In our fast 24
hour society, if a problem appears we demand an immediate response and an
action to sort the problem out. The
obvious problem is that being seen to do something is not the same as sorting
the problem in the first place.
This set of
circumstances I think first appeared 25 years ago when a spate of dog attacks
on small children led to the Dangerous Dogs Act – a byword for rushing into
actions which did more harm than good.
It is this Something must be done-ism which came to mind in the
aftermath of Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris.
Dear @David_Cameron:
Blanket bomb ISIS until they beg us to stop. Then blanket bomb ISIS more until there is no one left alive to beg.
— MDW (@mdwsyd) November 13, 2015
I wasn’t aware of
events until everything had happened. I
then made the cardinal error of checking twitter and saw several tweets calling
for direct action against the organisation we will call Daesh. One in particular asked Cameron to
carpet-bomb Daesh beyond the point of surrender. The voices calling for direct military action
against Daesh looked vocal and intolerant to opposing views (like the tweet above). Kinda like Daesh themselves.
What escaped all
of the people advocating the bombing of Daesh areas is that bombing of the
Middle East has been done on and off since September 11th 2001 with not a great
deal of success. Afghanistan has fallen
back into the arms of the Taliban, Pakistan has essentially become a no go area
for westerners, Iraq became the vacuum that firstly Al Quaida and then the
Wahabists of Daesh desired to set up a sort of homeland. Libya has descended into lawlessness. It’s not a good record of intervention, is
it?
What will make
things worse and increase the likelihood of more Paris style attacks will be
the apparent desire to make our retribution a highly visible one. The Middle East and sub-continent are not
pro-Western areas at the best of times.
At moments like now, they’d be suspicious of reprisals, which might lead
to a rise in support for Daesh. However
you look at it, bombing Iraq & Syrian areas under the jackboot of Daesh is
not an option.
That’s not to say
there are not things that can be done.
For starters the west should really start to look at their own role
here. They allowed the spread of the
Wahabist sect of Islam to spread unchecked throughout the Islamic world from
it’s home in Saudi Arabia. Indeed the
seeds of this can be traced to the migration of ‘freedom fighters’ from Saudi
Arabia, including one Osama Bin Laden, to take part in the Afghanistan War in
the 1980’s. Tackling Saudi’s Wahabist
tendencies is a vital first step.
We should also
try and help and assist Iraq, Syria and the Kurds in driving out Daesh but in a
resolutely non visible way – unless officially asked to. This means any available background or
supporting roles we can do we should be doing.
Anything that does not act as a call to arms against the west.
This is an issue
that cannot be solved by a golden bullet.
Although there are parallels with the Second World War – Daesh’s values
are remarkably similar to the National Socialists values in terms of their
vicious intolerance to any dissenters or anything not complying to their values
– this cannot be seen as a direct comparison due to the West’s standing in the
Middle East. This situation calls for
intelligence and smart tactics to defeat Daesh, not the blundering in advocated
by right wingers the world over.
Something must be done, but not that.
No comments:
Post a Comment