Am I the only one thinking the best response to the Paris attacks is an intelligence response?

[backscatter712]

...and not a military response.

You need to remember that ISIS is using a strategy of trolling.

Trolling through murder.

It's what they did last year when they attacked Charlie Hebdo.

Apparently, that didn't get the response they wanted.

So we get what we had today.

And they'll probably get the response they want - a crackdown, and military strikes in the Middle East...

...which will have collateral damage, and a lot of innocent civilians treated roughly or having to bury loved ones...

...which will cause some of those people to be radicalized and sign up with ISIS or other Islamist extremist groups...

...which is the real goal of ISIS leaders and leaders of other radical terrorist groups - they're murder-trolls using the response to build power.

So my thoughts is that we need more human intelligence. Time to put the CIA to work, along with France's intel agencies, and Russia's. Plant some moles in the Islamist networks. Track down the leaders and power-mongers. And put some polonium in their tea.

And also find their financiers. I think some wealthy arab sheikhs are also going to need some radioactive heavy elements added to their diets...

[Turbineguy]

1. That sounds about right

but it probably will not happen.

[gwheezie]

2. I agree with you

I posted an op on some of the more insane responses I hear people talking about.

[napi21]

3. I agree the Hatfield & McCoy tactics aren't working, however

from the little I've heard about internal ops, our intelligence community is having a very difficult time finding people who COULD fit into ISIS as a mole. There aren't very many Arabs or people who could pass for an Arab who on our side and WILLING to do a job like that. That, coupled with human instinct being retaliatory, I'm not sure we'd be able to convince the people of France & Russia (since it appears a terrorist planted a bomb on board that Russian plane in Egypt) that they just aren't going to see their Country avenge the murders of their fellow countrymen. Think back to 911...what would most Americans have said and done if no action had been taken for the murder of the Americans in NY & Pa?

Norm Goldman was discussing this on his show tonight. He also said he feared this was going to be another event in retaliation, and it would keep going like that for a couple hundred years unless someone comes up with another solution. Constant eye for an eye by both sides without end. To make it even worse, one of Norm's callers said he worked with a lot of people from the Middle East and that in their culture, it's not just an eye for an eye, but TWO eyes for one. I see this whole thing getting horribly worse as ISIS directly hits large numbers of people in different countries, and they all NEED to retaliate.
The exit of millions of people from the middle eastern countries (lots of countries) will be fleeing SOMEWHERE seeking asylum like the Syrians are now.

[MisterP]

4. new ones will just step in: we only have delusions of omnipotence, not actual power

[tecelote]

14. "new ones will just step in"

Especially if we respond with bombs. Nothing like having a solution that increases the problem requiring more of the same solution.

[-none]

35. That is exactly what we have been doing.

Gotta feed the MIC and keep them happy, doncha kno?

[Warpy]

5. The first impulse is to hit back

but we know all too well that is not going to work. A war against terror is like the war on drugs, it'll just give us more of what we're supposedly fighting against.

I said from the beginning (1993, the first WTC bombing) that the only thing that would work is intensive police work and international cooperation. We need to stop dimwit things like the drug war and devote all that police and surveillance power to follow bad guys who think god's on their side or we're going to see another attack worse than 9/11 right here.

[BlueMTexpat]

6. True - but as we are finding out more and more

(and most had already suspected), it wasn't a lack of intelligence that allowed 9-11 to happen.

It was because our political leaders had their own agenda.

9-11 justified their agenda to them and to too many others. Had there been true intelligence - not just the security kind, but actual foresight with true knowledge and understanding of the situation in the ME where the I/P situation, among others, remains a constant festering abscess - we would and should have used it instead of the military in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now we are seeing the consequences of extremely stupid policies dating back at least to 1967, exacerbated a hundred-fold by Bush-Cheney policies.

