PARIS

[Becca Mills]

Being a liberal with mostly liberal friends (academic here, so it's natural), my social media has been full of critiques of the comparatively lavish attention given to the French attacks compared to attacks in nations where "no white people died." I do think there's something do that critique. But I think there's also an element of cultural identification: France strikes Americans as being more "like America" than Turkey or Lebanon, so the danger seems less distant, more immediate. And it's more striking when something happens in a nation where the rule of law is strong. I know Lebanon has been fairly quiet for the last few years, but it's nevertheless pretty firmly fixed in my mind as a nation torn apart by civil war and chaos.

WH is certainly right that Islam currently has a dangerous element of radical, violent fundamentalism -- much more so than the other major religions, at this point. But most of the others have also had periods of brutal violence (maybe Buddhism is an exception?). In the case of Christianity, it happened before weapons got nearly as deadly as they are now, but the Spanish Inquisition and the warfare and suppression of minority sects during the Reformation were pretty darned awful. But just as most Christians have always been normal people just wanting to go about their lives, not zealots on the warpath, most Muslims are normal folks who want jobs, decent schools, and safe homes.

I suspect this will be going on for some time. South America seems to be the only immune continent, so far -- there've been multiple strikes in Africa, North America, and Europe, and there was that horrible bombing in Bali a decade or so ago. There was just another in Nigeria today. It is alarming, and it's very hard to know what to do about it. It's not a situation that's given to "solutions," because while these carefully planned, large-scale attacks exact the biggest toll, it really only takes one person to pull off a terror attack, and how can you ever keep there from being one person?

What I'm doing is reminding myself that we're all very unlikely to die from terrorism. If it does happen to one of us, yeah, it'll be horrible for our friends and loved ones. But it'll also be horrible if we die in a car accident (30K deaths/year in the U.S.) or of a hospital-acquired infection (100K deaths/year) or whatever. Having some sense of where risk really lies in our day-to-day lives is important. Even in the worst year ever for U.S. terrorism deaths, ten times as many people died in car accidents. We could greatly reduce traffic deaths if we had a nationwide speed limit of 35 mph, but we willingly trade greatly increased risk for the convenience of shorter travel times. So, we're pretty blase about something that kills tens of thousands a year but out-of-our-minds terrified of something that kills a fraction as many? It's not logical. Trampling on civil liberties and dialing back compassion in response isn't sensible.

[lindymoone]

Nov 18, 2015 1:02:11 GMT -5 Becca Mills said:

Being a liberal with mostly liberal friends (academic here, so it's natural), my social media has been full of critiques of the comparatively lavish attention given to the French attacks compared to attacks in nations where "no white people died." I do think there's something do that critique. But I think there's also an element of cultural identification: France strikes Americans as being more "like America" than Turkey or Lebanon, so the danger seems less distant, more immediate. And it's more striking when something happens in a nation where the rule of law is strong. I know Lebanon has been fairly quiet for the last few years, but it's nevertheless pretty firmly fixed in my mind as a nation torn apart by civil war and chaos.

WH is certainly right that Islam currently has a dangerous element of radical, violent fundamentalism -- much more so than the other major religions, at this point. But most of the others have also had periods of brutal violence (maybe Buddhism is an exception?). In the case of Christianity, it happened before weapons got nearly as deadly as they are now, but the Spanish Inquisition and the warfare and suppression of minority sects during the Reformation were pretty darned awful. But just as most Christians have always been normal people just wanting to go about their lives, not zealots on the warpath, most Muslims are normal folks who want jobs, decent schools, and safe homes.

I suspect this will be going on for some time. South America seems to be the only immune continent, so far -- there've been multiple strikes in Africa, North America, and Europe, and there was that horrible bombing in Bali a decade or so ago. There was just another in Nigeria today. It is alarming, and it's very hard to know what to do about it. It's not a situation that's given to "solutions," because while these carefully planned, large-scale attacks exact the biggest toll, it really only takes one person to pull off a terror attack, and how can you ever keep there from being one person?

What I'm doing is reminding myself that we're all very unlikely to die from terrorism. If it does happen to one of us, yeah, it'll be horrible for our friends and loved ones. But it'll also be horrible if we die in a car accident (30K deaths/year in the U.S.) or of a hospital-acquired infection (100K deaths/year) or whatever. Having some sense of where risk really lies in our day-to-day lives is important. Even in the worst year ever for U.S. terrorism deaths, ten times as many people died in car accidents. We could greatly reduce traffic deaths if we had a nationwide speed limit of 35 mph, but we willingly trade greatly increased risk for the convenience of shorter travel times. So, we're pretty blase about something that kills tens of thousands a year but out-of-our-minds terrified of something that kills a fraction as many? It's not logical. Trampling on civil liberties and dialing back compassion in response isn't sensible.

Very well said. 

[whdean]

Nov 18, 2015 1:02:11 GMT -5 Becca Mills said:

WH is certainly right that Islam currently has a dangerous element of radical, violent fundamentalism -- much more so than the other major religions, at this point. But most of the others have also had periods of brutal violence (maybe Buddhism is an exception?). In the case of Christianity, it happened before weapons got nearly as deadly as they are now, but the Spanish Inquisition and the warfare and suppression of minority sects during the Reformation were pretty darned awful. But just as most Christians have always been normal people just wanting to go about their lives, not zealots on the warpath, most Muslims are normal folks who want jobs, decent schools, and safe homes.

