Saturday, March 26, 2016

The Brussels Attack and the Wretched Con Warmongers



Every time terrorists attack a target in Europe, like they did in Brussels this week, it brings the warmongers crawling out of the woodwork in Canada.

And has the absurd Con chicken hawks blaming Justin Trudeau.



And sure enough the aftermath of that cowardly attack was no exception.

With this old hawk claiming that if we don't take fight the ISIS crazies on their own soil, they will bring the fight to ours.  

Our unwillingness to materially expand the effort against IS in Syria and Iraq is assuring that the battlefield will be over here, rather than fighting IS over there.

A massive intervention, not only of air power but of boots on the ground, is the only thing that will eliminate IS as a source of inspiration. As long as IS exists, the inspiration will remain.


When in fact ISIS is slowly being pushed back by the Iraqi army 



The only army that can defeat them, now with the help of Canadian trainers.

There is NOTHING the terrorists want more than more Western boots on the ground.

The lessons of Brussels are quite different.

Belgium seems an unlikely location for a hub of European extremist violence. But there are good reasons for the concentration of radical activity in the small state. Many of the problems that lead to militancy are common across the world, developing and developed, and though they may differ in severity, have the same consequences. 

These include a sizeable and poorly integrated Muslim minority, high levels of youth unemployment in that community, the availability of arms, a highly developed communications and transport network passing through the country, authorities that have been often complacent and always under-resourced, and domestic political instability.

And Canada is not Belgium.

We do not have a sizeable and poorly integrated Muslim minority, our levels of youth unemployment are not concentrated in one community, we have reasonably good gun control, we don't have porous borders, and we don't have domestic political instability.

The best way to fight any homegrown terrorist threat is to make sure our security forces are strengthened, which the Trudeau government did in its recent budget. 

And above all make sure that young Muslim Canadians are not made to feel unwelcome in their own country, as foul bigots like Ezra Levant are always doing.



And that de-radicalization programs be expanded and made more available for those tempted to heed ISIS' siren call.

Which is what we also are doing, and why we have so far been so successful in avoiding a major terrorist attack.

And the truth is that we are safer now that we have ended our bombing campaign, than we were when the foul chicken hawk Stephen Harper was stirring up bigotry for crass political purposes....



And no doubt hoping that a terrorist attack would help win him another majority...



We dodged that bullet, and at least now we can focus on making this country safer by strengthening our best defences: our precious Canadian values.

And by telling our homegrown warmongers that their values are not ours.

And that they should do us all a favour.

And go jump in the nearest lake.

Or save their wretched bloviating, and this song, for themselves...


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5 comments:

Jolly Roger said...

kenny is a nobody, used car lot salesmen, have more brains than him,..If it wasn't for Bush, Blair, and the other imbeciles who were let loose on world dominance, who MUST BE tried for international war crimes, we wouldn't be having this discussion, I hope Bernie comes out on top in the US presidential election race or we could very well all be f&&ked

e.a.f. said...

Belgium has internal issues which has left to young people feeling distanced from main stream society. Then there is the incompetence of the Belgium authorities. Turkey deported one of the "alleged terrorists" and sent a memo to Belgium about him. Did they do anything? one can conclude, not so much. it might be pointed out one of the terrorist's families had lived there for 3 generations so one can hardly refer to him as anything but Belgium

Juan Cole had an interesting post today about how many deaths in the U.S.A. are caused by all sorts of things. 138K people die just from accidents such as slipping in the bathtub. No body freaks out about that. then there is cancer, heart failure, but the Americans don't spend anywhere near the money they do on those issues as they do on "terrorism". Canada most likely isn't that much different, except perhps deaths due to lack of health care. the most interesting stat was: from 2005 to 2015 there were 70 deaths due to terrorism on American soil. 24 of those deaths were attributed to Muslim extremists. The rest to white supremist types. so in the grand scheme of things don't worry about the "muslim terrorists". Worry about that white guy next door. there are more of those.

This whole terrorism thing is being blown out of proportion, but it does deflect from real issues in societies, lack of food, housing, health care, jobs, educations, etc. Its just another form of bread and circuses. Keep them looking for the "terrorists" and they won't see the rest of the mess around them

lagatta à montréal said...

Even in Europe, some of the worst terrorists are far-right white supremacist types, like Anders Behring Brevik. In Italy, fascist terrorists killed more people than leftist ones even in the years of the Red Brigades, because they tended to target railway stations and other public places. The Bologna railway station bombing was horrific. Not to mention the crap fascists are doing in Hungary and Greece...

And of course, among the accidents you mention, road deaths remain huge...

Simon, in a sense youth unemployment is "concentrated" in Indigenous communities, but most are far from urban centres. Youth of colour are also far more likely to be unemployed or underemployed, but they are as you say of many different origins.

Anonymous said...

Kenny is just a headline chaser hoping that if an attack in North America happens he will be able to shout "I warned you the Libs are weak and incompetent on terror". The best thing he could do for Canadians is to sign up with one of the groups fighting to defeat ISIS. I am sure any number of them would be willing to use him as a stalking horse.It would be fitting justice as it was his Con minded cousins that created the power vacuum ISIS now occupies. Their destruction with no forward planning will create another power vacuum that is potentially far more destructive.Hopefully saner minds are negotiating their way through this mine field and will have a post ISIS agreement in place before the next wave of war mongers reach the White House.
RT

Anonymous said...

As long as there is a profit to be made from terrorism and the fear that goes with it, we will see nothing change. I believe we do not fear that which we know, as intensely as we tend to fear that which we don't. This is what the governments and the media push- the fear of beheading which is anathema to a Western mind, the lack of knowledge of Islam the religion to the masses, the ability to avoid factual information by using patriotism and racism to destroy contrary voices, the perceived colour of the skin of Muslims and their different culture and laws, all seem more disconcerting to us than our own Christian Extremists who refuse to separate Church from State, or the Fundamentalists that are beyond the mainstream Christian view through quote mining, or the white skinned supremacist terror groups that have become more mainstream because they were defeated in '45. I despair of a world that believes it is fine to kill millions of innocents and create death and destruction for millions more, based solely on the actions of a handful of ideologues, while acting to kill and abandon their own citizens to homelessness, unwanted teen pregnancy, chemical laden food, etc. and yet has not the foresight to see the backlash to these aggressive policies. We have refused to understand human behavior, as we refuse to accept historical precedents, but it serves the war industry and many of our sitting governments, so nothing will change. When the human race dies off, which we will if we are not able to evolve beyond what we are now, the earth will still be here, and the likelihood of life somewhere existing is good, so maybe in a hundred million years there will be a new dominant civilization that thrives. I doubt whether it will be based on intelligence, as it does not seem to have helped us evolve above the muck we emerged from.