{"id":203379,"date":"2015-11-25T19:13:28","date_gmt":"2015-11-25T19:13:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/isis-and-washingtons-war-mongers-need-each-other\/"},"modified":"2015-11-25T19:13:28","modified_gmt":"2015-11-25T19:13:28","slug":"isis-and-washingtons-war-mongers-need-each-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/isis-and-washingtons-war-mongers-need-each-other\/","title":{"rendered":"ISIS and Washington\u2019s War Mongers Need Each Other"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"(Photo:<\/p>\n

(Photo: Jordi Bernabeu Farr\u00c3\u00bas | Flickr)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Honestly, I don\u2019t know whether to rant or weep, neither of which are usual impulses for me.\u00a0In the wake of the slaughter in Paris, I have the urge to write one of two sentences here: Paris changed everything; Paris changes nothing.\u00a0Each is, in its own way, undoubtedly true.\u00a0And here\u2019s a third sentence I know to be true: This can\u2019t end well.<\/p>\n

Other than my hometown, New York, Paris is perhaps the city where I\u2019ve felt most at ease. I\u2019ve never been to Baghdad (where Paris-style Islamic State terror events are\u00a0relatively commonplace<\/a>); or Beirut, where they\u00a0just began<\/a>; or Syria\u2019s ravaged Aleppo (thank you, Bashar al-Assad of\u00a0barrel-bomb<\/a>\u00a0terror fame); or Mumbai (which experienced an\u00a0early version<\/a>\u00a0of such a terror attack); or Sana\u2019a, the capital of Yemen, now\u00a0partly destroyed<\/a>\u00a0by the U.S.-backed Saudi air force; or Kabul, where Taliban attacks on\u00a0restaurants<\/a>\u00a0have become the norm; or Turkey\u2019s capital, Ankara, where Islamic State suicide bombers recently\u00a0killed<\/a>\u00a097 demonstrators at a peace rally.\u00a0But I have spent time in Paris.\u00a0And so, as with my own burning, acrid city on September 11, 2001, I find myself particularly repulsed by the barbaric acts of civilian slaughter carried out by\u00a0three<\/a>\u00a0well-trained, well-organized, well-armed suicide teams evidently organized as a first strike force from the hell of the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq.<\/p>\n

The Paris attacks should not, however, be seen primarily as acts of revenge from a distinctly twisted crew, even though one of the murderers\u00a0reportedly shouted<\/a>, \u201cYou killed our brothers in Syria and now we are here.\u201d\u00a0Instead, they were clearly acts of calculated provocation meant to reshape our world in grim ways.\u00a0Worse yet, their effectiveness was pre-guaranteed because, as has been true since 9\/11, the leaders of such terror groups, starting with\u00a0Osama bin Laden<\/a>, have grasped the dynamics of our world, of what makes us tick and especially what provokes us into our own barbarous acts, so much better than our leaders, our militaries, or our national security states have understood them (or, for that matter, themselves).<\/p>\n

Here in a nutshell is what bin Laden grasped before 9\/11: with modest millions of dollars and a relatively small number of followers, he and his movement couldn\u2019t hope to create the world of their fervid dreams.\u00a0If, however, he could lure the planet\u2019s \u201csole superpower\u201d into stepping into his universe, military first, it would change everything and so do his work for him.\u00a0And indeed (see: invasion of Afghanistan, invasion of Iraq), an operation mounted for an\u00a0estimated<\/a>\u00a0$400,000 to $500,000, using 19 dedicated (mostly Saudi) followers armed only with paper cutters, did just that.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s never stopped since because, just as bin Laden dreamed, Washington helped loose al-Qaeda and its successor outfits from the constraints of a more organized, controlled world.\u00a0In these last 14 years of\u00a0failed wars<\/a>\u00a0and conflicts of every sort, American military power, aided and abetted by the Saudis, the British, the French, and other countries on a case-by-case basis, essentially fractured the Greater Middle East.\u00a0It helped create five failed states (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen), worlds in which terror groups could thrive and in the chaos of which they could attract ever more recruits.<\/p>\n

Wiping Out the Gray Zones<\/strong><\/p>\n

Think of the Islamic State and various al-Qaeda crews as having developed (to steal a term from commentator John Feffer) \u201csplinterlands<\/a>\u201d strategies.\u00a0To continue to grow, they need the U.S. and its allies to lend them an eternally destructive hand to further smash the worlds around them. So in response to the Paris attacks, French President Francois Hollande\u2019s statement<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cwe will lead a war which will be pitiless\u201d was just what the terror doctor ordered, as was the growing pressure in Washington for a \u201cbig military response<\/a>\u201d to Paris.\u00a0The first French reprisal air strikes against IS\u2019s Syrian \u201ccapital,\u201d\u00a0Raqqa<\/a>, were indeed launched<\/a>\u00a0within two days.<\/p>\n