A few things are worth bearing in mind when it comes to “religious” violence. The so-called wars of religion in Europe had to do more with political legitimacy than religious fundamentalism. The religious differences emerged more or less peacefully; it was the political implications of the religious differences that created problems. To simplify a little, majority religions distrusted minority sects because they didn’t necessarily recognize the same political authority (e.g., pope vs. king and Parliament in England). Mutual suspicion would grow until one made a move to protect itself from the other, leading to wars and insurgencies.

What’s interesting is that the elite at the time also recognized that this cycle was at work. So, those in power often tried to impose a “common religion” (e.g., Charles I and II in England) on a political entity to prevent the schisms from happening. You can see that there’s a kind of sense in this. But the elite often lacked the power to bring about such a deep revolution (e.g., in England), so the “peace-making” policy tended to make things even worse.

It’s often said that the solution to all this was, in a word, “modernity” (e.g., religion became less of overt source of political legitimacy and religion became more private). But that covers up the antecedent that made it possible. Again, to simplify a little, the God of Christianity does not nominate agents in this world and order them to bring about his dominion on Earth. He’s says he’ll take care of that and that no one can know for certain who will be (or who has been for Calvinists) chosen for Heaven and Hell. That’s why Christian missionaries went about their business in a peaceful posture, trusting that God’s light would do the work for them. At any rate, this constant in Christianity has had and continues to have a strong moderating effect on violence among Christians and between Christians and others.

(Sure, some people are always on about all the horrible things that were supposedly done “in the name of religion!” But such people espouse, or have been influence by those who espouse, the relatively new religion of progressivism, which is really a secularized version of Christianity. One of the things that marks progressivists from their non-secular co-religionists is their absence of self-awareness. In other words, Christians know theirs is a faith; progressives think of progress and their values as facts—the result of social evolution, something “we’ve all come accept,” and so forth. That’s why progressives tend to be absolutists and why they’re so shrill in their attacks on others—e.g., why the paradox in their intolerant behaviour toward intolerance goes unappreciated by them. Anyway, the point is that this particular counterpoint depends on ideological assumptions or is just plain naïve.)

Now, Islam differs from Christianity in this very important aspect: Muslims are responsible for bringing about God’s plan. True, every subgroup isn’t in favour of taking up the sword, and many of the one’s living in the West appear to have been modernized. But this deeply rooted idea does make Muslim’s more insular and does make them feel more responsible for “taking action” and more sympathetic toward those who do. It’s also why the second-generation children of modernized Western Muslim parents turn radical—it’s one way to get back to one’s roots. A lot of people in the West are uncomfortable with this fact because it feels prejudicial to say it out loud. Besides, “mirror imaging” (projecting our beliefs and feelings on others) is a lot more comforting than entertaining the opposite. But nothing real has ever been willed away. So, in addition to keep baddies from doing things, we'll also have to come up with a solution for preventing "back to rootsers" from turning on us.

[carlos]

History is the lamentable record of unintended consequences--as witness the lengthy article in today's NYT showing that a substantial part of the origins of Daesh/ISIS/ISIL (etc.) can be traced to the military prison in Iraq where the USA provided (I am paraphrasing the former commandant) the inmates with good food, medical and dental care, time for reflection and planning, and protection from being killed in their own sectarian struggles. The suggestion of the article is that we created a nurturing atmosphere for ISIS.

It seems to me it is yet another warning to avoid meddling in matters and cultures we don't understand, and particularly to avoid interventions based on faulty intelligence, ignorant prejudice, or dubious strategic, (oil) considerations.

Without in any way minimizing the events in Paris, from the perspective of the typical civilian, terror is terror. The magnitude of fear created by an attack of religious fanatics on a crowded theater (however awful) is not to be compared with the 'shock and awe' we were so proud of when we undertook to discipline Saddam Hussein.

We don't understand what is happening in the Muslim world--and we probably never will (especially so long as our engagement is limited to the cruising level of Predator Drones.) The people who claim to understand are probably wrong, or have some agenda of their own to sell (e.g., the late Iraqi expert Mr. Chalabi) with unintended consequences of their own to follow.

It is very tempting to 'build a fence around them', to keep them "there" (or at least, out of "here".) A futile hope, I should think, considering that the US has pretty rigorous immigration barriers and a physical wall at its southern border not dissimilar from the Iron Curtain, and yet we have 11 million illegal immigrants.

Neither the legal, nor the physical barriers have succeeded here--and it does not seem likely they will work in Europe.

There is no easy solution--the decisions we make now--regardless of what they are, will have their own unintended consequences to haunt our children and grandchildren. I'm very gloomy, and see no signs that any candidate in either party offers any solutions better than Mr. Obama's policy of 'reluctant and limited engagement.'

Perhaps the optimistic view is that unintended consequences are often no worse than the intended outcome, and on rare occasions, maybe better.