A business executive is not more credible than an MI6 body…
and I am no fan of HuffPo.
The failure of a follow through / coherent Iraq policy across 2 administrations is the recent catalyst. Also, remember, the American electorate voted for a candidate who ran on a platform of leaving Iraq ASAP.
edit: the people that were supposed to do so, were raising the flags about ISIL (and predecessor organization) potential long before they were in the newspaper. The ones who get paid salaries by the taxpayers to tell policymakers what is happening in the world.
Not merely disgruntled and unemployed…but disgruntled and unemployed mid-level and senior-level military officers with decades of military and organizational experience. While not a match to the overwhelming power and training of the US armed forces, they were able to fight Iran to a bloody stalemate in an 8 year war in the '80s and were much more of a match for the post-Saddam Iraqi army.
Especially considering how despite the best efforts of the US military to provide training and top-of-the-line equipment to the post-Saddam Iraqi Army, most of their major defeats including the capitulation at Mosul and more recently, the capitulation at Ramadi were mainly due to senior Iraqi commanders* either fleeing without a fight or inexplicably ordering a withdrawal despite having far greater superiority in manpower and weapons.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27838435
Not only did this highlight the disturbing lack of effectiveness of the new post-Saddam Iraqi Army, the quick capitulation also caused a sizable chunk of military equipment and weapons provided by the US to fall into ISIS’ hands which further enhanced their military and terrorist capabilities.
- Many reports have cited the gutting of the command structure by the PM and his senior ministers by emphasizing the consideration of political and religious/ethnic identity** over military proficiency.
** Another issue which led many of the mid/senior level military officers from the Iraqi army of Saddam Hussein’s era as he and those military officers were mostly Sunni Muslims whereas the majority of the Iraqi populace and the post-Saddam government are dominated by the Shiite Muslim.
After Saddam Hussein’s fall and with it, the collapse of Sunni minority political and military leadership dominance over Iraqi society, the formerly privileged Sunni minority…especially those formerly employed as officers in Saddam’s army found there was no place or gainful employment for them in the post-Saddam social order.
Despite the fact Saddam’s government and most military officers were only nominally religious and their political/ideological leanings in practice were far closer to the secular Arab nationalistic Nasserite movement, the seething resentment borne partially of entitlement and partially from exclusion caused them to go over to the ISIS movement and quickly dominate the leadership and organizing of their military and intelligence apparatuses.
Ironically, the embattled Syrian government which has been reeling under Isis’ attacks organized and led by former military officers of Saddam’s army and intelligence apparatuses were at one time political kin of Saddam Hussein and his senior/mid-level military officers as both regimes are/were respectively dominated by the Baath party.
Several arrests that are made AFTER this horror make me wonder, why AFTER and not BEFORE? The only answer I have: nations do not want to keep their citizens safe, they rather keep the enemy safe.
Wow! What a senseless statement. Are you following the news or merely offering cheap sound bites?
The police forces are following trails of evidence in a very complex affair. Are you suggesting the local polices in Brussels and Paris start rounding up hundreds of Muslims based on suspicion only?
Since the attacks on the airport, they have picked up a number of terrorists, including one earlier today. I am afraid that people who are making statements like the one above fail to understand the size of the Muslim population of Brussels and especially in the communes where they represent the majority.
While some of the perpetrators were hardened criminals, several lived in total obscurity and enjoyed the protection given to citizens.
Police work is far from perfect and the rise of this type of senseless and coward attacks requires massive changes in technology and budgets.
Who compared the Patriot Act to Nazism? The reference to Ariet Macht Frei was meant to point out that it’s not new that government changes the meaning of words to accomplish dubious goals and to placate people. Not hard to grasp if one takes the time.
Arbeit Macht Frei has a sinister history from its use in the 1933 round ups of masses to its signage of concentrations camps. In a way, it might be emblematic to discussions about how to deal with radicals hiding in a mostly peaceful community of innocents.
Yes, that completely makes sense. Isn’t it the mission of every nation to destroy its own people and preserve its enemies? :-S
Out here in the reality-based community, one problem is that there are so many people being watched who haven’t quite done anything illegal. It’s so much easier to connect dots after the fact. The same thing happened in the US regarding 9/11. With the benefit of hindsight, it was clear to see how the plot formed, and how easy it would have been to stop it at many points along the way.
Another huge problem is intelligence agencies not sharing information, and that quickly needs to be changed. That was also a problem in the US before 9/11. Various intelligence and law enforcement agencies simply didn’t talk to each other, and it was easy for the terrorists to take advantage of stupid turf battles and inefficiencies.
Update & security implications of the flight attendant at LAX w the 70 lbs of cocaine
6 suspects have been arrested.
Note also that mass surveillance can include so many targets that are false alarms that those plotting actual attacks get lost in the noise. Think of needles in haystacks, or where the Ark of the Covenant was being stored at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Good point, ucb. Right after 9/11, I remember some official saying that the good guys have to be right – detect and thwart plots – 100% of the time. The bad guys only have to be right once.
