NOVEMBER 16,
2015
COUNTERPUNCH.ORG
Paris.
The
chaos is spreading from the Middle East into Europe. An endless stream of
unidentifiable refugees and migrants trudge through the Balkans toward the
promised lands of Germany and Sweden. Fights are breaking out in refugee camps
between national groups. Both the migrants massed near Calais trying vainly to
enter Britain and the exasperated citizens of Calais are increasingly impatient
and angry. National leaders who, with the vision of happy European integration
on their minds, embraced and advocated the ideals of open borders and
multiculturalism, are rudely awakening to their inability to cope. And
now Paris has suffered the sort of attacks that are familiar to Beirut or to
Russia.
Yes, as Chris Floyd wrote, the West is reaping
the whirlwind of its support for extremist violence. But it is not time
to tell the victims that they are to blame, especially when the main targets in
Paris were young people relaxing on a Friday evening, too young to bear
responsibility for the disastrous Western policies that have fostered madness
in the Middle East for several decades.
The targeted assassination last January of staff members of Charlie
Hebdo led to the slogan of solidarity, “We are all Charlie”. That
slogan has become unpleasantly true: yes, we are all Charlie now. Anyone who,
say, was enjoying a nice low priced meal in a modest Cambodian restaurant in
the unpretentious 10th arrondissement could have been gunned
down in cold blood, just like that. The killers did not go after symbols
of power, they went after anybody and everybody. Their rampage targeted a
neighborhood without tourist attractions, just ordinary café terraces known to
be popular with young Parisians. It had to have been chosen by people who knew
the terrain.
The
big question is: what next? Will this fear cause people to wake up to reality
and think clearly?
President
François Hollande rapidly came on television obviously moved and trying his
best to live up to the situation. But he just doesn’t have it in him.
By stressing that now we are “at war”, President Hollande seemed to be
mimicking the US reaction to 9/11. But at war with whom exactly?
France has been a foremost supporter of the “Assad must go” line. Does France
need to change wars? Should it, could it, possibly change foreign
policies?
President
Obama went on television with statements of solidarity while the attacks were
still going on. These statements were naturally played up by media
wishing to use these attacks to secure and strengthen current U.S. domination
of French foreign policy.
Israeli
condolences were quickly used by the usual commentators to stress that Israel
understands us and stands by us, because Israel is a perpetual victim of such
terror attacks, these days with “knife attacks…”
No,
the attacks by desperate Palestinians are not the same as the gratuitous
murders in Paris. That claim is familiar: because of 9/11, and now
because of November 13, we are all in the same boat with Israel, fighting the
same enemy. But which enemy, after all? The enemy of Israel is Hezbollah,
which just suffered a devastating attack in Beirut from the same sort of people
who massacred Parisians. The enemy of Israel is Iran, which is fighting
Daech. Who is our enemy after all, and who is our friend?
More
and more people can be heard daring to say: French media are totally Zionized.
The Israeli influence on the media is probably stronger in France than
anywhere on earth – perhaps even than in Israel, where there is a critical
newspaper, Haaretz, which says things no French newspaper would dare to say.
None
of the media commentators observed that the Paris attacks resemble most closely
the terrorist attacks that have been experienced by Russia. Where was
their sympathy for the victims of the Sinai air crash? Or the children
murdered in Beslan in 2006? In Moscow, sympathetic Russians brought
flowers to the French embassy, unreported by French media.
The
media are stuck with their story of the big bad Putin and the big bad Assad.
They are not easily willing to switch narratives and admit they got it all
backwards. But events may force recognition of reality.
The
big question is, how will France react?
Especially
in the United States, it is quickly assumed that French authorities will react
as hysterically and belligerently as their U.S. counterparts after 9/11,
exploiting the horrendous events to throttle civil liberties and launch foreign
wars. But there are reasons to hope that in France, cooler heads may
prevail. The emotional reaction to the tragic fate of the victims is no
different. But emotion need not prevent people from thinking clearly,
even though it often does. One can mourn and still use reason.
There
will be a domestic reaction and a foreign policy reaction, closely related.
The Domestic Reaction
The
first official reaction, Hollande’s declaration that “we are at war”, accompanied
by ordering the Army to patrol the streets of Paris, is not particularly
promising. Soldiers in the streets are evidently intended largely to
reassure the public (although not everyone feels reassured in the presence of
all those firearms), but they can neither prevent suicide attacks nor get to
the heart of the problem. It is likely that anyone unfortunate enough to
“look like” what police think a terrorist looks like will find himself stopped
in the street or the train station and asked to show papers. This may be
unpleasant but it is not tragic if it stops there.
