This morning the suspicion that this was organized by the so-called Islamic State crime gang is verified. I saw Muslim and religion bashing all over the idionet, totally predictable, a reprise of the religion bashing during the Charlie Hebdo incident. And in this attack yesterday we can see how helpful that was in preventing another attack. The fact is that by a large percentage, the victims of the so-called Islamic State have been Muslims, with minority religions in that area also being victims of their criminality. While I can't claim any kind of expertise in the teachings of the Quran, I gather from those who do that the actions of the Islamic State can't be justified from what it says. Religious texts, even when they countenance violence generally establish limits within which it is to be used. It is atheism which denies the validity of moral boundaries as anything other than mere conventions, the nihilism which comes with that which says anything goes. I would not be at all surprised if a reading of the Islamic scriptures would show what a reading of those of its sister traditions do, that people acting under the name of Islam are actually practicing that form of anti-Islamic nihilism which is a result of the denial of morality.
We, in the West, are always shocked and horrified when terror is committed on white Europeans especially those living in Europe or North America or in Australia. It seems to be only when it is nineteen or 128 Europeans or any number of Americans killed in a terror campaign that we seem to feel it sufficiently, to feel it as it must be felt to have any kind of decency and a claim to moral authority. But we don't have that authority because our governments, modern, secular, have practiced terror on a vaster scale than even such criminal gangs as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda have the resources to contemplate. The last death toll in Paris I read before starting this said there were about 128 people murdered, outright and about 250 injured, some of whom are not expected to live. You can gain some appreciation for that scale of carnage for the carnage as TV "news" broadcast military porn in the footage of the beginning of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, the direct cause of the rise of the Islamic State. Listen to Wolf Blitzer's excitement as he announces the launching of 3000 Tomahawk Missiles
I wouldn't trust any estimate of how many Iraqi civilians, I would guess many of them opponents of Saddam Hussein's regime, were killed in just that first night of terror, styled by the American media with the name"Shock and Awe". I wouldn't be surprised if they test-marketed that slogan before they used it. And that killing went on for years producing thousands of times more dead, it's still going on, the Islamic State crime group rose out of the wreckage of Iraq. If you hear anyone who claims to find it incomprehensible how the Islamic State thugs could do what they did, remembering and considering this might make it a lot more comprehensible. And this was only one such attack that could be mentioned. It has been going on in the Middle East for decades, centuries of Western attacks against civilian populations as well as armies. The revenge that Ronald Reagan took after the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut which killed that killed 52 people, having the USS New Jersey fire missiles into the hills of Lebanon. If you don't remember that one incident, you can get some feel from this article about the 30th anniversary commemorations of it by the U. S. State Department.
As Secretary of State Kerrey knows well, from his nearly three decades in the US Senate and his four years (2009-2013) as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee the actions of the USS New Jersey itself was arguably terrorism and some experts in the International Law Bureau of the Pentagon have said as much.
This observer lived for more than a year in the Chouf village of Sweifeit, a beautiful place set high above the remains of the US marine barracks, the Beirut airport and the Mediterranean Sea where the USS Jersey and other US Sixth fleet warships are normally positioned when they come calling on Lebanon.
Neighbors still recall what some here call, “the terror days of USS New Jersey” and its shelling with both 26 inch and 19 inch shells, the former weighing up to 2,700 pounds depending how they are loaded and with what explosive mixture. Clearly visible around Sweifeit and dozens of other smaller towns, are the remains of houses and buildings not yet repaired from the intense shelling. Also shown, are indications in the ground at various locations when unexploded shells remain imbedded. One wonders if as part of the ‘special enduring friendship between the United States and Lebanon on a person to person level” that the president spoke of this week, he might order the Pentagon to defuse and removed these huge bombs. If so he would distinguish his administration from that of the occupiers of Palestine who for more than three decades have targeted various parts of Lebanon with American supplied and US taxpayer paid weapons, including literally millions of US made cluster bombs during the 33 day Israeli aggression in 2006.
I can't find an estimate of how many civilians those bombs killed on that one retaliation. I have read that they were so off target that it is certain that they killed many. The reason for that is given in some sources as a choice to remix the powder used to fire them to save money.
Someone should inform the American people, including our supposed educated class, that our government has practiced terrorism at the true world class level around the world. In Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatamala.... And we are hardly the only Western government which has used terrorism as a means of economic and military domination throughout out history. In the aftermath of the successful Haitian revolution against French imperial domination, the great American hero of the French Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson*, began a series of administrations hostile to the Haitian people, including periods of support for dictators who ruled by terror. The George W. Bush administration being the most recent of those administrations who have had a hand in fomenting violence and terror in that one Island.
This post could go on into a long series, documenting the use of terror by secular, modern Western democracies around the world. Our terror has been more effective because of Western science. As other places have that science, their terrorism will become more effective in murdering more people, in many places, such as many countries in Africa, the terror is armed and enabled by Western arms industries. enabled and aided by the governments in which those industries are located. And that's just one aspect of it.
Of course none of this terror is allowed to be discussed realistically, do that and you'll be attacked or, worse, marginalized and ignored. But, remember, we've armed the people who don't forget that terror and they aren't going to be contained anymore. We broke it, we bought it.
* This article from the Official Historian of the State Department is interesting for this passage contrasting the attitudes of the Adams and Jefferson administrations.
The beginning of the Federalist administration of President John Adams signaled a change in policy. Adams was resolutely anti-slavery and felt no need to aid white forces in St. Domingue. He was also concerned that L’Ouverture would choose to pursue a policy of state-supported piracy like that of the Barbary States. Lastly, St. Domingue’s trade had partially rebounded, and Adams wished to preserve trade links with the colony. Consequently, Adams decided to provide aid to L’Ouverture against his British-supported rivals. This situation was complicated by the Quasi-War with France—L’Ouverture continued to insist that St. Domingue was a French colony even as he pursued an independent foreign policy.
Under President Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, the United States cut off aid to L’Ouverture and instead pursued a policy to isolate Haiti, fearing that the Haitian revolution would spread to the United States. These concerns were in fact unfounded, as the fledgling Haitian state was more concerned with its own survival than with exporting revolution. Nevertheless, Jefferson grew even more hostile after L’Ouverture’s successor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, ordered the execution of whites remaining after the Napoleonic attempts to reconquer St. Domingue and reimpose slavery (French defeat led to the Louisiana Purchase.) Jefferson refused to recognize Haitian independence, a policy to which U.S. Federalists also acquiesced. Although France recognized Haitian independence in 1825, Haitians would have to wait until 1862 for the United States to recognize Haiti’s status as a sovereign, independent nation.
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