It is never going to be possible to stop every single attack. Maybe it’s time to start looking at root causes.
@LakeWashington
There is all kinds of rhetoric out there comparing the Patriot Act to the kind of police state Nazi Germany was, and I think that was what @soccerguy was talking about in his post, that I was responding to with my own. Comparing the Patriot Act to Nazi germany is both idiotic and offensive, because there is no comparison. My point, however, was that the Patriot Act has big problems with it that just because some use idiotic rhetoric against it, doesn’t mean it isn’t a threat. The law and order conservatives from the get go with the Patriot Act have tried to allow the kind of meta data gathering the NSA and others were doing to be used for routine law enforcement, the same type of people who think Miranda and other rulings on the rights of people being arrested is a hindrance to law enforcement, they were gathering information from cell phones and internet traffic that with the right analysis can tell who someone is and what they are doing…and apparently they were doing this with no oversight, law enforcement simply was contacting the NSA to ask for the data, wasn’t like the cops got a warrant to be able to get the data.
I have heard all the arguments, that this is meta data, that there isn’t any indentifying information in it, it won’t affect ordinary people, that they are looking for specific things, but that is true (hopefully) of the terrorist angle, but we aren’t talking that…and if that data was so anonymous, think about it, it would be useless for terrorism as well…but the reality is that there are very, very powerful methods to analyze meta data like this and find the granules, I work with people who quite frankly are off on their own planet, experts in language and pattern recognition, and they said that kind of data be as clear and specific with the right analysis as if it had been written in plain text in a database. It is just too tempting to law enforcement to use this is a crutch, to basically go on a fishinng expedition that bypasses the 4th amendment’s intent, which is to prevent a police state, prevent cops finding thing by fishing for them. Ask yourself why they wrote the 4th amendment, why they wanted warrants when searching for evidence, and it gives the answer, it was written against the backdrop of what the British authorities did, and often those searches were political in nature, not criminal.
The causes of ISIS are complicated, but have their roots in a lot of things. For one thing, the power vaccuums left in Iraq and more importantly, Syria, has allowed a group like ISIS to thrive. The irony is that ISIS is getting active in Europe because they are losing ground in Syria and Iraq. In effect, ISIS is a combination of splinters of Al Qaeda, that has all but become a ghost these days, and also by those who came out of Iraq and Syria as losers in a sense. Unlike Al Qaeda, ISIS was attractive because their goal was to establish states based on their ideas, they were more like the Taliban than Al Qaeda, and a lot of disaffected Muslims were drawn to this. Add in that ISIS is a lot more savvy than Al Qaeda, their use of social media and the web has been very, very effective, and that is one of their main recruiting tools, they are better organized, and they also know how to get the assets they need to fund all this.
One of the other reasons things like this happens is there isn’t a coordinated effort to get rid of Al Qaeda, ISIS and the like. There is decent cooperation between the US and Europe, but governments there don’t coordinate well. Several of the clowns involved this were flagged by the Turkish government, yet the Belgian authorities didn’t act on this. Ideally, there would be some sort of clearinghouse, kind of like Interpol, to coordinate the terrorism efforts, but it doesn’t exist (this might be ideal for the UN, but it shows how useless that organization is). We have Saudi Arabia, that on one hand has parts of the government and military who are providing intelligence and trying to get at the leaders, yet Saudi Arabia is the source for a decent amount of ISIS funding, and of course Saudi Arabia is exporting the radical Islam that is the basis for ISIS theology and actions; instead of working to end ISIS, their head Iman decided chess needed to be banned, what a mensch that guy is…until you have coordination, these kinds of things are going to happen, no country, not a big one like the US, or a small one like Belgium, can do this alone.
Musicprnt, I agree with your statements in post no. 172.
I have been in the mountains for three days seeking solitude from the ongoing remodeling of my house, only to
emerge to hear about these attacks. xiggi has been on my mind for the entire ride home.
xiggi, I know you have quit CC, but please check in to let us know you and your relatives over there are OK.
My sympathies with all who lost anyone, and hoping those injured survive to live a fruitful life.
I have been close to bombings in Madrid from the ETA terrorists. The closest was in a parking garage two blocks from our house.
My son was in already living in Madrid when the train bombings occurred, but as he lived in the city and the trains all came from the suburbs, he was never in danger, nor were relatives. All these years later, Madrid has not healed from that experience, and many of the convicted are no longer in prison, the most recent freed having been deported to Morocco. Spain spends an extraordinary amount on anti-terrorism, and not a week goes by that ISIL sympathizers are not arrested.
I was also reminded of xiggi
YKWUR
I got your PM and responded. now I have 2!
You know who you are. Now I have 3 that I can’t respond to. I’ll work on it.
When it * actually * hits close to home , it is entirely different than being an armchair general , declaring how others should or should not feel or respond .