All of this is like manna from heaven for the Islamic State, the more \u201cpitiless\u201d the better.\u00a0After all, that group\u2019s goal, as they\u00a0write<\/a>\u00a0in their magazine and online, is \u201cthe extinction of the gray zone\u201d in our world.\u00a0In other words, they\u00a0seek<\/a>\u00a0the sharpening of distinctions everywhere, which means the opening of abysses where complexity and interaction once existed.\u00a0Their dream is to live in a black-and-white world of utter religious and political clarity (and calamity), while engaging in what American pundits like to term a \u201cclash<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>of civilizations<\/a>.\u201d And\u2013what a joy for the Islamic State!\u2013Republican presidential candidates are already responding to the Paris attacks, as Marco Rubio did, by\u00a0calling for<\/a>\u00a0just such \u201ca civilizational conflict with radical Islam.\u201d As he put it, \u201cThis is not a grievance-based conflict. This is a clash of civilizations\u2026 And either they win, or we win.\u201d Jeb Bush similarly\u00a0responded<\/a>: \u201cThis is an organized effort to destroy Western civilization and we need to lead in this regard.\u201d The answer, of course, is \u201cwar<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0Various Republican candidates are also now\u00a0calling for<\/a>\u00a0only accepting Syrian Christians as refugees here.\u00a0You can\u2019t be more black and white than that.<\/p>\n

In the European context and with the destruction of those \u201cgray zones\u201d in mind, the Paris attacks should also be considered the Islamic State\u2019s first foray into the politics of the 2017 French presidential campaign.\u00a0Think of those mass killings as a wholehearted endorsement of the extremist candidate Marine le Pen, whose\u00a0poll numbers<\/a>\u00a0were already on the rise even before the attacks, and her anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant National Front Party.\u00a0She is now, in effect, IS\u2019s chosen candidate, the one most likely to go after gray zones.\u00a0In the process, of course, pressure on France\u2019s large,\u00a0increasingly isolated<\/a>\u00a0Muslim population will only increase.<\/p>\n

Such attacks are guaranteed to put wind in the already billowing sails of far right-wing parties all across Europe. It should, for instance, have come as no surprise that, in the wake of the Paris attacks, Konrad Szymanski, the European affairs minister for Poland\u2019s new far-right government, almost\u00a0instantly declared<\/a>\u00a0his country unlikely to abide by recently negotiated European Union (EU) quotas on accepting refugees from the Greater Middle East.\u00a0And we\u2019re only going to see\u00a0more of this<\/a>\u00a0in the post-Paris world.\u00a0With the assistance of IS and other jihadist groups, the elimination of such gray areas in Europe could, in the end, help crack the EU open, while pushing France\u2019s Muslims into an\u00a0even worse<\/a>\u00a0situation, which would, of course, mean more potential recruits for groups like the Islamic State.<\/p>\n

In other words, from IS\u2019s point of view, the Paris attacks and other acts like them represent a potential horn of plenty.\u00a0Sadly, it\u2019s not the only organization that will reap such benefits\u2013and I\u2019m not just referring to other jihadist outfits either.\u00a0Such acts are, after a fashion, similarly useful in the Western world.\u00a0Think of it as a kind of unspoken bargain between two \u201ccivilizations\u201d from hell.<\/p>\n

Take the United States, a place where, in the years since 9\/11, the\u00a0danger<\/a>\u00a0of being attacked by an Islamic terrorist could be slotted in somewhere between being \u201cshot\u201d by\u00a0your dog<\/a>\u00a0and being shot by a\u00a0toddler<\/a>\u00a0who has found a loaded, unlocked gun in your\u00a0house<\/a>,\u00a0purse,<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0car<\/a>. Among the many perils of American life from\u00a0car crashes<\/a>\u00a0to suicide,\u00a0E. coli illnesses<\/a>\u00a0to floods, injuries from\u00a0crumbling infrastructure<\/a>\u00a0to mass killings by\u00a0non-Islamic lone wolves<\/a>, Islamic terrorism remains at the bottom of the barrel in the company of other frightening but rare events like\u00a0shark attacks<\/a>. Yet the American national security state has essentially been built and funded to protect you from that danger alone.<\/p>\n

Put another way, the officials of that security state have bet the farm on the preeminence of the terrorist \u201cthreat,\u201d which has, not so surprisingly, left them eerily reliant on the Islamic State and other such organizations for the perpetuation of their way of life, their career opportunities, their growing powers, and their relative freedom to infringe on basic rights, as well as for that comfortably all-embracing blanket of secrecy that envelops their activities.\u00a0Note that, as with so many developments in our world which have caught them by\u00a0surprise<\/a>, the officials who run our\u00a0vast surveillance network<\/a>\u00a0and its\u00a0staggering ranks<\/a>\u00a0of intelligence operatives and analysts seemingly\u00a0hadn\u2019t a clue<\/a>\u00a0about the IS plot against Paris (even though intelligence officials in at least one\u00a0other country<\/a>\u00a0evidently did).\u00a0Nonetheless, whether they see actual threats coming or not, they need Paris-style alarms and nightmares, just as they need local \u201cplots,\u201d even ones\u00a0semi-engineered<\/a>\u00a0by FBI informers or created online by\u00a0lone idiots<\/a>, not lone wolves. Otherwise, why would the media keep prattling on about terrorism or presidential candidates keep humming the terror tune, and how, then, would public\u00a0panic levels<\/a>\u00a0remain reasonably high on the subject when so many other dangers are more pressing in American life?<\/p>\n