A bit
worse is a demand being voiced to loosen the tight limits on policemen’s use of
firearms. In France, it is legally impossible for police to get away with
murder as they do in the United States, and it is ardently to be hoped that
things stay that way.
In the population, one predictable reaction is that anti-Muslim or even
anti-Arab hostility may take the form of attacks on mosques or even on
individuals. But apprehension of that reaction, and measures to forestall
it, are even more widespread. Contrary to the impression often given by
reports in US media, persons of Arab descent or Muslim persuasion are not all
stuck in miserable suburban ghettos. They are part of French
society, and they were among the victims of the November 13 murders. For
all their faults, French media will join with French schools in efforts to
prevent Islamophobia from rising dangerously. It is obvious that
mistreatment of Muslims would be the best possible gift to the extremists. As a
practical matter, French investigators will need the help of the loyal Muslim
population to help thwart terrorist attacks.
This
latter task is indispensable. It requires the attempt to understand what is
behind the phenomenon – which does not mean finding excuses for it. A
certain leftist tendency to sympathize with every possible rebellion,
regardless of its motivation or results, to see it as a justified reaction to
oppression, is an unfounded, sentimental assumption that is going out of style.
Even
if the Paris terrorists were as downtrodden as is claimed (which is
questionable), there are many ways to react to inferior social status other
than indiscriminate random massacres. Afro-Americans can bear witness to
that, and their oppression has been incomparably worse than the (illegal)
discrimination suffered by French Muslims. Unemployment, resulting
in large part from economic policies imposed by the European Union, is
affecting the entire youthful population, but especially persons with poor
education and no connections. The absence of decent work opportunities
inevitably increases petty crime, and many of the eventual Islamic extremists
were converted in prison. These are social ills that need to be addressed
by a radical return to the social policies that are being systematically
eliminated by the current “Socialist” government.
Even
so, comparison with many other periods of hard times should make it clear that
outbursts of fanatic Islamist violence cannot simply be attributed to economic
factors. The fundamental source of the murderous rage exhibited on November 13
is to be found in the Middle East. Daech, or Islamic State, or whatever you
call it, acts as a beacon to young men, many of whom had already crossed the
line into criminal activity, who need a justification for their lives and a
channel for their feelings. The justification is provided by images of
people with whom they can identify: Palestinians in Gaza, families wiped out
during wedding festivities by U.S. bombs, the humiliation of whole countries by
arrogant Westerners. Joining the Jihad against “the Western Crusaders” to
establish a new “Caliphate” has a grandiose ring that appeals to both the best
and the worst in certain susceptible individuals.
Those
who have been branded as criminals and served prison sentences can feel
redeemed by the illusion of ascribing to some transcendent virtue. Just
as Allah’s paradise sounds appealing, contemporary Western society – based on
its commercial self-representation rather than on its reality, which these
people scarcely know – can appear to be a cesspool of sin. The ideology of
these Jihadists is a fanatic puritanism: they could coldly assassinate young
people on café terraces or in a theatre because they had adopted an ideology
that saw them merely as “sinners” against their almighty Allah.
This illusion is far from being restricted to the margins of French
society. France, with its tradition of secularism and enlightenment, should be
well equipped to combat this madness with reason and argument. Instead,
the recent trend has been to adopt the American habit of “not arguing about
religion”, not even in the classroom when Muslim students reject evolution as
contrary to the Koran. True, France is noted for efforts to restrict
certain Muslim customs, but leaves the ideas alone. The ideal of
multiculturalism has become the enemy of reason. It is forgotten that
disputing an individual’s ideas is not a personal attack. Intellectual
relativism, intended to foster brotherly love, leaves the door open to
fanaticism. Some things are true and some things are false, and the
postmodern notion that each individual has “her own truth” means that in the
end, not reason but force must prevail.
But
again, the source of the murderous ideology behind the terrorist attacks lies
in the Middle East and the dramas that have shaken the region for decades.
The International Reaction
The
course of France’s reaction to November 13 in terms of foreign policy is
uncertain. Despite the momentary show of “national unity”, sharp
divisions within the political elite are already visible.
President
Hollande is a prime example of a current European leadership which has long
since abandoned any effort at realistic strategic thinking, wrapped up as it is
in budgetary woes and the obsession with “building Europe”, that is, the
European Union. International issues have been left to the Great Protector
(Remember D-Day!), the United States, who is expected to save us from whatever
chaos it creates. Now is time to wake up.