I disagree, however, with the poster who said in essence that it is too difficult to place intelligence assets in the ME. There are plenty of Middle Easterners/North Africans of different national origins who are also patriotic American, British, French, etc., - even Russian - citizens. It is more a lack of will and sheer laziness -perhaps even racism - on the part of political leaders because human assets need a LOT of trust, training, and support. It is so much easier to use electronic games-playing - only these games are lethal and have a lot of collateral damage - or to rely on Mossad, which often has its own agenda.

[passiveporcupine]

7. I agree.

As much as I like Obama, I wish he hadn't had Osama bin Laden killed. I wish he'd had him captured alive and brought to trial, and then leave him in jail for the rest of his life.

Fighting terrorists kills too many innocent people. There has got to be a better way to ferret out those responsible for horrendous crimes and bring them to justice.

[tecelote]

16. +1

"Fighting terrorists kills too many innocent people." Absolutely! It just creates more terrorists.

How would you feel if your mother was "Collateral Damage"?

[peacebird]

27. Agree. Osama Bin Laden tried and convicted, sentenced to life in prison would have been better

But I think that people in power feared what he would say. After all, our own CIA trained him back before he became our enemy......

[PeoViejo]

30. OBL would have talked and implicated some very important people

like his Saudi Case Officer: Bandar Bush.

[peacebird]

32. Yes. That is why he had to be assasinated instead of tried.

[PeoViejo]

33. If you follow the rat down the hole

it will lead you to the Wahabi Saudis.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

8. The best response is an investigative response....

While Holmes would track down Moriarty through a network of spies, informants and deductive reasoning the Republicans would nuke London.

[geek tragedy]

11. There is no mystery to solve here.

The way to stop future attacks means more domestic spying and surveillance .

[CJCRANE]

13. How much more spying can we have?

Most perps of these kind of attacks are usually already known to the authorities.

[-none]

37. Domestic spying obviously is not working very well.

Neither is bombing the hell out of other countries.
Maybe if we started helping people that need it, instead of killing their friends and relatives, we could achieve peace in a few generations.
As it is now, we are engaging in perpetual Hydra war, with the enemy growing smarter and stronger the more we try to stop them. It is quit obvious we are doing it all wrong, but we continue anyway. Why?

[geek tragedy]

40. yeah, there's nothing wrong with ISIS that a few hugs and gift baskets won't fix nt

[-none]

57. This country helped create them.

Invading Iraq and all that, ya know?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

46. But not HERE....

Look at the case of Osama bin Laden. It was old fashion informants and tailing that lead to his hiding place.

All that spying on ourselves does is make us all suspects.

[geek tragedy]

49. Only because Pakistani intelligence was sheltering bin Laden.

terrorism operations now are very diffuse so that there's not one central nerve center. To the extent there is one, they're in places like Raqqa that are not susceptible to anything more than drone strikes.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

53. I keep thinking about an enforcement arm for International Law.

[geek tragedy]

54. That's a very good point about international law.

Is something law if there's no enforcement mechanism?

As things stand, states are the only ones who can enforce international law. Of course, they do not enforce it against themselves with regularity.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

59. I picture an elite force with full access to local records. They would NOT be a hit team....

This would be capture for trial. They could utilize local law enforcement and even deputize them.

We need to think "crime".

It's not a "war".

A war is between nation states. No actual nation has declared war. It isn't going to end with diplomats and leaders signing papers at a conference table.

Bernie is right in saying the reason things have gotten to this point is because of the failure of the local nations to rise up and take these guys on. It really IS a battle for the direction of Islam and its up to them to take on their own fundamentalist extremists.

[backscatter712]

45. Yep. That's what intelligence agencies are for.

Put the CIA and NSA to a useful job for a change.

Find the real Daesh fuckers responsible, then assassinate them.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

47. We need to expand INTERPOL beyond it's role as a mere database.

[malaise]

9. The best response is to arrest the war criminals in the West

and stop slaughtering innocents in the Middle East. Until Bush, Blair et al are in the Hague this planet is not safe. There is nothing called a one sided war - you kill innocents and put your own innocents in grave danger.

Sadly the West does not give a flying fugg about international law, Geneva Conventions, etc and neither do those who respond in this frightening way killing innocent young people.

