic fundamentalism is an understandable and predictable if not legitimate form of resistance; these are rife among left-wingers, liberals and political elites, and they are just the other side of the xenophobic coin. Both the right and the left treat Muslims as a monolithic group of essential otherness. In so doing, both take the terrorist bait and read from the ISIS script.

Just want to add too that what unites us on this thread is far more important than what divides us. No doubt all of us would like to see the end of ISIS, and no doubt all of us appreciate the fact that we don't live in the nightmare they have created in the Middle East and the one they want to spread across the world. Sickening stuff keeps happening here and over there and I think that's thrown us all off kilter. I think the most useful approach now would be to put our heads together and ask the difficult question as to what really would work not only to defeat ISIS militarily but to remove the fuel that fires these types of movements (as you're touching on in your second paragraph above). Continuing to bang our heads against each other because of our different political views isn't going to get us very far. — Baden

I don't think this is true. I think the differences in evidence here are exactly what are important, for reasons I've explained in this thread. I cannot "put my head together" with people who think the history of Western imperialism entitles them to say that Western society is not superior to the society that ISIS is building.

Just to repeat, the reason this is important is that there will never be a non-fundamentalist, non-violent, democratic alternative to motivate the young people who are drawn to Islamism unless people in the West stand up and fight for those values.

It is a problem that European liberals are divided roughly along the lines apparent in this thread, and we do need unity, but we can't just pretend these differences don't exist.

I cannot "put my head together" with people who think the history of Western imperialism entitles them to say that Western society is not superior to the society that ISIS is building. — jamalrob

I don't see anyone here claiming that (except maybe discoii). Certainly, Western imperialism undermines attempts to take the high moral ground against ISIS, but that doesn't equate to a claim of moral equivalence nor does it suggest that we aren't far better off living in Western societies.

Just to repeat, the reason this is important is that there will never be a non-fundamentalist, non-violent, democratic alternative to motivate the young people who are drawn to Islamism unless people in the West stand up and fight for those values — jamalrob

I totally agree we need to support enlightenment values but we don't do that by rushing into war and/or supporting or ignoring injustices against Muslims. There was nothing enlightened about the last war in Iraq and there is nothing enlightened about the continuing war in Afghanistan or the treatment of Palestinians by Israel and so on. We stand up for enlightenment values by acting in a way that reflects those values not by fighting militarily those who disagree with us about them (though in this case there are other reasons to fight under debate).

It is a problem that European liberals are divided roughly along the lines apparent in this thread, and we do need unity, but we can't just pretend these differences don't exist. — jamalrob

I don't think the lines are really drawn the way you're drawing them. I agree with a lot of what you said about the need to protect our values, but I also agree with a lot of the analysis of benkei and ssu concerning the difficulties and complexities involved in trying to export them, particularly militarily. So, maybe there are extreme liberals out there who are absolute cultural relativists and think we have no responsibility to do anything anywhere that would interfere with others' ways of life, and would see no way to morally distinguish between ISIS's practices and ours. But what I'm hearing on this thread from most of those opposing your arguments is much more nuanced than that.

Hey guys, look at these superior Western values, surely this would not cause any sort of repercussions in the future. All these right wing groups worldwide, they can only be explained by the fact that they must hate us for our diversity, pluralism, and freedom, and not for incidents like that that have happened daily for the past 400 years. These liberty-loving French, they love liberty so much, they preserve their liberty by exercising their liberty on starving children.

But our democracies are not perfect. All we need for our Western peoples to stand up and fight for their values in foreign lands is to do so without raping children, bombing hospitals, starving entire regions of people through economic terrorism, not drone strike weddings, and generally, getting the fuck out and accepting that fact that the West is no better than ISIS and that people think the West is better simply are subjects of the process of media propaganda bias, like highlighting a beheading, but not these French soldiers' systematic rape of children. That's hard to do though, but I'm sure the Catholic church, a superior religious organization to the ISIS caliphate, would not condone such things.

