The Islamic State group has trained at least 400 fighters to target Europe in deadly waves of attacks, deploying interlocking terror cells like the ones that struck Brussels and Paris with orders to choose the time, place and method for maximum chaos, officials have told The Associated Press.It's probably ISIL doctrine that the Europeans are soft and will do little more than cower in fear of their fighters.
I think they are very, very wrong. While Western civilization is a veneer that has thickened, the Europeans have a long and not terribly distant track record of engaging in mass slaughter because reasons. Oh, there's art and science and letters, but scratch deeply enough and you'll find a howling Saxon or a Frank or a Viking or a Magyar, all of whom at one time or another, controlled just about all of the land that the then-current technology could reach.
When ISIL pushes the Europeans far enough, I suspect that they'll find that they will have awakened a brutal and implacable foe who will have no compunction at all about doing very hard things. Afterwards, the Europeans will act all contrite but, in private, they will tell each other "but they had it coming to them". And they will.
8 comments:
There are plenty of people in Europe who would go medieval on the muzzies.
THEY AREN'T IN CHARGE. Instead you get closet commies like Merkel sucking
up to them and punishing people who speak out about muzzie violence. Europe fights back only AFTER massive civil upset and overthrown governments.
When the first hints of the Holocaust started reaching the West, people were incredulous. We weren't talking about medieval savages, after all. We were talking about Germans, a modern, civilized people, the people of Bach and Mozart and Beethoven, of Nietzsche and Goethe, Wagner and Strauss. Surely such a modern civilized people would not do something so barbarous.
Western elites tend to think that the West came to dominate the world through the power of their ideas. The reality is that the West came to dominate the world through germs and guns. The West tends to forget that. The rest of the world rarely does... but it seems memory in the Middle East isn't what it used to be.
Daech is smart enough to remember the crusades. They thrive on chaos, so they're trying to create it. As it happens, I was just reading P.Z. Myers's post on this topic, which is excellent. http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/03/23/chaossavagery-and-the-elimination-of-grey-zones/
I think it's useful to remember that it wasn't that long ago you couldn't got two weeks without ETA, the IRA, the Provos, or some other group setting off a car bomb or trying to drop a few mortar rounds onto a minister. Europe is not going to fall apart in a panic anymore than they did then, despite the best efforts of the 24/7 news cycle and opportunistic politicians. Ultimately, ISIL is an annoyance on a national level - a tragic one for those killed or injured, but let's face it, you should be worried more about MRSA than these idiots.
I don't think there's any question about whether we're rightfully going to (continue to) bomb the crap out of them, the only question is whether we play into their hands by going full Ted Cruz and stomping all over everyone's civil rights and alienating uninvolved Muslims.
Dan, calling Merkel a closet communist simply shows you need to break out of your echo-chamber and think clearly. Europe will weather this storm just fine, and probably with the current governments. Unlike 'Merica, they will simply continue going to work and doing everyday things while putting their people to work on the problem. We'll hear about how it was resolved about 20-30 years after things go down and Daech have faded into memories.
@CenterPuke88 -- Yeah, calling Merkel a "closet commie" is, well, cute, eh? But I'm not so sure I share your confidence about European government.
Maybe we're talking about two different things. Surely in 20 years there will be a government in Budapest, one in Berlin, others in Copenhagen and Rome and so on. But I'm thinking of the Union. The migrant crisis is just the latest problem over the last 5-8 years which hasn't reflected well on the EU at all. (I should say crises, because there's flood of war refugees coming in via the Balkans. This the EU couldn't really anticipate. But there's the other flood coming over the Mediterranean from Libya, the direct result of an idiotic military adventure spurred by France. I'm not aware of the EU doing anything to derail that war.) The latest deal worked out with Turkey seems to throw any pretense of humanitarianism into the ditch, in exchange for almost nothing.
Anyway, the EU is looking very inept, and seems to be getting more unpopular and shaky. I'm very sorry to see this, because at its best the Union has embodied ideals and institutions that are rare and valuable. Its failure would be a step backward for the world.
By the way, who the hell says "muzzies" with a straight face?
By the way, who the hell says "muzzies" with a straight face?
BIgots of course. They know they're bigots too, but they don't care, because they view their bigotry as justified and normal.
Reminds me of a lot of people I grew up with in the segregation-era South, who would use the n-word to describe black people and puff up with pride if you called them a bigot. Because they "knew" they were superior to black people, and thus felt their bigotry was justified and normal.
Pointing out to such people that they are bigots is useless because, of course, they already know they're bigots, and they're proud of it.
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