It’s just like old times. Terrorism “experts” fanned out across all networks. Threats of new terror attacks every morning. Television commentators hypothesizing about what might be wrong with Islam that it makes its adherents resort to violence. Oh yeah, so reminiscent of the good old days of late 2001. Except that we are already embroiled in endless wars overseas, so it’s hard to see how we could react the same way as we did back then. Invade them again!
A
mazingly, much of what people talked about on television this week was the fact that the Obama Administration did not send anyone to the enormous march in Paris. All I can say about this is, man, this administration really screws up on the simple stuff. I mean, after going through the time trouble to pass a national health care plan (substandard as it was), they couldn’t manage to build an e-commerce web site, right? You have to wonder …. why couldn’t they just send someone to walk arm and arm with all those great champions of liberty? Hell, Obama could have been dubbed King of the Hypocrites, there with Cameron and Merkel and Netanyahu and reps from Saudi Arabia, Gabon, UAE, Egypt, Russia, and other blatant free speech and human rights abusers. They might have chanted La Marseillaise and praised our shared values as Chelsea Manning rots in the brig and another drone flies in Pakistan or Yemen.
The Paris attack was against a controversial publication, so it can be termed as an assault on free speech. I can’t vehemently criticize Charlie Ebdo because I engage in much the same brand of borderline offensive, often childish humor myself. But there is no question that this publication is not the only motivating factor in these waves of attacks. We get this clearly from the attackers themselves. They were initially motivated, as many of their compatriots were, by America’s war in Iraq. This is blowback, pure and simple. Welcome to the future, my friends. We were warned that we were breeding a new generation of jihadists back in the early 2000s, and now they have come to age.
This is why you don’t go around blowing people up practically at random. It’s like setting your neighbor’s house on fire.
luv u,
jp