All I am asking is that we don't pretend that the West is this morally superior place and acknowledge that the only reason it's safe to live in the West with all these free values and the reason that ISIS style places exist is because, the West itself, as in the West localities, are not at war, but the Middle East is war torn. It's easy to take the moral high ground when your people won.

I agree a lot of the things we do are as morally abhorrent as a lot of the things they do. If agent A deliberately targets innocent civilians, it doesn't matter who agent A is. The action is wrong. What you also have to look at too though is the level of systematicity of such atrocities and the checks in balances in society to prevent them. In the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, I think these checks and balances are largely failing and the military have gotten away with way too much. But I don't see ISIS having any such checks and balances in place at all. Has any ISIS combatant ever been tried and convicted for abusing an infidel? I doubt it. And that difference in context can't be ignored.

ISIS is currently in the process of exerting their hegemony. In war time situations, in all societies, whether it be ISIS' or France, they always suspend all these checks and balances. Not to mention: the West rarely ever does anything to their own that commit any of the aforementioned atrocities. This is a fact that I think both of us would agree to. So, where is the actual difference between ISIS and the West, except that one is at war and the other is engaging in pseudo-wars.

For the record: personally, I'd like to see them both go.

If only such well thought out distinctions were employed in actual practice by everyone, then we'd remove "ISIS". Unfortunately, some people in this thread are spouting "Western values" nonsense.

I just want to note that I'm not the one going on about "Western values". This is an interpretation--a revealing one--of my mention of "secular values, freedom for women, reason and the diversity of cultural heritage, democracy, dissent, and religious difference".

@Baden, some good points, though I still think you're missing what's going on here. I'll reply later.

Haven't got much time, but I saw this in the Guardian and thought of you guys. It's mainly a criticism of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party but it's relevant here.

The charge sheet against western policy dating back a generation is easily drafted. It takes moments to weave a tale of counterproductive geopolitical vandalism, starting from US support for the mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan, via the chaos of post-Saddam Iraq, pausing to condemn blind eyes turned and arms sold to Saudi Arabia, whence the theology of infidel-murder pullulates.

But to stop there is lazy. Worse, it takes an effort of analytical obtuseness to make aggressive western governments the initiating agent of all that is sinister, void of good intent or positive consequence, and thus explain jihadism as a symptom, with the CIA and Tony Blair as the virus. As if the Taliban should have been left to rule Afghanistan; as if the insurgency against allied forces in Iraq were a national liberation front akin to anti-colonial movements against the British Empire; as if Isis presented negotiable terms of secular grievance that can be settled at a peace conference; as if the rhetoric against “Zionist-Crusaders”, the genocide of Yazidis and the systematic enslavement of women were all logical extrapolations from a dodgy strategy cooked up in the Pentagon: extreme, yes, but explicable by cross-reference to prior western offences. — Rafael Behr

- It's more of a personal attack on Jeremy Corbyn than the Labour party who have largely turned on their own leader (as Behr makes clear elsewhere in the article). There's a political lockdown in the UK on the idea that ISIS's actions could be in response to anything that the West has done, and Corbyn, true to his principles, has refused to play ball. But the attack is really an attack on a caricature of his position than on the reality of it. There is some middle ground between saying the West is the root of all evil in the world and that they bear no responsibility at all for any reactions to their foreign policy. Behr's confused approach obscures this. He concedes that:

He is right that it is still unclear how British airstrikes in Syria would make a practical difference against terrorism. The memory of Jean Charles de Menezes, mistakenly gunned down by police in 2005, is reason to weigh gravely the implications of authorising a shoot-to-kill policy. Justice would have been better served if Mohammed “Jihadi John” Emwazi had been put on trial. — Rafael Behr

Well, these are the statements that Corbyn is actually being attacked for. This is what he said. Yet Behr complains of:

This undercurrent of moral relativism [contaminating] the valid points in Corbyn’s argument. — Rafael Behr

Somehow Corbyn's right but it's this vague undercurrent of moral relativism that makes him a villain? Well, I'm not buying that. The idea that you can't speak the truth because it might have overtones considered politically inexpedient is not an attitude to be admired. It reminds me of the hysteria after 911 when Bill Maher got fired for saying that the hijackers weren't cowards. Context was ignored. You just can't say that. And now you just can't say that the West bears any responsibility at all for the recent attacks or you are consigned to the loony bin of conspiracy theorists that think the CIA invented jihadism.

