Light On Dark Water

Food For Thought On the Paris Attacks

When some calamity like this happens, I generally don't remark on it here or on Facebook. Unless I personally know someone affected, it seems like an empty gesture. Does anyone reading this care one way or the other if I express my sympathy for the victims? I doubt it. But of course I have been reading about it and thinking about it. This piece by Richard Fernandez seems especially interesting to me. Is it an accurate description of the situation? Maybe. 

A lot of people are expressing surprise at the attacks. I'm only surprised that there haven't been more such over the past fifteen years or so. Either Western governments have been pretty adept at stopping them, or the jihadists have not really been trying.

Maclin Horton
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14 responses to “Food For Thought On the Paris Attacks”

  1. Art Deco

    Europe’s problems regarding the flash mob mass migration are largely derived from stupid policy, stupid political signaling, and a stupid refusal to make use of force necessary to complete the task. Allowing yourself to be jerked around by feeble and mendicant African governments is just another component of that.
    As for other issues, c’mon. The Madrid train bombings, the London tube bombings, and Lockerbie were all gruesome within a half-an-order of magnitude of this set of attacks. It’s not likely a turning point in history.

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  2. Paul

    As Art says, if anything he seems rather behind the times. The Madrid bombings, the London bombings, the foiling of bomb plots in Belgium and in Scotland, the Paris attacks back in January: this has been on the cards for a decade. Long before the current refugee crisis. The article reads to me as a little like saying the best response to 9/11 would have been a border wall with Mexico. Whatever the dubious merits of such a policy, the two have very little directly to do with one another.
    The African passports issue is an interesting question of international law. Should you be able to bribe a country into letting you decide that whatever undocumented waif you pick up is one of its citizens? I won’t dispute that some sort of vigorous action could make it happen, but I’m not so sure that it would be a good thing.

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  3. Mac

    I took him to be saying that it’s the confluence of the three things that’s significant–the rise and success of ISIS, the refugee/ immigrant crisis, and the attacks, not the latter alone.

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  4. Grumpy in Manhattan

    I think the security services foil a lot of attacks we don’t hear about

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  5. Mac

    I suspect so.

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  6. Marianne

    Maybe in addition to the confluence of those three things happening now, the Paris attack will have more of an effect than what happened in London, for instance, because this time there’s no Blair or Bush to fulfill the villain role.

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  7. Mac

    France just bombed somebody and I haven’t heard any Western objections. But then there weren’t many (I don’t think) objections to Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan.
    “Paris Bombers Sneaked In With Syrian Refugees”–ABC headline just now. This is what Fernandez is talking about: this makes calls European immigration policies, multi-culturalism, etc. into question in an unavoidable way.

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  8. Robert Gotcher

    “when faced with the choice of saving the Left and saving the actual world, the odds are that “the world” goes over the side first.” Clever line.
    Stop the world, I want to get off.
    Or, as Schroeder said, sometimes I think I should put in for a transfer to a new comic strip.
    http://www.mezzacotta.net/garfield/comics/1596.png

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  9. Mac

    The phrase “march of folly” comes to my mind pretty often.

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  10. Paul

    France was already bombing ISIS in Syria. They’ve been more active than most on that front. They’ve stepped it up a bit now though.
    One of the Paris bombers was using a fake Syrian passport. As far as they’ve been identified they were all French and Belgian citizens.

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  11. Art Deco

    Whatever the dubious merits of such a policy, the two have very little directly to do with one another.
    Actually, a substantial pool of people living in your midst from which to draw suicide bombers has everything to do with immigration. Failures of immigration policy and open-borders bushwah is a chronic problem in the U.S. and in Europe. The flash mob migrations would be an acute problem and the responsible party is the hag-Chancellor of Germany more than any other.

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  12. Paul

    It has to do with the immigration of the 1960s and 1970s, and the subsequent failures of integration (“multiculturalism” largely being an excuse to avoid actually making any effort to integrate immigrants). The policies of the past 30 years have been to reduce internal borders while making it harder to get into Europe. None of this has anything to do with current refugees. Those fleeing Syria have been subjected to this kind of violence for the last five years (which is five years less than Islamist attacks have been carried out in major European cities). Even a “post hoc” argument should be based on the actual chronological order of events.

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  13. Art Deco

    Those fleeing Syria
    They are young men from a variety of loci and there are refugee camps adjacent to Syria to house those among them actually from Syria. They are commonly leaving the camps, not violence in Syria. They’d stay put if anyone made it clear they’ll be forcibly turned back if they attempt to get into Europe.
    It has to do with the immigration of the 1960s and 1970s, and the subsequent failures of integration (“multiculturalism” largely being an excuse to avoid actually making any effort to integrate immigrants).
    You mean you fancy immigration from the Near East and North Africa stopped dead in 1979, and that the banlieus would not make for problems if the social workers and school administrators had been allowed to work their magic back in 1970?
    Buy my bridge. There cannot be a more stereotyped system of schooling than that of France; the Arab and Berber populations therein are commonly French-speaking off the boat. The labor market in France is wretched, but that situation erupted ca. 1982 and has persisted since. Was not a feature of economic life therein in 1970.
    People are not playdough in the hands of social workers or vo-tech instructors, or anyone else.
    Euroelites have a mess on their hands and they do not acknowledge that. The popular response is FN in France and the Swedish Democrats.

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  14. Louise

    “A lot of people are expressing surprise at the attacks. I’m only surprised that there haven’t been more such over the past fifteen years or so.”
    I agree with that.

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