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The West’s Response to Mass Murder: Pretty Lights
On the BBC today I heard an interview with a Belgian member of the EU parliament. (She had the wavery, unearthly voice of the Talosians who imprisoned Captain Pike.) Her prescription for a unified response going forward to deal with the repercussions of the emanating penumbras of the unpleasantness at the airport: coordination. The police services are coordinated now, but they must be coordinated more. Barriers that prevent coordination must be addressed, and uncoordinated situations must be solved, and this can be done with a concerted effort to coordinate. The host was somewhat exasperated, and noted that Belgium had a large population of individuals who had gone to ISIS-land and come back. What about them?
The MP had a ready answer. Why, the EU Parliament had passed strong measures that permitted them to follow these individuals. It permitted the police to look at them.
That was her term. I’m sure she meant “investigate,” but even so, why would this take a special act? Because automatic scrutiny of bad actors might be seen as discriminatory, marginalizing, alienating? The idea of revoking citizenship of anyone who larks off to Syria to join the Bloody-Moon Army seems simple enough. As does incarceration and deportation for any non-citizen who’s even remotely connected to a terrorist attack. Well your honor I knew he was up to something with all the meetings and the wires and the mysterious men who kept dropping by, and after the attack he asked me to hide him and go to the man who had the passports, and yes I did that. But you have to understand —
GAVEL BANG Five years. Next case.
Never happen. I’ve no doubt there are serious hard-cases in European law-enforcement and counter-terrorism who would love to go weapons-free, so to speak, on the threat — and do so without caring whether it abrades the sensibilities of the technocratic stratum whose moral preening over the virtues of the post-national multi-cultural European identity got everyone in this fix. But that’s not enough.
See, here’s the odd thing. ISIS claimed responsibility, right?
Don’t we know where ISIS is? Don’t you think we have a reasonable idea where their C&C HQs are in those cities?
I’m not talking about a cruise missile response, but a MOAB over an ISIS stronghold. It won’t make them stop, but that’s not the point. It would make them pay, which you might consider an adequate short-term response. Next time? Two MOABs, two cities. The collateral damage would be horrific. No doubt it would renew their enthusiasm. So next time they get three.
It’s brutal, yes, but there are precedents set by much-beloved Democratic presidents.
Eventually the point has to sink in: you pay. Even if it doesn’t, there’s less ISIS, which would seem to be a good thing in the long run.
Such responses, however, seem unlikely these days. Outre; too . . . Russian. Would you approve? Would you consider it descending to their level? Or is it best to absorb and mourn, coordinate and look, and be prepared for the next attack. By which I mean: they’d better have the Eiffel Tower programmed for all the European countries’ colors. You’d hate to have 400 people killed in a Swedish airport and not be able to call up the flag-profile file that night. I mean, people would think you didn’t care.
Published in General
Even after the Germans had invaded France by marching through Belgium in WWI, the Belgians still refused to let the French prepare defensive positions against Hitler on Belgian territory. And they held to this position even after Hitler had invaded Poland. I wonder if the Belgians were surprised when Hitler did an end run around the Maginot Line by invading France through Belgium (again!) a few months later.
Honestly, appeasement is in the blood of these people. No matter how obvious the threat, they refuse to respond to it.
I think that’s correct, although I wouldn’t say it’s “in the blood.” I’d say that fearfulness of losing sovereignty has historically caused Belgium to try to play too many sides of the fence, to devastating effect.
If you have the Alps in your country, that strategy might work – Hannibal notwithstanding. If you’re counting on the Ardennes to keep the barbarians from being interested, it’s not going to work.
This just seems like a savvy real estate move. Once the Caliphate is established in Europe,the Jihadis can just move right in to the offices of the EU. They’ll save a bundle on construction costs.
How not to handle an intelligence bonanza.
I was serious about my RTL remark; how is it that we can claim to care about the little lives lost in abortion, insist that our candidate at least say he’s pro-life, deplore anyone who sees abortion as a necessary evil, then defend revenge killings of terrorists’ wives and kids?
I get all the arguments about how many innocent civilians died in WW2, but those innocent lives did weigh upon the national and decently-developed conscience—hence our attempts to develop weapons that don’t cause as much collateral damage.
You’ll just have to harden your heart, Kate.
I do not understand what you mean by RTL.
Right to life, I believe.
Thanks Basil – since she was responding to me, I’ll write up more when I get home.
“The implicit calculation that Trump’s high-minded conservative critics have made (though we doubt any have really thought this through) is that Trump’s occasional exhortations to repay thuggishness in kind are worse—far worse—than what will follow if we assent meekly to the thuggishness of Trump’s enemies. Who are also our enemies—the enemies of the historic American nation and all who pledge allegiance to it.”
Because, when it comes right down to it, the wives and children aren’t the target. The enemy war making capability is. Destroying a city doesn’t mean we don’t warn them – we dropped leaflets even before we dropped Nukes in WW2. Even then, the targets were specific military-industrial targets. Hiroshima – 2nd army HQ and Nagasaki – Mitsubishi plant complexes.
However, the continued indiscriminate targeting of civilians on the part of ISIL may be answered by reprisal (the deliberate commission of a what would otherwise be a war crime – in order to induce the enemy to follow the laws of war.)
Some of the guys at work today were speculating as to when Belgium will invoke NATO article 5 – an attack on one is an attack on all, particularly now that ISIL actually controls territory.
My opinion is that the Belgians are unwilling to – it doesn’t comport with their transnational-cosmopolitan outlook.
I don’t like the idea of committing war crimes as a means of reprisal. The enemy won’t follow the laws of war no matter what we do.
Hypothetically, would you be in favor of this kind of reprisal: taking recently caught terrorists, putting them in orange jumpsuits, and having special forces operatives in black balaclavas cut their heads off while the camera records the whole thing?
No.
I would support a form of reprisal where no quarter is given.
The more that’s reported about this, the more I suspect the Belgians can’t even count to five, no less invoke it.
But they can count to panj, which is what matters when making a home for cuckoo eggs.
That’s farsi, dude.
Dari, to hear me tell it. But you’re correct.