At the end of the day the question is what is the difference between bombing a wedding party and slaughtering kids at a music concert.

Where was this response when Bush was killing thousands of Iraqi innocents?

My head hurts...for all the innocents.
Stop the fucking wars!

[Abouttime]

21. This is so true

We could probably end terrorism tomorrow with this approach, just admit we (our leaders) were wrong, bring them to account and get our militaries the hell out of the Middle East.

[peacebird]

28. I agree. Send Bush, Cheney, Blair, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al to the Hague for war crimes tribunal.

It would go a long way towards defusing the fury we unleashed in the middle east.

And hell yes, pull our troops out of there.

[onecaliberal]

52. Yes, this is what needs to occur.

#NoMoreWar.

[oberliner]

26. "Where was this response when Bush was killing thousands of Iraqi innocents?"

[peacebird]

29. We were called traitors and worse for marching against the war. We knew what was coming w IWR

So did Bernie.

Too many other dems voted for it, afraid to be called weak on terror. Cowards or fools, history will judge them. Now they claim they were 'wrong' to vote for ir. Now they claim they were 'mislead' by Bush.

The people marching were not fooled. We knew. Bernie was not fooled either. He took the difficult, unpopular, but correct path. He is a true leader.

[Octafish]

38. Money to be made, peacebird.

KA-CHING: The Company Getting Rich Off the ISIS War

For the Middle East, the growth of the self-proclaimed Islamic State has been a catastrophe.
For one American firm, it’s been a gold mine.

by Kate Brannen
08.02.15

The war against ISIS isn’t going so great, with the self-appointed terror group standing up to a year of U.S. airstrikes in Syria and Iraq.

But that hasn’t kept defense contractors from doing rather well amidst the fighting. Lockheed Martin has received orders for thousands of more Hellfire missiles. AM General is busy supplying Iraq with 160 American-built Humvee vehicles, while General Dynamics is selling the country millions of dollars worth of tank ammunition.

SOS International, a family-owned business whose corporate headquarters are in New York City, is one of the biggest players on the ground in Iraq, employing the most Americans in the country after the U.S. Embassy. On the company’s board of advisors: former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz—considered to be one of the architects of the invasion of Iraq—and Paul Butler, a former special assistant to Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld.

The company, which goes by “SOSi,” says on its website that the contracts it’s been awarded for work in Iraq in 2015 have a total value of more than $400 million. They include a $40 million contract to provide everything from meals to perimeter security to emergency fire and medical services at Iraq’s Besmaya Compound, one of the sites where U.S. troops are training Iraqi soldiers. The Army awarded SOSi a separate $100 million contract in late June for similar services at Camp Taji. The Pentagon expects that contract to last through June 2018.

A year after U.S. airstrikes began targeting the so-called Islamic State in Iraq, there are 3,500 U.S. troops deployed there, training and advising Iraqi troops. But a number that is not discussed is the growing number of contractors required to support these operations. According to the U.S. military, there are 6,300 contractors working in Iraq today, supporting U.S. operations. Separately, the State Department is seeking janitorial services, drivers, linguists, and security contractors to work at its Iraqi facilities.

While these numbers pale in comparison to the more than 163,000 working in Iraq at the peak of the Iraq War, they are steadily growing. And with the fight against ISIS expected to take several years, it also represents a growing opportunity for defense, security, and logistics contractors, especially as work in Afghanistan begins to dry up.

“It allows us to maintain the façade of no boots on the ground while at the same time growing our footprint,” said Laura Dickinson, a law professor at George Washington University whose recent work has focused on regulating private military contractors.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/02/the-company-getting-rich-off-of-the-isis-war.html

Has Corporate Owned News broadcast this story: REGULATING Defense Contractors?

Holding these traitors and warmongers who lied America into war on innocent nations would go a long way to restoring Justice and World Peace.

