generalspeaking

Responding Defensively

Who can blame colonized people and nations from feelings of resentment at having been used and abused by more powerful countries, their national resources sacked to profit foreign nations, their culture, tradition and heritage held in contempt by a foreign source occupying their lands to benefit themselves, denying opportunities and a future to the people of the land, held in thrall to the interlopers?

Often, those colonial powers could not have held the control and power they managed without the active assistance of local authorities more than satisfied to aid in the oppression of their own people. Nations like Spain, France, Britain, Holland, Portugal, Italy and others explored vast geographic distances for opportunities to enslave less developed nations and their peoples to the enrichment of their European nations.

Eventually, however, the days of colonial empire passed. The former colonies realized independence. They had the opportunity given them, or they demanded and snatched it, sometimes peacefully, sometimes by conflicts, to finally end foreign domination and become autonomously independent, capable of making their own decisions. Which did not necessarily translate into freedom for their masses, when the new rulers and their governments simply emulated those who had oppressed them.

What the emerging governments were able to capitalize on, however, were the civil infrastructure, the judicial processes, the administrative methodology they learned from the departing colonialist masters. That knowledge either helped them to become responsible administrations answering to their peoples' needs, or to become despots answering to their own needs. In the Middle East the latter prevailed.

In the Middle East, traditional tribal enmities and sectarian disputes and hatreds simply re-surfaced amid the general turmoil of mass dysfunction, of state oppression of the masses, of continued intrigues, and of misalliances with former colonial masters that continued. And then the ideology of violent Islamism resurfaced, an Islam that was bred in violent conquest, and which through its sacred texts perpetuates violent conquest. Jihad reborn. With their original target the Middle East potentates and tyrants.

And eventually with the junction of Saudi Arabian oil wealth re-purposing madrassas, and the Muslim Brotherhood fulminating against placid and flaccid Islam, and al-Qaeda rising out of the foreign Islamists' convergence on Afghanistan to fight Russia with the connivance of Pakistan, violent intrigues against the West arose, and eventually, the horrible spectacle of passenger jets used as missiles to bring down massive buildings housing thousands of people at work occurred.

Out of that world-shattering atrocity rose a unified West understanding that a new common enemy had surfaced, one with whom there could be no reasoning, and no matching of army to army. The jihad response to that coalition was an assault on Britain, another on Spain, yet another on Indonesia, and more discrete assaults complete with the horror of never knowing when and where they would occur, in the United States, France and Belgium.

Islamist jihad was reborn with a vengeance. Europe soon lost its determination to confront and defeat violent Islam. Part of the reason was that Europe had opened its doors to Islam, and was being overwhelmed by a Muslim demographic which became an intruder into the normalcy of European life, culture, traditions, law and religion. It seemed far less palatable, much less possible, to continue to send European militaries abroad to deal with Islamist conflicts, since Europe was well infiltrated and susceptible to jihadist violence.

Europe also soon enough realized that its defences were required to turn inward. From among its own populations threats arose that had to be detected and disarmed. Some were neither detected nor disarmed, and the violence directed against Europe and North America increasingly came from within, and not without. European-born-and-bred Muslims responded to the call to jihad and exploited themselves either abroad or right at home to fulfill their sacred Islamist obligations.

In France, the military protects synagogues, art galleries, schools, newspapers, public offices and underground stations - and oh yes, their own police. Primarily, though, the military has been dispatched in an urgent need to defend against attacks propelled toward critics of Islam, and society's Jewish demographic. Half of the French military now is on guard within France. To ensure another Charlie Hebdo doesn't take place, or the bombing of a theatre filled with patrons, or a kosher market.

In a new photo report purportedly released by the Islamic State, two men accused of aiding the United States-supported Iraqi government are beheaded for treason.

In Italy thousands of soldiers are involved in internal military operations with a focus on "safe streets" to ensure the country's cities are safeguarded, even while Italy's army is concurrently involved providing assistance to migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Turkey. France engages itself in an offensive against Islamic State, but Spain and Italy have made their military scarce on that file. Domestic security comes first, not offensive military strikes. Even though the source in the Middle East is what drives the internal security file.

Britain has effectively been transformed into Londonistan, more than matching the French banlieues with their many 'no-go' zones. Countries like Syria and Iraq have been unable to defend themselves against a non-state militia like Islamic State, and nor is the Arab League capable of assembling its own well-armed and -provisioned military might to confront the Islamic State jihadis that threaten the delicate stability of the Middle East, awaiting the intervention of the West and of NATO to do the work for them.

The traditional leader from the West in the Middle East whenever matters get out of hand, has withdrawn. After all, President Obama had to earn the Nobel Peace prize he was awarded so early in his tenure, leading America to a new non-interventionist path, where everyone is friends with everyone else, except when they aren't. Europe has been downsizing its military might, spending far less of their GDP on defense, with the lowest number of enlisted men in recent history.

The UK has followed suit, with a downsized military and is continuing to shrink. Military bases in Canada were prepared to host migrants from the Middle East. There too the military finds itself understaffed, and the new government has set aside the funding originally intended to refurbish its ailing air and sea fleets. Canada's new government withdrew its warplanes from the U.S.-led air strikes against ISIL.

All this as Europe is being invaded by Muslim hordes, fearful of slaughter by their own governments, anxious to escape poverty and unemployment, even while among the legitimate refugees and migrants the malevolent presence of Islamists infiltrating themselves among the refugees are opportunistically travelling to various sites to install themselves awaiting the right time to reveal their purpose, a foretaste of which took place recently in Paris and Brussels.

Labels: Conflict, Crisis Politics, Europe, Immigration, Islam, Political Realities, Refugees

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, May 05, 2016