A little late but…welcome, France
Nine years after George Bush declared war on al Qaeda, the French have finally done the same according to the Associated Press;
“We are at war with al-Qaida,” Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Tuesday, a day after President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the death of 78-year-old hostage Michel Germaneau.
The humanitarian worker had been abducted April 20 or 22 in Niger by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, and was later taken to Mali, officials said.
Unfortunately for France, the US has promised “…it would help the French “in any way that we can” to bring those who killed Germaneau to justice….” I’m pretty sure that a declaration of war is in no way a way to bring justice to anyone. The perpetuation of that myth will only confuse and prolong France’s involvement in their own war against terror, as it has ours.
Watch how confused the comments section becomes to prove my point for me.
Category: Terror War
Declaring war is the ultimate way to bring justice to those that deserve it.
They only declared war so they can surrender to them….That’s what surrender monkeys do…
Jonn is now channeling IVAW…..
Watch how confused the comments section becomes to prove my point for me.
…getting popcorn now…
Thank goodness for the French. If not for them, who would present alternative ideas and stand up th the international bully known as the USA? Freedom Fries anyone?
Joe, after a crack like that…honestly, someone is just going to swat you like a fly.
Joe… that’s rather funny, considering that the whole point is that the French now realize what we have for years: radical Islam is a threat to ALL nations and must be stopped.
I wonder if we will hear about the French invading Nice anytime soon?
My confusion comes from a French aid worker being killed in Niger by al-Qaeda. I have a hard time thinking anyone could see a threat in an aid worker in Niger, of all places. And the guy was 78 years old?
Yeah, I can just see terrorists laying awake at night with that man in the vicinity…
Great. Now France is aboard. They can share in our huge success in battling Islamic terrorists. Oh wait, I forgot, now there are ten times as many terrorists as there were ten years ago. Nevermind……
#9 Joe:
Have you ever had the pleasure of fighting a fire ant infestation? There’s a rule of thumb with them that applies here:
Just because you’ll never get all the varmints, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t fight them in the first place.
Flawed analogy, PintoNag, although I must say I do enjoy your thoughtful postings. With fire ants, once a fire ant, always a fire ant. Kill a fire ant and it remains dead. With terrorists/taliban/insurgents, kill an insurgent or a family member, and you may get ten new insurgents. Do the math and the outlook is not promising. One thing proponents of both conflicts never have understood is that they are not fighting soldiers, they are fighting an idea, or a group of ideas (meme complex?), and ideas travel at the speed of sound, they jump hosts, and they mutate and proliferate. We’ve done a pretty lousy job of fighting that meme complex with our own competing meme complex, and in fact have made it much more powerful, more infectious and more virulent.
#11 Joe:
I can find only one flaw with your argument: that is, you have left no room for them to learn from their mistakes. You say that if you kill an insurgent or a family member, that you may get ten new insurgents. That would seem to indicate that no member of the family would see anything wrong in the insurgents’ actions that caused him to be killed.
A fairly recent historical example may clarify what I mean. Take the IRA. Just because they are Catholic, and are supposedly fighting the violent Protestant overthrow of Ireland, doesn’t mean that all Irish Catholics will support them. You might argue that Islam and Catholicism are different, in that Islam supports war, while Catholicism would eschew it. That’s not quite accurate, because the Catholic Church does support the “Just War” concept; an attempt to eradicate the Catholic Faith as well as a nation could indeed invoke that concept. But the Catholics in Ireland, while fully supporting their faith, do not fully support the methods used by the IRA to push their cause. They have seen, first hand, the violence that the IRA uses, and they disagree with the methods if not with the original intent that inspired them.
Islam insists that it is a religion of peace. It would stand to reason that the adherents of Islam will, in time, draw away from the violence of it’s most extreme members.
PintoNag,
I would hope that “Islam will, in time, draw away from the violence of it’s most extreme members”, but I am afraid that will be a long term process, like the “Enlightment”. The problem is that in the tug-of-war between the ideas of radical Islam and those of civilized (western) society, we haven’t given them a lot of positive images lately. We haven’t effectively used our bully pulpit trumpet the many benefits of real democracy, women’s rights, etc., and also when it comes to the carrot and the stick, we have increasingly used the stick (you’re either with us or against us), and the more you use force and intimidation, the less effective it becomes. Ever see “Training Day” with Denzel Washington? Remember one of the last scenes, where the network of snitches, informants and gang-bangers he had held together with fear and intimidation lost their fear of him and sat passively by while he got the s**t beat out of him? Remind you of any country you can think of? Not to mention, with all our problems at home, the beacon of the American ideal is becoming a little tarnished. Gotta run – thank you……
Thank you France, for joining what was… and is… called the obvious. Move over, smugness.