[peacebird]

39. Sadly you are correct.

[SoLeftIAmRight]

55. very good start

and take a good hard look at the weapons industrial complex

[Spitfire of ATJ]

60. Too many people fall back to the idea of collective punishment.

[geek tragedy]

10. the civil liberties debate there ought to be interesting nt

[polly7]

12. I agree.

With all the equipment, the contacts, the intelligence - there is no way the international community couldn't be more effective at ending this than bombing, over and over and over again.

[jberryhill]

15. No, you're not the only one

[Yo_Mama]

17. Intelligence without the ability to destroy the fountainhead is useless.

You've got a group of bandits armed with a toxic ideology who want to kill masses of people. When Al-Sisi addressed the Egyptian imams he spoke to that precise ideology. This is a group committed to mass murder of all who would oppose them.

Without crushing ISIS, the millions of people on the move can't be stopped, and unless those millions are stopped, some of the malefactors will inevitably enter countries.

ISIS is just profoundly evil. It has a will to destroy.

The Islamic Empire of Snuff Flicks is exactly what it says it is - a group dedicated to bringing about mass war and destruction.

[PeoViejo]

31. Absolutely

Daesh would love to see us destroy each other.

[razorman]

18. I have never understood the reluctance to assassinate enemy leadership.

Bombing masses of them, with the unavoidable civilian casualties that always accompany such an act, is all right. But, somehow, taking out an individual leader or conspirator is out-of-bounds. I suspect the theory is that, if we pick off their leaders, they will try to pick off ours. That just wouldn't be "cricket".

[malaise]

24. We have been picking off their leaders for hundreds of years

[LiberalEsto]

19. The CIA is too busy spying on the likes of us nt

[bigwillq]

20. No, but it will be a military response.

War, War, War, and no wonder the US leads the world in gun violence. The people are just following its leaders.

[EX500rider]

62. "no wonder the US leads the world in gun violence"

Except we don't?

[bigwillq]

63. Ok.

Good look.

But the US and its military will still continue to fight violence with violence, and I am no longer sure if that is the right thing to do.

[Maeve]

22. We'll be doing good if we just get an INTELLIGENT response.

Instead we'll get Cruz and Coulter and more Trump and Carson blather....

[Mister Ed]

23. I firmly believe that you are right. n/t

[Igel]

25. Think in terms of rewards and punishments.

Think in terms of behavioral science, not political science.

That means what a proper response should be has to be viewed not from our self-centered framework but from others'.

First, from the perspective of the group carrying out this attack, whoever they are.

Second, from the perspective of those that might be influenced and judge us versus them and take sides or cooperate/not cooperate.

That's the rub. Given extreme group solidarity you get a two-fold kind of evaluation. If somebody strikes them, then a communal response is appropriate. That's what we see. One Western Xian kills some Muslims, any Western Xian is fair game because the grievance isn't between individuals but between communities. However, if they do something wrong (and can bring themselves to risk dishonoring the group by admitting this), then any revenge against them has to strike the perps and only the perps. Immediately a line is drawn separating the "innocent victims" from the attackers, and the innocent victims call the remaining members of their group to engage in a communal response. As soon as there's a response in the works, the admission of wrong vanishes (if it ever existed) and ranks close.

It's a good survival strategy if you have that kind of a value system. But it makes for harshly unstable societies. The West, in whole and by every subgroup, should revile such a cultural trait as incompatible on its face with modern forms of governance and eschew adopting any of its forms or traits. Much of the West only dropped this form of thinking in the last 200 years, and some sub-populations in the West have yet to lose it, even as others seek to re-adopt it.


The problem is that if we adopt our own perspective as to what's culturally appropriate, it will been seen entirely from the perspective of the other group(s). Charlie Hebdo was a success, in part. It didn't change behavior, but it confirmed that the West was full of cotton wadding. You mount a massive attack on a civilian target and all you get is wailing and grieving, like old women, and words, like effeminate cowards. Either the French are just weak and puny or they're imbeciles--that's what's implied given some sub-groups' framework. If you ignore cultural relativism when it's difficult, all that's left is cultural relativism as a tool of local or domestic manipulation and power-seeking, not truth or principle.