The
situation is complicated, but not at all impossible to understand, even though
it makes no sense.
The
chaos began in two places: Israeli conquest of Palestine, and U.S. exploitation
of Islamic fanatics in Afghanistan to undermine the Soviet Union. In
order to combat Arab nationalism, considered its primary regional enemy, Israel
was ready to welcome the growth of political Islam as a force to undermine the
Arab nationalist, modernizing States of Iraq and Syria and, in its own way,
Libya. The United States duly undertook the destruction of these states,
using “humanitarian” pretexts, urged on by Israel’s ardent supporters in the U.S.
policy establishment, who sold government on media on the notion that Israel’s
enemies were the enemies of the United States. The Israeli role in these
disasters is clear as day to just about everybody outside the United States
itself. By being exploited for U.S. or Israeli purposes, latent extremist
tendencies were encouraged by victories, grew strong, and came to represent, in
the eyes of many, the appropriate way to reject Western domination.
To
make matters worse, Saudi Arabia joined in the fray, using its vast money
surplus to build mosques and spread Wahhabi ideas from the Balkans to Nigeria.
Saudi money supports various Sunni fanatic with the purpose of eliminating
Shi’ite Islam and weakening its rival, Iran. Since Israel also sees Iran
as a major regional enemy, Saudi Arabia and Israel have become de facto
regional allies, both with the support of the United States.
France
is bound to Israel by the “bad conscience” fostered and promoted by media,
personalities and politicians under influence of such organizations as the CRIF
(Representative Council of French Jewish organizations). It is bound to
Saudi Arabia not only by oil but even more by the Saudi market for French
military hardware.
To
make a long story short, this screwed up system of alliances between opposites
has led to a situation where “the West”, meaning the U.S., Britain and France,
are at war against both sides of the conflict in Syria. They are at
least pretending to bomb the Islamic fanatics intend on destroying the Syrian
State. At the same time, they have themselves been trying to destroy the
Syrian State by proclaiming that “Assad must go”. They seem to imply that
if Assad goes, Syria will still be there. But in reality, Assad is above
all the symbol and the unifying element in that Syrian State, whose army has
kept fighting foreign-backed forces for four years despite heavy losses, and
which still carries out its government functions. Assad commands the
respect and adherence of the Army and of the majority of the citizens remaining
in what is left of that beleaguered country. The war in Syria is simply
the latest in a series of wars eliminating enemies of Israel and of Saudi
Arabia, thanks to U.S. support.. Calling for Assad to “go” means calling for
Syria to fall into pieces.
And
who would pick up the pieces?
The
country’s three hostile neighbors, of course: Turkey would take the North,
Israel would take the Golan Heights (permanently) and perhaps more, while
Saudia Arabia’s client fanatics would try to hand on to the rest, as conflict
continues in Yemen and elsewhere.
Only
Russia is acting clearly and rationally. It has intervened, legally, on the
request of the Syrian government. Russia is trying to save an existing
state and block the further expansion of the Islamic fanatics, who are a known
threat to Russia itself.
U.S.
and Israeli leaders are hastening to envelop France in a “solidarity” intended
to prevent the shocked country from escaping the embrace of its destructive
alliance. But sometimes a catastrophe can signal a turning point.
So
what next? France is already at war in Syria, but which war? After
calling on President Hollande to show “national unity”, former President
Nicolas Sarkozy called for alliance with Russia against Daech. “There
cannot be two coalitions in Syria”, he said. Like Marine LePen, Sarkozy
had already visited Moscow and called for better relations with Vladimir
Poutine. What this would mean for relations with NATO and the United
States is unclear at this moment.
The
European Union is also shaken by the spread of chaos from the Middle East. The
Paris terrorist attacks are certain to dampen whatever enthusiasm there was
about taking in masses of unidentified migrants from the Middle East.
Like Hungary and Austria, France has now closed its borders. Schengen
(the EU agreement on borders) is kaput. What to do about the refugees is a
question without any good answer.
The
French left, in its present form, is on its deathbed. Too much
doctrinaire reliance on the EU and the euro, too much betrayal of the working
class, too much pro-Israel influence, too much obedience to Washington, too
much empty incantations about “multiculturalism”, too much censorship of debate
and silencing of controversy, too much self-satisfaction in its own virtue.
The
arrogance and dishonesty of the left is moving France inevitably to the right.
But attention: the French right is still far to the left of the U.S. right, and
even to much of the U.S. left in many key respects. Americans concerned with
world peace should withhold their judgment of a country finally on the verge of
challenging its foreign policy “made in USA”.
