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Pakistani attorney and author Rafia Zakaria wrote an op-ed in Al Jazeera America about the Islamic extremists' war on fun, including sports, music, even dining in a fine restaurant. Zakaria points out that this apparent obsession predates the existence of ISIS by several decades (at least); he suspects this is a big reason why the attackers chose Paris, renowned worldwide for its brilliant culture and joie de vivre.
Terrorism’s targeting of the merry is universal and indiscriminate, a division of the world between those who wish to live and laugh and hope and those who kill and destroy. The latter are deadly and relentless, and they have already squeezed out the mirth from too many of the world’s cities, from Karachi, Kabul and Baghdad to Nairobi and Beirut.
Zakaria experienced this aspect of terror firsthand. A high school friend had just passed a big exam, and was out celebrating with his family at a restaurant in Karachi, Pakistan, when terrorists struck.
Al Jazeera America provides a separate analysis warning that military action alone cannot defeat ISIS (aka ISIL), which of course is not a "nation" in the traditional sense, but more of a guerilla outfit like Al Qaeda, that opportunistically seized a stronghold in chaotic regions of Syria and Iraq. The piece's author, political scientist Rami G. Khouri, recommends that both the West and Muslim nations of the Middle East spend more resources on addressing economic and political problems facing impoverished youths who are potentially attracted by the ISIS' recruiting pitch:
If the underlying threats to ordinary citizens’ lives in autocratic Arab-Islamic societies remain unaddressed — from jobs, water and health insurance, to free elections, a credible justice system and corruption — the flow of recruits to movements like ISIL or something even worse will persist and even accelerate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2015, @12:42AM
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"It actually matters why someone dies, why they were killed, and how you react to it afterward."
OK let's consider the USA drone killings, the same ones that killed more than 100 civilians in a single month in Pakistan. Let's consider all of the drone strikes in countries where USA is not officially at war, although it's not like USA can make a humanitarian argument for invading any of the countries it invaded lately. All of these killings are extrajudicial, and some of them are clearly war crimes. As we have long suspected, and now know for sure thanks to the leaks, the targets are based on rumors, the effectiveness is around 10%, and some 90% of the causalities are civilian. (By the way, here's how you count civilian deaths when you bomb a wedding, a hospital, or any civilian compound based on a rumor: everyone who is not positively identified as a combatant is a civilian. The US army counts the other way, which tells you how much they care.) All of this is known to the US strategists, so we can safely conclude that the program's main intention is to terrorize the population: to scare the civilians away from the Islamic militants. You seem to have a hard time catching on, but so much is clear to the people under the drones, at least: the USA drone program is the largest, meanest, deadliest, and the most shameless terrorist action on the face of the planet today. I would even go as far as to call it cowardly, which is hardly a fitting term for terrorists who are suicidal bombers, but is pretty apt for the people who use remote-controlled drones.
"Civilians being killed is an accident. We work hard, but imperfectly, to minimize occurrences. When it happens, we consider it a failure. We don't celebrate it. All of this says something about us."
You are woefully misinformed, up to and including the celebration. Many of the ordinary US residents do in fact celebrate the bombings, and they vote accordingly. As for the soldiers on the ground, the strategic command, and the drone pilots, it's pretty much exactly the opposite of what you claim. They view all Arabs as subhuman and shoot them just as readily as Israeli soldiers shoot unarmed Palestinians, that is, like rabid dogs, and with just as much consequence. There are exceptions, of course, such as PFC Manning, and we all know how well they fare within the system.
"It's also worth asking what each group would do if they had complete power to force the other to live as they want. How would USA shape the Mid East?"
Judging by their current actions, USA would nuke it and take the land. They are basically trying to get as close to that goal as they can with conventional weapons. Everything USA and its allies have done so far only served to destabilize the region, but the course is still the same. The strategy must be to drown the region in war until the civil society ceases to exist: no more laws, no more infrastructure, no more schools or hospitals or doctors or teachers, or any kind of educated people. And once there's no one left but a few partisans, the land will be declared empty, just like Australia and Americas were declared empty not so long ago, and then the "civilized" people can draw the new borders and move in.
I don't believe this strategy will work, as the unintended and unpredictable consequences are already turning out to be much much worse than imagined, but it looks like USA and its allies are going to stay the course for a while longer, so it will get a lot worse before it gets better. The ocean may not protect the USA for much longer.
~Anonymous 0x9932FE2729B1D963
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