As the French government launches a major retaliatory bombing campaign against the ISIS-held Syrian city of Raqqa, observers warn that President François Hollande is taking a page from the widely discredited playbook of former American President George W. Bush.
Merciless response. I wonder how many innocent civilians will be murdered for every terrorist killed? There are an estimated 200,000 people in Raqqa, and most are probably innocent civilians.
On a couple of possible related notes.
Wikileaks is about to expose a one Billion dollar corruption scandal that involves the White House. Putin announced at the G20 summit that Isis is being financed by 40 countries, with some being G20 nations.
Yes, bombing and war will solve nothing. It is sad to see the French falling into this trap. It will all end badly and worse. The innocents are the ones left behind, the poor and the marginalized who can’t get out. I worked for 14 years to stop these wars. I am devastated by all of it. Why are we in the West so blind?
Every French leader - Hollande, Sarkozy, mayor of Paris Hidalgo, even the priest leading the mass mourning at Notre Dame - channeled GW Bush: “They hate us for our freedoms. That’s why they attacked where people from all over the free world were enjoying themselves.”
Contrast with the progress the Syrian army, with Russian air support, has accomplished in freeing the area around Aleppo. Without an accompanying ground operation, to actually secure the territory, aerial bombardment is as ineffective as it is inhumane.
I’m convinced ISIS must be rolled back. But the first step in doing that is convincing the Saudis and their Gulf State allies AND the US to stop funding ISIS. Stop sending weapons to them. The arms industry loves this duplicitous game, in effect selling arms to both sides. It’s the civilians caught in the meat grinder.
Dependency on weapons of destruction has been proven throughout history to be an addictive ideology inextricably knotted up in failed ideology that on one hand hides its destructive criminality and dehumanization and on the other holds hostage the peoples subjected to the ideology in the ‘nation states’ from which it sucks life, equilibrium and sustainability. It is the same as calling rape a form of sexuality when it is in fact violent domination.
Life on this planet is a stunningly elegant creation of which human beings are but one part. All of our differences are integral parts of elementary dynamics, while the dominant ideologues pretend and convince themselves that they are gods over ‘that which is not them’. All of the ‘externalized costs’ reflect virtually all that is not them, and the centuries of increasing destruction in a perfect example of precisely what does not work - except for the narcissistic reproduction of the rape. .
Of course France has a knee-jerk bombing response.
Of course civilians are getting killed in it.
It’s unlikely this will be the worst of it.
If France goes after its own Muslim population they’ll be fostering an environment that will produce more terrorists, thus creating a feedback loop of repression/response.
Which is just what ISIS wants.
What do you suppose we’ll call them this time? Bomber Fries?
You’re absolutely correct. Assange continues to carry Putin’s water.
“RT has been called a propaganda outlet for the Russian government and its foreign policy by former Russian officials[15] and by news reporters,including former RT reporters. It has also been accused of spreading disinformation.[20][21][22] The United Kingdom media regulator Ofcom has threatened RT with sanctions because of repeated violations of its rules on impartiality.[23] The network states that it offers a “Russian perspective” on global events.” From Wikipedia re: RT edited for brevity.
Doing Nothing is Not an Option! What Would You Do? What would Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, Some Historical philospohers do/propose? How do you resolve the issue? Someone Once Wrote a Song “Imagine”. But It’s just a song… No figure alive today or historical figure can or ever did stop bad things from happening! Free will, humans do bad things, just as humans do good things… Evolution will ultimately take care of everything…
Yes, Namaste or Climate Change/Global Warming. (take your pick of the terminology.) It always appears to be a simple matter to describe the problem, but the
answer and how to respond is a far more difficult concept.
Attacking the right people is better than attacking the wrong country. Too bad it won’t be that clean, however.
Hate to tell you but RT has better reporting then the rest of the Western Whore Media combined.
The response is a mistake unless the whole thing is a false flag event in which case the “mistake” is precisely the point of the event, and this would mean that we should not call it a mistake, and more generally we should stop buying into the official narrative of the event. I’m not saying that I know the attacks to be an inside job (if they are, this will only be known many years later) , but we must expand our view of.this tragedy sufficiently to allow for this possibility, and hence use language that reflects this caution. In other words, we don’t know if a warlike response is a mistake, or the planned-for aim.
Hate to sound sexist but this chest thumping zero-sum upmanship has characterized the male dominated world for centuries and continues to drag humanity down into a sewer of repetitive violence, competition and toxicity. Perfectly good solutions are set aside because they don’t grant that adrenaline rush associated with giving free rein to testosterone-fueled aggressiveness. Sick of it already.
Actually redravensounds, President Obama, (a term of respect I prefer to use for any and all American presidents) did make a statement. I’ll post the URL as a link, but from my experience as a member here, few would be bothered to read. No it’s not posted on any of the MSM nor even from Wikileaks or from Putin’s tv station. Those who have such disrespect to call the President “Obamer” will appreciate little of what is said even if you should bother to read, but the following is one small statement I found I very much appreciated. Enjoy or not the complete press conference as I suspect you didn’t bother to listen to it and won’t bother to read it now.
“My only interest is to end suffering and to keep the American people safe. And if there’s a good idea out there, then we’re going to do it…But what we do not do, what I do not do, is to take actions either because it is going to work politically or it is going to somehow, in the abstract, make America look tough, or make me look tough.”
Wouldn’t it be BizRate if some people actually listened to Obama and didn’t use some childish name when referring to him?
“Peace is constructed, not fought for.” (Brent Davis)
“Collateral damage” since before the Iraq invasion (Vietnam) is a statistic that has purposefully not been recorded or kept in order to perpetuate ignorance and indifference to the carnage of innocent civilians. Leaving countries in total disarray/chaos and their people destitute/desperate fosters the growth of ISIS/ISIL/Al Qaeda groups who step in to capitalize on the anger and discontent. In spite of not keeping count of innocent lives lost, the results of the destruction from bombs, missiles, drones, etc. are blindingly clear: violence begets violence and the bloodshed is emblazoned across TV and i-phone tablets and screens worldwide.
Let us be realistic.
France has no intention of taking revenge or enforcing justice. It simply means to take control of Raqqa away from ISIS before Syria can do so and so keep Syria out.
Arguably this obliteration of ISIS was the design to be completed once the Syrian Government had been overthrown. The 150 odd now dead in Paris is a price the French Government opportunistically now thinks is reasonable to pay.
Like the rest of the ‘Free West’, France is in deep trouble, for the trouble is within.
Quack