So, I would reject the idea that it is the people trying to shut down debate and impose a kind of populist censorship on the issue that are standing up for the values we keep talking about on this thread. They're not. They're simply trying to protect Western interests in a much more mundane and less laudable way.

After writing the above, I came across another article in the Guardian by Mehdi Hasan, one that makes just the point I was making above.

We accept that Russian bombs can provoke a terror backlash. Ours can too.

That there is a link, a connection, between the west’s military interventions in the Middle East and terrorist attacks against the west, that violence begets violence, is “glaringly evident” to anyone with open eyes, if not open minds.

Yet over the past 14 years, too many of us have “decided not to see”. From New York to Madrid to London, any public utterance of the words “foreign” and “policy” in the aftermath of a terrorist attack has evoked paroxysms of outrage from politicians and pundits alike. — Mehdi Hasan

It's worth quoting more of this:

Isn’t it odd, then, that in the case of Russia, western governments have been keen to link Vladimir Putin’s – and only Vladimir Putin’s – foreign policy to terrorist violence? On 1 October the US government and its allies issued a joint statement declaring that the Russian president’s decision to intervene in Syria would “only fuel more extremism and radicalisation”. Yes, you heard them: it’ll “fuel” it.

Moscow’s bombing campaign will “lead to further radicalisation and increased terrorism”, claimed David Cameron on 4 October. Note the words “lead to”... — Mehdi Hasan

This is the same David Cameron who wholeheartedly embraced the following statement directed at him from across the aisle in the House of Commons:

...any attempt, by any organization, somehow to blame the West or France's military intervention is not only wrong, disgraceful, but should be condemned — Emma Reynolds, Labour MP

Is the hypocrisy glaringly obvious enough yet?

This thread has ballooned considerably since my last visit. Many posts are tempting to reply to, but as an adumbration of what I would want to say, I shall merely add here that the resistance to Islamic terrorism is not the cause of Islamic terrorism (or any kind of terrorism). This fallacy, still so rife in these kinds of discussions, needs to die post haste.

chickens and eggs. It's not about who started what but that it doesn't happen "accidentily" like bad weather. Terrorist actions don't happen out of the blue and ignoring the circumstances that attributed (and continue to attribute) to the conditions necessary to give rise to such extremism when they are essentially within our power to change is being stupid.

Stupid in the way that gets people killed.

Certainly, addressing all valid criticisms will not make terrorist attacks go away soon but it will mean a lower probability of them and less recruits for their cause at a very low cost really; practising what we preach.

Sure, what you say is all general enough that I cannot but agree.

I've offered a couple of ideas in this thread.

Some people (not you) think I'm part of the problem. For instance when I point out their "universal" values, Western values, because, you know, that's what they are.

Except for a few of course, the economic, social and cultural human rights were mostly a Russian and communist affair. But don't let history stop anyone here from being righteous.

It kind of pissed me off to be considered the problem to be honest. But that was just professional pride I guess, having graduated in the subject.

Some of my ideas are radical in the sense that I think we should focus solely on the root (radix) problems. I then think in sets of conditions, which conditions give rise to IS and local radicalisation.

I can't banish ideology, I can't kill it. But throughout time violent ideologies, even these particular wahhabist/salafist's ones, existed without having a meaningful following and therefore impact on others. So it's clear idea can exist without causing harm (so far, so obvious).