The relationship between that ever-more powerful\u00a0shadow government<\/a>\u00a0in Washington and the Islamic terrorists of our planet is both mutually reinforcing and unnervingly incestuous.\u00a0Both, of course, emerge as winners when the gray zones begin to disappear.\u00a0When Paris is hit, after all, law enforcement agencies in the U.S. instantly increase their \u201calert levels\u201d; the CIA<\/a>\u00a0director\u00a0pushes back hard<\/a>\u00a0against \u201chand-wringing over intrusive government spying\u201d and the\u00a0minimalist restrictions<\/a>\u00a0on electronic surveillance put in place in recent years; the FBI heightens<\/a>\u00a0\u201cits surveillance of Americans under investigation for apparent ties to the Islamic State\u201d; and, among other things, more police patrols are\u00a0sent out<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0major cities<\/a>, while local law enforcement \u201cvigilance\u201d\u00a0rises<\/a>\u00a0even in places like Niagara Falls, New York.\u00a0In Los Angeles, post-Paris, extra patrols were typically sent \u201cto \u2018critical sites\u2019 and [the city\u2019s police department was] monitoring the ongoing situation, even though it said there were no known threats.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lack of obvious threats is, of course, beside the point when American \u201csafety\u201d is at stake!\u00a0In the meantime, the road toward a more locked-down, secretive, governmentally intrusive, less democratic world is being well paved.<\/p>\n

A Dance of Death<\/strong><\/p>\n

Think of this as a kind of global\u00a0danse macabre<\/em>\u00a0in which ISIS attacks\u2013eight committed guys, some possibly trained in combat in Syria or Iraq, with AK-47s, suicide vests, and rental cars\u2013spread death, chaos, panic, and alarm in our world at next to no cost at all.\u00a0In response, Washington and its allies engage in a big-budget version of the same, including intensified air campaigns which will, of course, end up taking out\u00a0civilian targets<\/a>\u00a0and infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Think of what the U.S. military does when it heads out to destroy those gray zones as the Kobane or Sinjar Strategy. Kobane was a largely Kurdish town on the Turkish border that IS militants\u00a0besieged<\/a>\u00a0and partially took in 2014. They were driven back early this year by the same combination of forces that recently\u00a0retook<\/a>\u00a0the town of Sinjar in northern Iraq: Kurdish fighters and American warplanes.\u00a0By the time both were retaken, American bombs and Islamic State IEDs and booby-trapped houses had insured that those towns would be largely uninhabitable wrecks, littered with corpses and the\u00a0skeletons of buildings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Similarly, plans by the U.S. to\u00a0intensify<\/a>\u00a0the bombing of those Syrian oilfields under the control of the Islamic state (to cut into its supply of funds) reflect a strategy that, whatever its immediate successes, is guaranteed to further wreck the infrastructure of the region.\u00a0This will help ensure that, no matter what happens to the Islamic State, \u201cSyria\u201d or any state structure like it will be no more.\u00a0Such acts of destruction, largely from the air, have been taking place across the Greater Middle East since 2001.\u00a0From Libya to Syria, Iraq to Yemen, the Sinjar Strategy has demonstrably\u00a0done little<\/a>\u00a0to bring success to the U.S. and its allies in their various wars.\u00a0It has, however, helped create a zone of failed and increasingly fragile states.\u00a0It has left uprooted populations leading skeletal lives in haunted lands that are also hunting grounds for extremists of every sort. Consider this the dream world of Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as well as the perfect breeding ground for yet more extreme nightmares of our age. A dance of death indeed.<\/p>\n

As it happens, I\u2019ve barely ranted and not yet wept.\u00a0If anything, on reaching the end of this piece, I find myself depressed.\u00a0The future shouldn\u2019t be so easy to see or so repetitively predictable.\u00a0And it\u2019s a terrible thing to know that, as the gray zones of our planet continue to disappear and wrecked worlds spread, the tempo of that dance of mutual death and destruction stands every chance of speeding up as the \u201cmusic\u201d only grows louder.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This piece was reprinted from Foreign Policy In Focus<\/a> by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Photo: Jordi Bernabeu Farr\u00c3\u00bas | Flickr) Honestly, I don\u2019t know whether to rant or weep, neither of which are usual impulses for me.\u00a0In the wake of the slaughter in Paris, I have the urge to write one of two sentences here: Paris changed everything; Paris changes nothing.\u00a0Each is, in its own way, undoubtedly true.\u00a0And here\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":203380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-203379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}