Terrorism
Wednesday, 9 December 2015 - 5:59pm
I have to disagree with Ted Rall here:
The Paris attacks are an attempt to sap political support — a better word might be tolerance, because the anti-ISIS war was never ratified by the people of France — for the French government’s participation in the air war against ISIS.
The attacks also serve secondary purposes as propaganda for recruitment — look, emasculated Muslims everywhere, we are fighting back against the infidel crusaders who have tortured and massacred and humiliated us, in their center of power! — as well as to make Westerners ask this very question: why us? ISIS wants France to draw the conclusion that what they are doing in Syria and Iraq is immoral and/or too costly to continue.
The attacks are all about propaganda, but not in either of the ways Ted suggests. Al Quaeda, and now ISIS, have never given two hoots about the West. New York, London, Madrid, Bali, Paris, are all just means to an end. They may well see these mass killings as just restribution, but that is an incidental matter. ISIS certainly do not want to be seen as victorious, nor do they want the Western atrocities to stop. They want to provoke ever-greater barbarity from the West upon defenseless populations, because it is that which is the ultimate recruitment tool in the part of the world they do care about.
Another question often asked is "where did they come from?" Not, as supposed by racists, from a weak-willed people unusually succeptible to "radicalisation". ISIS came from the same place as the Khmer Rouge; out of the rubble and into the power vaccuum created by Western bombs.