So factors/conditions for radicalisation we can influence are :

Abstract
1. Western foreign policy (to the extent it is unfair or immoral)
2. Racial inequality / discrimination
3. poverty

Personal/motivational
4. Personal experience (relates to 2 and 3)
5. sense of belonging (relates to 2)
6. Lack of education (not a rule of thumb but sufficiently correlated to take seriously)
7. Above may lead to wanting revenge or status

Ideological
7. violent ideology

We can offer different ideology but unlike jamalrob I don't put stock in repeating what we've been saying for 30 years because the reality is that we're not living up to those promises. And the reality is also, I want people to be angry (I know I am), I just don't want them to kill other people because of it.

So let them rage because there is poverty and they might be poor, there is inequality and they might have been treated unfairly, foreign policy is a mockery of justice. Let them radicalise in this sense, rage and protest against it. So change it. Change it all. It would be about fucking time. (which reminds me, who here went out on the streets to protest Iraq and Afghanistan? Who here has ever done a thing aside from talking about, to try and change the world for the better? I suspect too few...)

That's where, with regards to radicalisation, I think we need to focus our attentions and I cannot seem to factor bombs into it.

Well, that's one of the biggest problems with quietism Benkei: you know damned well we're going to bomb the crap out of ISIS, but you are so opposed that you apparently don't care how it's done. The Americans were following really strict rules of engagement. When they bombed the crude transport trucks they dropped leaflets two hours before they destroyed the trucks. The French have already dispensed with this.

Light-bulbs were invented in a western country too. Does this mean they only operate exclusively in the domain of the west?

P.S: See C.L.R James' 'The Black Jacobins' for an explanation of why the above idea might be bullshit in historical terms.

For instance when I point out their "universal" values, Western values, because, you know, that's what they are. — Benkei

I would say they're both.

But throughout time violent ideologies, even these particular wahhabist/salafist's ones, existed without having a meaningful following and therefore impact on others. — Benkei

Other ideologies whose results are the same existed just as much in the past. They just had different names. Islamic terrorism and militarism is nothing new, despite the names we put on it.

Abstract
1. Western foreign policy (to the extent it is unfair or immoral)
2. Racial inequality / discrimination
3. poverty

Personal/motivational
4. Personal experience (relates to 2 and 3)
5. sense of belonging (relates to 2)
6. Lack of education (not a rule of thumb but sufficiently correlated to take seriously)
7. Above may lead to wanting revenge or status — Benkei

All agreed.

I don't put stock in repeating what we've been saying for 30 years because the reality is that we're not living up to those promises. — Benkei

This is where my suspicion kicks in. We may not live up to the ideals we espouse in the West, which is trivially true, but that doesn't therefore mean we don't live in a safer, freer, and culturally superior region of the world compared to those regions ISIS controls (or any number of other brutal theocratic polities). It's the implication that you are attempting to assert the moral equivalence of the West and Islamic theocracy, merely on account of the former having committed some bad deeds as well, that I take it raises jr's ire, and mine as well.

who here went out on the streets to protest Iraq and Afghanistan? — Benkei

It certainly wouldn't have been me, since I support both wars. But as a single individual, there's very little I can do, or for you to do on the other side, to affect any real change, so it's pointless trying to pin guilt on one for inaction.

if you look carefully you'll notice that the use of light bulbs is more widespread than the believe in these western values. Which is part of the point when I said we shouldn't be enforcing our narrative on other cultures. For instance, African pre-colonial dispute settlement has nothing to do with judges and courts and the introduction of courts to replace traditional settlement is one of the reasons that contribute to a high level of corruption in, for instance, Nigeria (or Niger, I forget).

Of course, we can reply "but that's not really what we meant and you're doing it wrong". Unfortunately already a lot of people around the world are thinking "what the fuck did democracy bring me but poverty and injustice?" and this is not just a few African countries but Asia and South America as well.

In addition, I don't believe in universal values any more. It's quite clearly a luxury only rich countries can afford - and that only in a limited and incomplete fashion.

Having said that, I'm interested in if you could unpack a bit more the counter argument because I get what you're saying that others can adopt these values, I just think we're over estimating such adoption levels.