[LostOne4Ever]

34. No you are not the only one

[font style="font-family:'Georgia','Baskerville Old Face','Helvetica',fantasy;" size=4 color=teal]But sadly, most of society is made up of reactionaries whose first, second and final reaction to anything is violence.

Violence breeds more violence, Hate breeds more hate, and the broken cycle of revenge and death can only be stopped when we as a society repudiate violence altogether.[/font]

[gordyfl]

36. Kudos to All on This Thread

I thought these were all great posts on this thread. A lot of independent thinkers who don't allow the media pundits and politicians do their thinking for them.

War is a serious matter. Bombing is war, even if you define it as Special Operations, Providing Air Support, whatever. Before any country bombs another country ALL the consequences and repercussions should be considered. The U.S., Russia, France, Great Britain have participated in creating quagmires in the Middle East, and surrounding areas. All for what? Is it really worth it?

I heard Bernie Sanders say in the first debate that Russia would be caught in a quagmire in Syria. I heard some moans coming from the audience. Not many, but some. This was before the Russian airliner was blown up.

I think our leaders should think, think, think before getting us involved in wars around the world.

I believe we should focus on building and repairing bridges here at home, instead of destroying bridges around the world.

[winter is coming]

41. No, it's not just you.

Lashing out indiscriminately in anger is the easy thing to do, but will only make matters worse.

[Electric Monk]

42. Stop calling them ISIS or ISIL, call them DAESH instead

http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/why-isis-will-hate-it-if-we-start-calling-them-daesh--bkC822p_zl

http://theweek.com/speedreads/446139/france-says-name-isis-offensive-call-daesh-instead

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/19/us-general-rebrands-isis

[backscatter712]

44. Works for me.

I've taken to calling them the Daesh head-choppers.

[sadoldgirl]

43. All I can hope for is

that Holland and Obama only speak in this
aggressive way to stop the rightists from
taking over.

I think that both men have cool heads. Whether
they can avoid a bloody and totally futile
answer remains to be seen.

[Rex]

48. Well, unlike trolls on the WWW you cannot just ignore ISIS. Seems to make the problem worse.

I do agree with we need to freeze all their assests that we can and make them poor poor poor, however violence is all they understand. I think we know that already.

[Eleanors38]

50. No, you are not. Better and more intense intelligence-gathering will help...

a lot more, and reduced blunt-force military responses. But don't forget: when the bloody little blowholes are identified, they should be killed.

Down with DAESH.

[backscatter712]

51. Well, that's a given. Anytime any member of Daesh is identified, kill him.

Everyone in that organization needs to be exterminated. Down to the last man. Murder them all. But be smart about it, don't just blow shit up in the Middle East in a temper-tantrum. We must be downright cold-blooded.

The only reason to spare a Deash life is if that member of Daesh has information that helps us find more Daesh.

[daleo]

56. We need to step up the game on renewable energy and domestic oil supplies

Even if it costs more than middle east oil. Then disengage from interfering in the affairs of the middle east - let them sort out their internal divisions on their own.

[librechik]

58. sigh. If only we could claim to be intelligent.

Or have a functioning intelligence system. I trust nothing that comes out of Dullesville.

[Stevepol]

61. This is exactly the response that was called for after 9-11.

We had a golden opportunity at that point to join with the rest of the world in a new kind of NATO, one aimed at coordinating the intelligence agencies of all western countries and all others that might want to join us in the future, to keep track of terrorists and all those "criminals," and that is what they were, not solders nor agents of a foreign country. Where would we be today if we had done that? I believe Gore, who actually won the election, might well have taken steps in that direction.

[immoderate]

64. There are at least two of us.

--imm

[hifiguy]

65. I suspect that is exactly how French authorities

will proceed within France. Quietly and eventually lethally.

The GIGN is NOT to be fucked with. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Gendarmerie_Intervention_Group

And they are police, not military. Which means that any French citizens who aided or abetted the attacks will also be in a WORLD of hurt.